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The US Attorney scandal has gobbled up a lot of the headlines recently, but its origin can be traced back five years, well before the firing of 8 federal prosecutors for suspicious reasons in December 2006.
Actually, we have to go back to the island nation of Guam, a well-connected DC lobbyist who’s now sitting in a jail cell, and a certain Congressman from Roseville.
Jack Abramoff made a cool seven million dollars from contracts with the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. His duties were essentially to shield the American protectorate from all US labor laws, while retaining the ability to place a “Made in the USA” label on any of their products. This successful lobbying effort allowed the CNMI to create sweatshops where sexual slavery, child labor and forced abortions were part of the landscape. And the greatest ally to Jack Abramoff in Congress on this issue was John Doolitte (CA-04), called a “hero for the CNMI” in internal emails between Abramoff and the CNMI government.
Abramoff’s success in stopping all efforts to reform the labor situation in the CNMI caught the notice of other Pacific island protectorates. He soon got a job lobbying for Guam, and sought to lobby against a court reform bill which would weaken the authority of the Guam Superior Court. The Superior Court hired Abramoff, unusual in itself, and paid him in a series of laundered $9,000 checks funneled through a Laguna Beach lawyer. Abramoff was trying to hide his involvement lobbying for the Superior Court while seeking to torpedo the bill that would impact them.
Now, Guam had a federal prosecutor, named Fred Black, and he saw this business and opened a grand jury investigation. At precisely that time, he was fired.
A US grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor, and the probe ended soon after […]
(Abramoff’s financial) transactions were the target of a grand jury subpoena issued Nov. 18, 2002, according to the subpoena. It demanded that Anthony Sanchez, administrative director of the Guam Superior Court, turn over all records involving the lobbying contract, including bills and payments.
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.
Black was looking into other official corruption on the island as well, so it was sensible that Abramoff would want him out of the picture.
This connection to the current scandal, a clear case of firing a federal prosecutor to shield Republicans from corruption investigations, has caught the notice of the Congress.
Two House committee chairmen yesterday asked that the congressional probe into the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys be widened to include the case of acting U.S. Attorney Fred Black who was replaced in 2002 after he began investigating the now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his dealings with Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
California Congressman George Miller, the Education and Labor Committee chairman, and West Virginia Congressman Nick Rahall, the Natural Resources Committee chairman, have repeatedly pressed for a full investigation of Abramoff’s dealings with the CNMI and its sweatshop industry and of the replacement of Fred Black, the then-acting U.S. Attorney for Guam and the CNMI.
Nobody in the Congress today was closer to Jack Abramoff when all of this was going on than John Doolittle. He received hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Abramoff. He knew exactly what Abramoff was doing in the various Pacific protectorates, and in fact he supported it with his votes. He enabled the kind of politicization of the cause of justice that we see today.
Fortunately, we have a choice in Congress. Charlie Brown needs your support at the end of the first quarter. Please consider making a contribution.
P.S. Yeah, and Jerry McNerney too. He just announced through email that he WON John Kerry’s “March Madness” competition, and will receive funding from the Senator.