As we all remember, the Culture of Corruption meme was devastating during the 2006 elections. Congressman Jerry Lewis somehow managed to avoid being indicted before the election, which surprised a lot of people. What has happened since is the new GOP playbook for how the Bush Justice Department protects a Republican member. And today, the LA Times adds another piece to the puzzle — it isn’t pretty.  

It wasn’t until late August 2007 that we learned the US Attorney investigation of Lewis stalled in December 2006 for lack of resources — just after the Culture of Corruption charge helped Democrats win the House. But stalling wasn’t enough, it needed to be derailed. It was in January 2007 when speculation began that San Diego USA Carol Lam was purged for her investigation of Lewis. A couple of months later, LA USA Debra Wong Yang quit in the middle of her investigation to take a nearly $1.5 million a year job with the law firm defending Jerry Lewis.

Thomas O’Brien, the new USA, disbanded the Public Integrity Unit investigating Republican Lewis for major corruption — the same week that NY USA Public Integrity Unit brought down Elliot Spitzer. Today we learn of yet another move to keep Lewis from being brought to justice, put this in the time-line for March 2007:

U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O’Brien is facing sharp criticism from prosecutors within his office who say he is pressuring them to file relatively insignificant criminal cases to drive up statistics that make the office eligible for increased federal funding.

The prosecutors said O’Brien’s effort to increase filings amounts to a quota system in which lawyers face possible discipline and other career consequences if they fail to achieve their numbers. It also detracts from their traditional mission of prosecuting complex, time-consuming cases that local authorities are unable to pursue, they said.

[…]

The disgruntled prosecutors in Los Angeles say they are now spending an exorbitant amount of time working on less significant cases — mail theft, smaller drug offenses and illegal immigration — to reach quotas. They cited the recent disbanding of the office’s public integrity and environmental crimes section, a unit with a history of working on complex police corruption and political corruption cases, as evidence of a shift toward high-volume, low-quality prosecutions.

The Lewis scandal is so damaging because it involves both major corruption and former Republican Congressman Bill Lowery — it really does illustrate that corruption is part of the culture in the GOP.

Congressman Jerry Lewis sleeps well at night knowing there is a Bush Justice Department, from The Recorder (reg. required) (h/t TPM):

Federal prosecutors who work public corruption cases in Los Angeles had a vastly different week than their counterparts in Manhattan.

While the East Coast AUSAs enjoyed national celebrity for bringing down Gov. Eliot Spitzer, Los Angeles U.S. Attorney Thomas O’Brien disbanded his public integrity unit last Monday. Those 17 attorneys will be redistributed among the major fraud and organized crime sections, which now will have a mandate to battle corruption, spokesman Thom Mrozek said.

Yes, it is that LA USA office:

Wong Yang was heading up the investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis’s (R-Calif.) ties to a lobbying firm and the millions of dollars in contracts the firm’s clients received from Congress. Wong Yang, the first Asian-American woman to serve as a U.S. attorney, left her post with Justice to become a partner at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, the law firm representing Lewis. She will co-chair the firm’s crisis-management practice group, along with Washington, D.C., partner Theodore B. Olson, a former Bush administration solicitor general.

Looks like the ultimate in crisis-management. Wow.

Bruin Kid lets us know that Jerry Lewis will be seeking re-election next year.  He’s obviously pretty confident that his legal troubles and investigations into his corrupt earmarking will amount to nothing.  I’m thinking this is why:

In Los Angeles, a federal criminal investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis, a California Republican, stalled for nearly six months due to a lack of funds, according to former prosecutors. The lead prosecutor on the inquiry and other lawyers departed the office, and vacancies couldn’t be filled. George Cardona, the interim U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, declined to comment on specific cases but confirmed that lack of funds and unfilled vacancies caused delays in some investigations […]

People with knowledge of the case said that by the time the investigation stalled in December 2006, it had branched out into other areas, including Mr. Lewis’s June 2003 role in passing legislation that helped giant hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management. People associated with Cerberus around the same time gave at least $140,000 to a political action committee controlled by Mr. Lewis. Cerberus officials didn’t respond to phone calls or emailed questions concerning the Lewis inquiry […]

After the lead prosecutor in the Lewis case quit, others assigned to the case took time getting up to speed. Brian Hershman, a former deputy chief of the Los Angeles office’s public corruption section, declined to comment on specific cases, but confirms that his group’s work overall was derailed by the departure of experienced prosecutors. Like several others, he says he left for more money to support his family.

Replacements “are mostly rookies,” he says. “It will be some time before they’ll be able to restore the section to what it was before.”

With additional funds recently made available by Congress, the Los Angeles office has filled 12 of 57 lawyer vacancies and is expecting an additional 12 lawyers to start soon. To jump-start the Lewis investigation, Mr. Cardona, the interim U.S. attorney, in June called on a veteran prosecutor, Michael Emmick, to revive and supervise the investigation, people with knowledge of the investigation say.

Day late and a dollar short on that one, I’d gather.  This is approaching criminal conduct by the Justice Department.  At a time when the investigation was expanding, Debra Wong Yang (the US Attorney for the region) suddenly jumped ship for the law firm representing Lewis.  You can bet they never lacked funds; Yang received nearly $1.5 million.  The law firm, Gibson Dunn, took the top assistant off the case as well.  So the LA office was thrown into disarray precisely when the investigation was heating up, and the money for the office dried up at the same time.  Pathetic.  With or without Alberto Gonzales, we still have a DoJ protecting its own and politicized beyond control.  And this is the time when Democratic leaders are seeking to call off the dogs in the US Attorney case?

As mentioned a couple times on Calitics, Bob Novak is reporting that corrupt con Jerry Lewis may retire in 2008.  Novak may be a douchebag of liberty, but he usually has excellent inside information from the GOP (you know, like who’s a covert CIA agent and who isn’t).  It started me wondering why Lewis would retire at this point, when the investigations into his practices have slowed to a crawl.  Then I remembered this story I read in yesterday’s LA Times:

As Congress investigates whether U.S. attorneys across the nation were fired or forced out for political reasons, the Bush administration appears to be poised to nominate a respected career prosecutor as U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.

Thomas O’Brien, 47, the chief of the office’s criminal division, worked for five years in the district attorney’s hard-core gang division before moving to the U.S. attorney’s office.

“He’s probably the most apolitical person selected to that job for some time,” Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said. “He’s an excellent pick. He’s a career, professional prosecutor.”

The position of US Attorney for Los Angeles, which holds jurisdiction over Lewis’ case, has been vacant since Debra Wong Yang left in January to go to Gibson Dunn, a high-powered Republican law firm that is also REPRESENTING Lewis.  O’Brien appears to be an unlikely pick for an ideological White House – he’s competent, apolitical, and a respected prosecutor – but because the Congress is sniffing around all of these US Attorney threads these days, they may have no choice but to hire someone of his stature:

Carl W. Tobias, professor of constitutional law at the University of Richmond, said O’Brien’s nomination would be a healthy sign that the Justice Department is changing its policies.

“My sense of what’s going on is that there is an inclination at the Justice Department to pick these kinds of people to defuse the controversy,” Tobias said. “It seems like it’s going to be much more of a meritocracy.”

And this could be bad news for the thoroughly unmeritorious Lewis.  An independent prosecutor would follow the evidence, and there’s a mountain of it where Lewis is concerned.  He used the Appropriations Committee in the 109th Congress as his own personal earmark factory, steering contracts to clients of connected lobbyist Bill Lowery, who has graciously given half a million dollars to Lewis campaigns over the years.

A guy like this as US Attorney in LA could be Lewis’ worst nightmare:

…O’Brien motivates attorneys to be creative and volunteer for cases. When an assistant U.S. attorney passed out during opening statements last week due to a medical problem, O’Brien took over personally. On Thursday, he was in court on the case.

“He came out with that background as a D.A. where you get a file the day before and go try it,” Carter said.

A hard-charging former D.A. versus Jerry Lewis?  That’s no contest.  Maybe it’s better for him to get out of Washington while the getting’s good, and focus more time and money on saving his own posterior.