What follows below is a letter I sent to AG Eric Holder last week, on behalf of VelvetRevolution.us (of which The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder), calling for his immediate investigation of all political prosecutions at the DoJ during the Bush era, including those of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and Mississippi attorney/Democratic fundraiser Paul Minor. On the heels of the DoJ’s dismissal of charges against Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, the DoJ needs to similarly vacate charges against anyone who was specifically targeted, for political reasons, by the Bush Admin’s perversion of justice at the DoJ.
There are now well over 700 organizations and individuals, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ray McGovern and Scott Horton currently signed on to the letter, and you are invited to do so yourself via the campaign’s main page at RestoreJusticeAtJustice.com. More details are over there. We hope you’ll both sign on, and help spread the word.
Here is the letter to Holder, sent last week just before Minor’s wife passed away, and prior to the release of the Bush regime’s appalling torture memos which we will, no doubt, be dealing with in a future campaign…
Department of Justice
Washington, DC 20530
April 13, 2009
Dear Attorney General Holder:
Thank you for taking the necessary steps to vacate the conviction of Senator Ted Stevens because of misconduct by federal prosecutors. We now ask that you quickly do the same for all Bush-era politically motivated cases, starting with Don Siegelman and Paul Minor. Such action is necessary to restore public confidence in the rule of law and the Department of Justice (“DOJâ€), and to rectify a vast and manifest injustice. You must act soon, because the victims of such prosecutions are now suffering—some of them cruelly. It is unacceptable that any one of them should have to endure imprisonment, financial ruin, and even loss of family while courts ponder whether trial error occurred.
It is well established that the previous DOJ was controlled by partisans who misused their authority by targeting Democrats and others with viewpoints different from their own. As a result, people have been variously wronged, either by (1) rejection for employment at DOJ, (2) dismissal from positions there, or (3) trumped-up and/or partisan-targeted criminal prosecution. Under your leadership, the DOJ has moved toward ending such abuse. With your investigations of the hiring practices at DOJ and the US Attorney firings, you have begun to take concrete steps to deal with Points (1) and (2). As to Point (3), however, not enough has been done. Other than early, still-cursory DOJ investigations of problems with the prosecution of Don Siegelman and Paul Minor, your office has announced no action or intention to redress well-documented instances of selective criminal prosecutions carried out by the Bush administration.
A preponderance of evidence makes clear that zealous partisans in both the Bush White House and DOJ used their positions to protect and/or empower pro-Bush Republicans, while targeting those who disagreed—primarily Democrats—as enemies. Certain politicians, such as Gov. Siegelman, were targeted for threatening hoped-for GOP electoral gains, while certain jurists and attorneys, such as Oliver Diaz and Paul Minor, were punished for obstructing the intentions of the party’s allies in big business.
As Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Brendan DeMelle recently reported in an article urging the release of Paul Minor, a study by University of Missouri Professors Donald Shields and John Cragan shows that “eighty percent of the Bush DOJ’s political investigations targeted Democrats — 5.6 Democrats for every Republican investigated by U.S. Attorneys for political misconduct. Shields noted in Congressional testimony that ‘such selective investigation and prosecution rates’ represent a clear bias in the severely disproportionate ‘political profiling’ of Democrats under Bush.â€
The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld most charges against Gov. Siegelman, with everyone involved deliberately ignoring the huge elephant in that courtroom—i.e., that post-trial revelations, deemed inadmissible by the appellate judges, pointed to profound political corruption as well as prosecutorial abuse. The governor should not have to wait months or years for a court to address these issues when you have the authority to do so at once.
And then there is Paul Minor, an attorney now in federal prison for a “crime†related to the funding of Democratic candidates and causes. Minor’s wife is dying of cancer in a hospital in Baton Rouge. Last month, he was given a three-hour pass to spend a moment with her (under supervision), but she had no chance to talk to him because she had been given her pain medication and lay fast asleep throughout his visit. Why should this man have to spend another hour away from his wife’s bedside, awaiting the decision of a court, when the flagrant partisan intent behind his prosecution should move the DOJ to withdraw charges, just as you did in Sen. Stevens’ case? **
Selective prosecution for political advantage is a prosecutorial abuse at least as troubling as the wrongs in Sen. Stevens’ case and, arguably, far more dangerous. We therefore ask that you immediately order the dismissal of charges against Don Siegelman and Paul Minor, and move quickly to investigate and identify other cases mounted by the Bush Administration for political advantage and, where appropriate, vacate them immediately. Only through such righteous action, which is wholly in your power, can we be sure that justice will, at last, be done, and that America’s courts may once again deserve the public’s confidence.
Sincerely,
Brad Friedman
Co-Founder, VelvetRevolution.us
** On the evening of April 13, 2009, Sylvia Minor died without her husband by her side after the DOJ opposed both bail pending appeal and a compassionate bedside furlough.
UPDATE: I’ve got a bunch of media appearances scheduled this week to discuss this campaign. Here’s one of them I pre-taped this morning on XM ch. 167’s Urban Journal w/ Keith Murphy for airing later this evening (8:45pm ET, 5:45pm PT). Thanks to Keith for making it available early to us (appx 10 mins)…
[audio:http://bradblog.com/audio/KeithMurphy_UrbanJournal_BradFriedman_042009.mp3]
well written and straight to the point as ussual brad,this has been my biggest disapointment with the new president,his disregard for the criminal conduct of the last admin,which unfortunately makes him an obstructor of justice
I expected surprisingly little from a new Administration beyond that it be “not Bush” and that it return to us the sense of moral and humane values that we saw discarded. I voted for that change specifically. The big issues will take years to get under control and success is not assured; these are technical and political issues. I don’t blame your Administration for them and won’t be surprised if some great measure of failure in correcting is forthcoming. I did though vote and look forward to simple humanity and basic justice. It is not apparent to me that that is the change that has been brought to Washington with your Administration.
That the Justice Department- your Justice Department- would urge against a furlough for Paul Minor to be with his dying wife (really Sir, how could you?) and take only negative action in securing justice for Minor and Siegelman is the deal-breaker. They are the distillation of the change I voted for and demand for my support. They are low hanging fruit, ripe for picking if for no more than mere symbolism. That this small act of decency and justice is so aggressively resisted speaks volumes. Shame on you. …”
I expected ruthless politics (not necessarily a bad thing) and a long, hard, possibly not entirely successful slog back from 8 years after Bush. I didn’t expect and won’t support moral turpitude regarding our own political prisoners. Even I (who would argue Obama’s fitness for the job and political acumen) won’t stand for a lack of humanity and common decency.
A pox on them all.
Correction:
The entire first paragraph of my above comment is gone. Somewhere between UltraEdit and the comment box it disappeared. Sorry about that, I’ve gotta’ check my configuration file- this happens pretty regularly even though an entire ‘comment’ is highlighted for saving. Better proofreading the comment box would help too but I was sure it was there.
It went to the effect that your letter Brad, was excellent and addresses a much needed investigation. I too have been writing the DOJ and White House on the need to clean out and up the DOJ as well as the need to free our own political prisoners, specifically Siegelman and Minor. I started writing letters before the inauguration and right up to after the announcement that the DOJ would withdraw the case against Stevens.
After the announcement that a review of Siegelman and Minor would not be forthcoming and Minor’s wife died I sent a letter to the WH (and a cc: to DOJ) withdrawing my support. They crossed the line with that one.
The first two paras of the posting were excerpts from my last- really ‘last’ letter to the powers that be. I’m not willing to play a ‘write us, we’d love to hear what’s on your mind’ game if nothing comes of it over even so basic and simple matter as this. We can’t be the only people writing/advising them about this. I hope your letter(s) meet success.
NUREMBERG II
~
We can’t let this chance to get Rove slide!
Those poor 256 people. It’s a common response….such as…what about all those passengers? Sympathies go out to the friends and families of all the combined passengers on the 4 planes from 911. I never wanted to know what these criminals did to those people. There were no commercial planes on 911. I hope these 256 people are all on some beautiful tropical island living on the governments tip. I never want to know how these criminals may have made these people disappear. Though when describing numbers about 911….you must always remember that millions of people have died BECAUSE of 911 and the “fact†that there were 4 commercial planes?!
Millions have died, Trillions have been spent and allocated, Billions will be effected for generations to come, 100’s of thousands detained, tortured, and killed in a never ending universal war on terror. ALL….because 4 commercial planes crashed on 911. I still give my sympathies to those 256 people who may have disappeared……when you understand that there were no commercial planes on 911…..suddenly you realize the magnitude of how many people have been effected and killed based on a fabricated lie told by so many. There were no commercial planes on 911. It was a lie.
Justice delayed is justice denied.
WHY is justice continued to be ‘politicized’?
IS it because the Neo-Cons have threatened Obama ad his ‘team’ with a ‘right-wing conspiracy’…campaign? OR what kind of threat would stop a Constitutional Law Professor from seeing to it that the Constitution is RESTORED?
The politicization of the DOJ under the Obama administration is deeply troubling.
The use of state secrets privilege to derail entire court cases in concert with WH policy is obviously abusive politicization.
I recently had the opportunity to ask Senator Feingold, a lead opponent to the mis-use of state secrets privilege, if he thought Holder’s DOJ was politically motivated. Here’s some quotes, and a link to the video:
“This one? (current DOJ) The jury’s out”
“I think this administration has gotten a number of things right in the area of the rule of law, but there are a couple of areas where they’ve gone real wrong.”
I have been the lead ctitic, the lead critic of the continuing abuse of the state secrets privilege, and I was appalled by Attorney General Holder’s unwillingness to say to clear effect that the warrantless wiretapping program was baldly illegal….I’m deeply troubled by it.”
YouTube video
DKos diary