U.S. Attorney Firing Scandal Widens

Posted on March 19, 2007

The U.S. Attorney firing scandal continues to heat up. Emails have now surfaced which appear to show that San Diego U.S. attorney Carol Lam was fired because she was investigating Republican politicians in Southern California.

Appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) revealed evidence that Lam had notified Washington about search warrants in a Republican corruption case last year. Soon thereafter, a top Justice Department official in Washington wrote to the White House about a "real problem we have right now with Carol Lam."
"As the evidence comes in, as we look at the e-mails, there were clearly U.S. attorneys that were thorns in the side for one reason or another of the Justice Department," said Feinstein, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "And they decided, by strategy, in one fell swoop to get rid of them." Another Judiciary Committee member, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), agreed that an investigation in San Diego, along with a parallel GOP corruption probe in Los Angeles, might have been directly linked to Lam's firing. "The most notorious is the Southern District of California, San Diego," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "In the middle of the investigation she was fired."
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Lam spearheaded the case against Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the former Republican congressman from Rancho Santa Fe who pleaded guilty to bribery and income tax evasion. He was sentenced in March 2006 to eight years and four months in prison. In a broadening of the Cunningham investigation, Feinstein said, Lam turned her sights on two of the former lawmaker's associates: Brent R. Wilkes, a Poway-based defense contractor, and Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, a top CIA official who abruptly resigned May 8. The two men, friends from childhood, were roommates at San Diego State University, served as best man at each other's wedding and named their sons after each other.
Feinstein said that on May 10, Lam "sent a notice to the Justice Department saying that there would be two search warrants sent in the case of Dusty Foggo and a defense contractor. The next day, an e-mail went from the Justice Department to the White House." The May 11 e-mail was from D. Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, to White House Deputy Counsel William Kelley. "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," it said.

Well, that appears crystal clear, doesn't it? Carol Lam was a big problem for the White House, since she was getting too close to taking down Dusty Foggo. This is a abuse of power, pure and simple. And it may be quite a bit more than that. U.S. attorneys made be political appointees, but once they are appointed, they must be non-partisan and do their jobs as best they can. The White House is not allowed to abuse its power in order to cover up a bribery conspiracy.