Lam, C AG

=<div><div id="node-body-top" class="clear-block" style="line-height: 28px; width: 630px;">March 7, 2005, Leonard Leo tapped out an email on his BlackBerry to Mary Beth Buchanan, then the director of the Executive Office of United States Attorneys, suggesting a candidate to replace Carol Lam, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California. "You guys need a good candidate?" Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society, wrote to Buchanan, herself a member of the influential conservative lawyers' group. "I'd strongly recommend the current GC [general counsel] of the Air Force, Mary Walker."</div><div id="node-body-break"><div id="node-body-bottom" style="line-height: 28px; width: 630px;">At the time, White House and Justice Department officials were in preliminary talks about replacing an unspecified number of "underperforming" federal prosecutors, a plan that would culminate almost two years later in the forced resignations of nine U.S. Attorneys, including Lam, and ignite a scandal that has claimed the jobs of at least four high-ranking Justice Department officials. Leo's email, written so early in the process, speaks to the close relationship that has developed between the Federalist Society—an organization whose aims include "reordering priorities" within the judicial system to fit its conservative agenda—and key Justice Department decision makers, many of whom are members of the group.While perhaps not a prerequisite for employment at the highest echelons of Justice, membership in the society has become a standard by which political appointees at the agency identify candidates who share their agenda. Some officials at the agency view it as such an indicator of conservative virtue that membership in the society was included as a category—along with Hill and campaign experience—on a spreadsheet that was used to rank the qualifications of the 93 sitting U.S. Attorneys, a document included in the reams of Justice Department memoranda released by the House Judiciary Committee this spring.Beyond highlighting the organization's role as the administration's de facto headhunter for conservative lawyers and judges, Leo's correspondence raises the question of what, if any, role the Federalist Society played in the prosecutor firings. Leo did not respond to messages left at his office and on his cell phone, but he told the New York Times last night that, when he emailed Buchanan, he was unaware that a plan was in the works to replace multiple U.S. Attorneys. But, he acknowledged, his recommendation was not unsolicited. "The only way I could have possibly made that recommendation is if somebody said to me, 'Gee, do you know anyone who would be good?'" he said.Leo's email, released yesterday as part of an ongoing congressional investigation into the prosecutor firings, marks the second time in as many days that his name has been raised in connection with the probe. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Bradley Schlozman—the controversial Justice Department official who replaced Todd Graves as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri—acknowledged seeking Leo's advice on candidates to fill career positions at the agency.Unlike his former colleague, Monica Goodling, who testified that she "crossed the line" in vetting the political bonafides of job applicants, Schlozman denied subjecting potential hires to a political litmus test.His record would suggest otherwise. Schlozman is a member of the Federalist Society, and in May the Boston Globe reported that half of the career lawyers hired during his tenure were members of the society or the conservative Republican National Lawyers Association; among the eight hires during the previous two years, none had been. According to Joseph Rich, a 37-year veteran of the Justice Department who served as the head of the agency's voting rights section until 2005, Schlozman was among a cadre of appointees who have presided over an unprecedented wave of politicization at the agency. Within the Civil Rights division, where Schlozman served until March 2006, "there appeared to be a conscious effort to remake the Division's career staff," Rich told Congress in March. He described "major" changes in hiring procedures "which virtually eliminated any career staff input into the hiring of career attorneys." As a result, he went on, the attorneys hired for the division had "little if any experience in, or commitment to, the enforcement of civil rights laws."The politicization of Justice went well beyond hiring practices, according to Rich, extending to efforts to "influence elections." Schlozman, he says, was part of a group of political appointees that greenlighted Tom DeLay's controversial redistricting plan, which resulted in Texas Republicans winning a record number of U.S. House seats in the 2004 election. Later, while serving as the interim U.S. Attorney in Missouri, Schlozman indicted four voter registration recruiters for the <a href="http://www.acorn.org/" target="new" sites="sites" all="all" assets="assets" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" white="white" px="px" style="text-decoration: none; background-position: 0% 90%; background-image: url("");">Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now</a> (ACORN) on charges of voter fraud days before the mid-term elections. (During his Senate appearance this week, Schlozman maintained that he was unaware of ACORN's political leanings.)The Federalist Society's advice has been sought not only on Justice Department hires: Leonard Leo is one of the Bush administration's go-to experts on the federal judiciary. When the time arrived for the president to fill two open Supreme Court slots, Leo took a temporary leave from the Society in order to advise the administration. The administration did end up selecting two Federalist Society members for the high court, bringing to four the number of Supreme Court justices (Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito) who claim membership in the organization.Leo was less successful in selling Justice on his pick to replace Carol Lam. This owed, perhaps, to Mary Walker's controversial past. In addition to being accused of whitewashing an investigation of rampant sexual assault at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Walker also headed the group of Pentagon lawyers that produced a report arguing that the president was not bound by the Geneva Conventions. When Lam stepped down in February, she was replaced by one of her deputies, Karen Hewitt—also a member of the Society.Daniel Schulman is Mother Jones' deputy Washington, DC, bureau chief. Reach him at dschulman (at) motherjones.com. Dan is the New York Times best-selling author of Sons of Wichita</div></div></div>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Lam" title="Carol Lam" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Carol Lam</a> (R) oversaw the Rep. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy%22Duke%22_Cunningham" title="Randy " class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Randy "Duke" Cunningham</a> military contracting corruption case. Congressman <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Issa" title="Darrell Issa" style="text-decoration: none; background: none;">Darrell Issa</a> complained (falsely) that Lam was not prosecuting illegal border crossings aggressively enough.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_U.S.attorneys_controversy#cite_note-75" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">[75]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_U.S._attorneys_controversy#cite_note-75" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">=</a>We know the fired U.S. Attorneys were booted for political reasons,

but at this point there is simply no way to know exactly what those

reasons were. For example, several possible explanations are floating

around surrounding the ouster of ex-San Diego prosecutor Carol Lam.

Here's a few:Duke Cunningham Conviction
Lam was responsible for the <a href="http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20070314-1311-ca-congress-prosecutors-lam.html">investigation and conviction</a>

of disgraced Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Cunningham

got eight years in federal prison for taking more than $2.4 million in

bribes from defense contractors just a few months before the midterm

elections, a significant blow to the party.Kyle Foggo Indictment
Lam didn't stop with Cunningham. Among the other indictments was Kyle Foggo, the third-ranking official in the CIA. <a href="http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20070319-0510-lam.html">Foggo was involved in corruption and bribery</a>

with the same defense contractor as Cunningham. The day after Lam

notified the Justice Department that search warrants would be issued,

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff wrote the following in

an email:
<blockquote>"The real problem we have right now with

Carol Lam ... leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to

be nominated on 11/18, the day her four-year term expires."
</blockquote>Rep. Jerry Lewis Investigation
The above email did not mention what the "real problem" was. While some stories tie it to Foggo, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-usattys15mar15,1,5413433.story?coll=la-news-a_section">others tie it to the investigation of Rep. Lewis</a>,

the former chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee who

was also tied by Lam into the Cunningham case. The email was sent the

very day the New York Times identified that Lam had begun investigating

Lewis.

Dick Cheney Implicated in Scandal
Lam may have been getting close to uncovering <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/19/carol-lam-white-house/">a possible role by Dick Cheney himself in the Cunningham case.</a>

Mitchell Wade, the convicted defense contractor involved in the

scandal, got $140,000 from the White House on July 15, 2002 to provide

Cheney with "office furniture and computers." It was his very first

federal contract. Just two weeks later Wade bought a yacht for

Cunningham for the price of exactly $140,000.There are also a

number of possible Cheney connections to the corrupt GOP types that Lam

was prosecuting, including a politically and environmentally charged

sewage treatment project in Tijuana to alleviate San Diego's growing

need in this area.

Freak coincidence or illegal corruption conspiracy? You decide- Carol Lam can't because she was fired.She appears to be the woman who loved justice too much for the Busheviks.

Chafing with Bush Policies
This explanation seems to be the most "legitimate" excuse for Lam's firing. Karl Rove explained that Lam was forced out <a href="http://www.usnews.com/usnews/blogs/news_blog/070319/lam_was_fired_for_a_immigratio.htm">because she refused to make immigration cases a priority</a> at the insistence of the Administration. The only problem is that Karl Rove just made this excuse up, <a href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002804.php">according to TPMmuckraker.com</a>. Apparently no one ever asked her to focus more on immigration, and no one else is now saying she was fired for this reason.

However, <a href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002813.php">the same site also reports</a>

that a few members of Congress "signed on to a letter criticizing U.S.

Attorney Carol Lam's 'lax' handling of immigration crimes" in 2005.

Among the signees were Reps. Jerry Lewis and Duke Cunningham, who was

already being investigated at the time. The immigration excuse sure

seems like a popular scapegoat for those in trouble.Especially

since the Gonzales DOJ praised Lam's work on immigration enforcement in a

letter to California Senator Dianne Feinstein.* * * The conservative National Review Online <a href="http://frum.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZWY2MzQ3ZGE1ZjI0MzljYTFkOTk4MzM5ODNkMjY2MjM=">thinks it can refute the entire Carol Lam matter</a>

because of timing concerns. They think that the political explanations

do not hold water because many of these events occurred after Lam had

already been "targeted" by the Justice Department in an email. But the

fact remains that Lam was not actually fired until after these matters

came to light.

Until there is a full investigation with

full disclosure, we can’t be sure exactly why Carol Lam or her former

colleagues were fired. But what has been uncovered so far more than just

raises questions. Look at Bud Cummins, who was <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cummins16mar16,1,7503626.story?track=rss&ctrack=1&cset=true">booted without explanation just months after investigating Republican Missouri Governor Matt Blunt</a> for corruption ahead of a tight Senate race.In

the end, it appears the prosecutors were fired for one of two reasons:

either they were holding up Republicans to the rule of law (and digging

deep enough to reach the White House); or they refused to indict

Democrats for purely partisan purposes.It's all part of an

administration that sees every branch of government as an extension of

the Bushevik GOP totalitarian government.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_U.S._attorneys_controversy#cite_note-75" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;">==</a>npr Lam

was a U.S. Attorney in San Diego, Calif. She prosecuted former

Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now in federal prison for

accepting bribes. The Justice Department has said that Lam was let go

because she wasn't aggressive enough in prosecuting immigration and gun

cases. But a 2005 performance review cited her as "an effective manager

and respected leader." Below is a timeline of the events leading up to Lam's dismissal.

      
            </font><div class="bucket">
                  <p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>February 17, 2005:</strong> Mistrial

declared in first Medicare fraud trial against San Diego's Alvarado

Hospital, after jury fails to reach a verdict. U.S. Attorney Carol Lam

suggests a retrial is likely.

March 2, 2005:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson emails

White House Counsel Harriet Miers, recommending removal of Carol Lam and

several others as "weak U.S. Attorneys who have been ineffectual

managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration initiatives,

etc."

June 12, 2005: Front-page story in The San Diego Union Tribune

reveals that a defense contractor paid an inflated price for Rep. Duke

Cunningham's San Diego-area house. Within days, U.S. Attorney Carol Lam

launches an investigation.

November 28, 2005: Cunningham pleads guilty to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. He resigns his congressional seat.

March 3, 2006: Cunningham is sentenced to eight years, four months in prison.

April 4, 2006:

Mistrial declared in second Medicare fraud trial against San Diego's

Alvarado Hospital, after jury fails to reach a verdict. U.S. Attorney

Carol Lam had personally tried the case.

Early May, 2006: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services threatens to cut Medicare and Medicaid funds to San Diego's Alvarado Hospital.

May 11, 2006: Front-page story in the Los Angeles Times

reports that the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles is probing ties

between House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and

lobbyist Bill Lowery, whose clients include alleged Cunningham

co-conspirator Brent Wilkes.

May 11, 2006:

General Alberto Gonzales' Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson e-mails a deputy

in the White House Counsel's office asking to discuss, "The real problem

we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we

should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year

term expires."

May 12, 2006: FBI

agents search the home and office of former CIA Executive Director Kyle

Foggo, best friend of alleged Cunningham co-conspirator Brent Wilkes.

May 17, 2006:

Alvarado Hospital's parent company, Tenet Healthcare, agrees to sell or

close the hospital and pay $21 million to settle criminal and civil

charges. The hospital is later sold.

May 31, 2006:

Attorney General's Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson e-mails Associate

Attorney General Bill Mercer asking, "Has ODAG ever called Carol Lam and

woodshedded her re immigration enforcement? Has anyone?"

June 15, 2006:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) writes to Attorney General Alberto

Gonzales, seeking information about immigration enforcement under U.S.

Attorney Carol Lam.

August 23, 2006:The

Justice Department responds to Feinstein's June 15 inquiry, defending

the philosophy of Lam's office, which "focuses on deterrence by

directing its resources and efforts against the worst immigration

offenders and by bringing felony cases against such defendants that will

result in longer sentences."

December 4, 2006:

Deputy White House Counsel William K. Kelley e-mails Attorney General

Alberto Gonzales' Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson, authorizing the dismissal

of seven U.S. Attorneys. "We're a go for the US Attny plan. WH leg,

political, and communications have signed off and acknowledged that we

have to be committed to following through once the pressure comes."

December 7, 2006: The Justice Department fires Carol Lam and six other U.S. attorneys.

December 21-22, 2006:

House Committees on Intelligence, Armed Services and Appropriations

disclose that they have been subpoenaed by a San Diego grand jury,

continuing the probe of defense contracting that began with Rep.

Cunningham.

February 13, 2007:

Former CIA Executive Director Kyle Foggo and defense contractor Brent

Wilkes are indicted on corruption charges. Both plead "not guilty" the

following day.

February 15, 2007: Carol Lam resigns as U.S. Attorney for San Diego.

      </div><font face="Times New Roman"><span class="mw-headline"><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; line-height: 22.4px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><sup id="cite_ref-75" class="reference" style="line-height: 1; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_U.S._attorneys_controversy#cite_note-75" style="text-decoration: none; white-space: nowrap; background: none;"><font size="4" color="#000000">==</font><br /></a></sup></p></span></font>