Patterico's Pontifications

3/22/2007

WaPo Details Potential Politicization of an Actual Case at the Justice Department

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:25 am



The Washington Post reports:

The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government’s racketeering case.

Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s office began micromanaging the team’s strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government’s claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers.

She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty. He and two others instructed her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony. And they ordered Eubanks to read verbatim a closing argument they had rewritten for her, she said.

An internal investigation revealed no wrongdoing, a fact that, Steve Sturm notes, was buried on the back pages, while the above was all on Page A1. Also, the principals involved argue that they were simply trying to ensure that any remedy would survive appeal, an argument that has some support in the judge’s final order.

Still, I think there are other shoes yet to drop on this one. Do you think there won’t be follow-up stories trying to tie this to specific donations from tobacco companies?

12 Responses to “WaPo Details Potential Politicization of an Actual Case at the Justice Department”

  1. Paragraph 9: Did this make the frontpage?

    Eubanks, who retired from Justice in December 2005, said she is coming forward now because she is concerned about what she called the “overwhelming politicization” of the department demonstrated by the controversy over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

    Umm, if this is true, then how does Ms. Eubanks explain the fact that in December 2005 she was already talking to press about this very subject.

    “The political appointees to whom I report made this an easy decision,” Eubanks told The Washington Post. She said her work on the tobacco case has been professionally rewarding but her politically appointed bosses “have been somewhat less than supportive of the team’s efforts,” the newspaper reported on Thursday. source

    Ms. Eubanks then spoke to the press again in July 2006 about misstatements made by DoJ officials to Congress. source

    Point of order: CREW was involved with Ms. Eubanks during this time period. CREW was sending complaints to the DoJ and the Congress on this Tobacco case.

    Gabriel Sutherland (90b3a1)

  2. Tort reform its time to quit lining the pockets of greedy trial lawyers

    krazy kagu (6a69d6)

  3. Gabriel Sutherland,

    My reading of it… “coming forward now” is not necessarily the same as “first coming forward”; still, that is a bit sloppy. But that earlier account also looks pretty bad for DOJ; beyond her account, there’s the bit about DOJ ignoring their own expert advice, and of course the now familiar-looking denial from Gonzales. We’ll see.

    Biff (c3722c)

  4. Biff: Eubanks made statements in July 2006 to the effect that DoJ officials may have provided false testimony or misstated information to the Congress.

    How is that different from what she is saying today?

    The WaPo frame on Ms. Eubanks is also interesting. Carol Loennig was the same reporter writing the pieces for the Post in December 2005 and July 2006. Loennig is framing Eubanks in a matter that makes these charges new, but in fact the charges are old and the old one were reported BY CAROL LOENNIG.

    Maybe Loennig just forgot about a high level source that was talking to her?

    Gabriel Sutherland (90b3a1)

  5. Maybe Loennig just forgot about a high level source that was talking to her?

    Ya know, I seem to recall that another reporter was doing the same thing recently — reporting the statements of a source without reflecting on what the same source had previously told the same reporter. Is this something they teach in journalism school, or is it simply a failure to research in their own writings?

    Robert Crawford (aa888e)

  6. Gabriel Sutherland,

    How is that different from what she is saying today?

    I don’t think it is, is it? The big difference here isn’t her story, it’s how it appears to corroborate with other stories that weren’t known at the time but are now–that’s what makes these old charges new, we have new reasons to examine them.

    Biff (c3722c)

  7. With Bush’s track record I’ll go with Obstruction Of Justice.

    It’s time to open all records to the public so the citzens can figure out what our bumbling civil servants are up to.

    James (e4a379)

  8. This one is absolutely HILARIOUS.

    First, as is noted by Ed Whalen at NRO — Eubanks is a civil litigator, and she was seeking relief in a civil suit under a RICO theory, which is generally a criminal charge. Not unheard of, but unusual nevertheless.

    What the political appointees had to do, was to seek guidance from the Criminal Division about whether the remedies that Eubanks was seeking to have the court impose would stand up on appeal under a RICO theory, since the DOJ expertise on RICO cases is in the OCRS — the DOJ Organized Crime and Racketeering Section.

    It was OCRS that relayed back to the Civil Division where Eubanks worked that she was asking for rememdies that would not hold up on appeal — a point that had been made by the district court in an earlier preliminary ruling. Eubanks didn’t let that slow her down.

    So, since she was unwilling to take guidance from the RICO experts in the Criminal Division — career prosecutors — the Political Appointees in the Civil Division where she worked TOLD her what she could and could not ask for according to the guidance from the Criminal Division OCRS.

    When she continued to resist, they wrote her closing argument for her and told her to read it verbatim.

    They should have simply canned her for insubordination. DOJ Attorneys are not independent contractors.

    And, to say this somehow reflects “politization” of DOJ is just absolute SILLINESS.

    It reflects career prosectutors in the Criminal Division trying to save an idiot civil litigator from doing something dumb.

    wls (077d0d)

  9. wls,

    Also, the judge is a Clinton appointee, and apparently one of the more liberal judges left there–and she didn’t see fit to award any monetary damages, either–so your scenario sounds quite plausible. However, it doesn’t necessarily address all of Eubanks’ complaint, which goes to motive. I say, if it looks like there’s any there there, then call her to testify before Congress and find out.

    Biff (c3722c)

  10. There’s an enormous disconnect here. State governments and the federal government have all jumped on board to soak big cash out of Big Tobacco. That’s been done by Democrats and Republicans. Big Tobacco certainly lobbies both parties’ politicians and also makes political contributions to both parties’ politicians at both state and federal levels.

    How is this transmuted into a case of obstruction of justice to pursue improper and exclusively Republican political motivations? Or, asked another way: Given that Big Tobacco was on the other side from the feds in this case, is there any possibility that anyone upstream from Eubanks could have possibly exerted any supervisory authority over Eubanks without generating changes by her that every disagreement was based on political motivations?

    “Whee, I’m suing an arguable friend of Republicans, I’m therefore bullet-proof in arguments with my bosses.” Is there something I’m missing, or isn’t that pretty much Ms. Eubanks’ entire argument?

    (The one part of her claims that I’m very troubled by is the claim that witnesses were instructed to change their testimony. That’s a powerful charge, but it’s also an amazingly slippery charge; it’s hard for me to imagine OPR blessing that, which frankly makes me wonder if she’s guilty of some exaggeration or mischaracterization on that particular set of contentions.)

    Beldar (0f57c7)

  11. I smell a book coming out.

    Another Drew (8018ee)

  12. Sharon Eubanks apparently works for CREW.

    This is a link to a Google cache of the blog “Tobacco on Trial”. The blog is a project of a public anti-smoking activist. The blog reports on a panel discussion in which Eubanks was a last minute booking. Sharon was the gravy because the post goes into how she was the star panelist. It reports that she presently(post date is August 2006) works for CREW, but is abstaining from CREW activities that relate to the DoJ Tobacco case.

    The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig DID NOT report that Sharon Eubanks is employed with a watchdog group that has and is presently filing ethics and criminal complaints on the DoJ Tobacco matter with the DoJ OPR office and the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.

    Gabriel Sutherland (90b3a1)


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