Bush Administration Pushed Out Lead Prosecutor On Abramoff Case

As many as eight U.S. Attorneys are leaving or being pushed out of their positions by the Bush administration. Several of these prosecutors are working on high-profile cases, such as Carol Lam, who ran the investigation into the corruption of former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA).

The San Diego Union-Tribune has noted that Lam appears to be the “victim of strong-arm political pressure from Washington, where officials apparently wanted to hand her job to a partisan operative.” U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins, who was pushed out by the Bush administration in December, was replaced with a “37-year-old protege of White House political adviser Karl Rove.”

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has denied political motivations behind the resignations, recently telling Congress, “Nothing could be further from the truth.” He added that they were a “sign of good management” by the Bush administration.

But these replacements are not the first time the administration has punished U.S. Attorneys for going after White House allies. In 2002, U.S. Attorney Frederick A. Black launched an investigation into Jack Abramoff’s “secret arrangement with Superior Court officials to lobby against a court reform bill then pending in Congress.” On Nov. 18, 2002, Black issued a grand jury subpoena to the Guam Superior Court to turn over all records involving the lobbying contract with Abramoff. The administration swiftly punished Black:

A day later, the chief prosecutor, US Attorney Frederick A. Black, who had launched the investigation, was demoted. A White House news release announced that Bush was replacing Black.

The timing caught some by surprise. Despite his officially temporary status as the acting US attorney, Black had held the assignment for more than a decade.

An internal Justice Department investigation concluded that the White House did not improperly retaliate against Black for raising allegations against Abramoff. But the probe into Abramoff’s activities in Guam died shortly after Black stepped down. Congress needs to question the White House about whether the Cunningham investigation will meet a similar fate when Lam resigns.

American Progress Senior Fellow Scott Lilly has more.

FOLLOW-UP STORY from the San Jose Mercury-News: Kevin Ryan may not be a household name, but two criminal investigations that the departing U.S. attorney for coastal Northern California is overseeing are widely known: steroids in sports and stock options backdating by corporate America.

Ryan, who was among a handful of top prosecutors nationwide who announced their resignations Tuesday to the backdrop of pressure from the Bush administration, leaves his office with both issues still squarely in the public's attention.

Last July, Ryan became the nation's first U.S. attorney to file charges against company executives for allegedly violating securities laws by backdating stock options without properly accounting for them. Backdating is when options are retroactively issued to coincide with low points in a company's share price - allowing shareholders to potentially reap a big windfall when prices subsequently rise.

The government is now investigating more than 100 companies, and Ryan created a government task force to investigate stock options fraud.

The Republican appointee also made headlines last week in the investigation of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s ill-fated boardroom spying probe. A low-level private investigator pleaded guilty to identity theft and conspiracy charges for illegally accessing private phone records of journalists and board members in the company's quest to ferret out the source of leaks to the media.

Ryan has actively pursued gang and drug cases while working with local law enforcement agencies. He also prosecuted Pavlo Lazarenko, the former prime minister of Ukraine on money laundering charges in a case that had more exposure in the former Soviet republic than at home.

One of the prosecutor's highest-profile criminal targets has been baseball player Barry Bonds. The Giants slugger is under investigation for allegedly lying to a federal grand jury in 2003 probing a Burlingame-based nutritional supplement company that doled out once-undetectable steroids to elite athletes.