Prosecutor Says Bush Appointees Interfered With Tobacco Case

[Burgold]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...032102713.html

Prosecutor Says Bush Appointees Interfered With Tobacco Case

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 22, 2007; Page A01

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.

"The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said," Eubanks said. "And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public."

Eubanks, who served for 22 years as a lawyer at Justice, said three political appointees were responsible for the last-minute shifts in the government's tobacco case in June 2005: then-Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum, then-Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and Keisler's deputy at the time, Dan Meron.

News reports on the strategy changes at the time caused an uproar in Congress and sparked an inquiry by the Justice Department. Government witnesses said they had been asked to change testimony, and one expert withdrew from the case. Government lawyers also announced that they were scaling back a proposed penalty against the industry from $130 billion to $10 billion.

[Burgold]

News reports on the strategy changes at the time caused an uproar in Congress and sparked an inquiry by the Justice Department. Government witnesses said they had been asked to change testimony, and one expert withdrew from the case. Government lawyers also announced that they were scaling back a proposed penalty against the industry from $130 billion to $10 billion.

Just more proof that the lobbiests and interests run this town to too big a degree. That's not a republican observation... just a government observation. The interest to "interfere" and reduce penalties seem to me to be an effort to please contributors. Just my speculation.

[Burgold]

No opinions on this?

[headexplode]

Just another incident in a very storied history of our government enabling and abetting the very companies they are supposed to regulate. And you're right, this goes beyond party lines and it is now an accepted fact of life.

[Shadowplay]

Just another incident in a very storied history of our government enabling and abetting the very companies they are supposed to regulate. And you're right, this goes beyond party lines and it is now an accepted fact of life.

Does anybody want to start a pool on how long Alberto remains in office?

This claim is rather dubious. There doesn't seem at this point to be any hard evidence such as email or whatnot. I love when the defenders, in this case it would be the right, call it a "political witch hunt" without taking the time to acknowledge whether or not improprieties actually occurred.

[alexey]

I'm sure Clinton did something like that too so its okay.