Justice was something approximating timely in the aftermath of the flawed case against former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. There have been many people of no small journalistic, political, and judicial weight who have documented and assessed prosecutorial misconduct in Gov. Siegelman’s case, and called for Justice to do something about it.

But not a peep from Justice.

I’ve been on the list to get email updates on the Siegelman case for a long time, and the latest one has that one little piece of information that starts dispersing the fog around the matter of Justice’s inaction: the involvement of someone very close to Attorney General Eric Holder.

Summarizing the content of the Siegelman email, and the other articles to which it links, would’ve been pretty much like re-inventing the wheel, so I asked Gov. Siegelman if I could reproduce it in its entirety.  The answer was yes, so here it is.

Tamarah Grimes…had come forward about misconduct in the Siegelman prosecution and wound up losing her job. A second, unnamed whistleblower fears a similar fate, or worse, if he comes forward. Dear Deborah, Scott Horton, Legal Affairs writer for Harper’s Magazine, exposes further misconduct in the Siegelman case quoting one member of the prosecution as saying that he would not come forward to expose government misconduct because: –”you don’t understand, these people would kill me if they have to to keep the lid on this.” And Main Justice? “They’d be happy to learn that I was dead.” Horton says the person responsible for subverting justice is David Margolas, Deputy Attorney General and the right hand man to Eric Holder. (Who is David Margolas? See Scott Horton’s speech below, 4th page, 3rd full paragraph.) Please read this article and Horton’s speech linked in The Legal Schnauzer. It is chilling! ……………………………………………………………………………………………… INSIDER ON SIEGELMAN PROSECUTION TEAM FEARS FOR HIS LIFE A member of the team that prosecuted former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman says he witnessed rampant misconduct in the case but is afraid to come forward out of fear for his life. Scott Horton, legal-affairs contributor for Harper’s Magazine, made the revelation in a speech last week to the Rotary Club of New York and the American Constitution Society. Horton says that one Justice Department whistleblower–Tamarah Grimes, of Montgomery–had come forward about misconduct in the Siegelman prosecution and wound up losing her job. A second, unnamed whistleblower fears a similar fate, or worse, if he comes forward. Horton says he has interviewed both prosecution insiders, and they corroborate statements by key witness Nick Bailey that he was heavily coached and threatened with being outed as a homosexual. Says Horton: As I note, two members of the prosecution team were appalled by the misconduct that drove the case against Siegelman. One of them filed internal complaints inside the Justice Department. The result? Her name is Tamara Grimes. She was persecuted, hounded, and finally dismissed from her position–in direct violation of the federal whistleblower protection statute. And what about the second member of the team? (He) tells me he will not step forward because he knows he would face the same fate. He even indicated the fear of a mob type–”you don’t understand, these people would kill me if they have to to keep the lid on this.” And Main Justice? “They’d be happy to learn that I was dead.” Horton goes on to summarize the Justice Department’s disgraceful handling of the Siegelman case: So today, even though the Siegelman case has been torn to shreds in the public and 104 state attorneys general, led by Grant Woods, the national co-chair of the McCain for President campaign, have formally complained about the Justice Department’s gross and abusive handling the case, the Justice Department admits no wrong. It’s even issued a series of brazenly false public statements in an attempt to cover its tracks. The Siegelman prosecution hardly is an isolated instance of abuse. Horton discusses other justice-related matters, and the full speech can be viewed here.

There’s another story today that I hope will result again in Obama’s taking the DOJ to task.  Or perhaps this time it will be Attorney General Holder who offers a correction.  Whoever might address it, this is a matter screaming to be addressed.

Bloomberg.com ran this story yesterday about the Obama DOJ defending John Yoo, author of memo that gave a green light to the Bush administration to torture people.  The situation arose in a federal case in U.S. District Court in California, in which Jose Padilla, held as an enemy combatant for three years, has named Yoo in a lawsuit for his role in creating “a system of torture.”

Obama has taken decisive action to reverse Bush era practices and policies related to the torture and other mistreatment of people held by the U.S.  Just a few days ago his administration released a new round of memos about Yoo’s actions, none of them favorable to Yoo.  So it’s easy to understand why U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White was caught by surprise when the DOJ attorney in the Padilla suit, Mary Mason, said that the allegations against Yoo don’t meet the legal threshhold for holding a federal employee personally liable.

An update to the story includes a communication from Matt Miller, a DOJ spokesperson, who first affirmed that the Obama DOJ disagrees with the Bush DOJ on how to handle national security issues.  But then…

BUT THEN…!!!

Miller’s email to thte AP continued: “Nevertheless, the department generally defends employees and former employees in lawsuits that are filed in connection to their official duties.”

What a gob-smacking moment.

This is another case of the Powers-That-Be resorting to every measure available to them to protect someone in a public service position similar to their own, no matter how serious, damaging, unethical (etc., etc.) that person’s actions were.  And this is the point at which bureaucrats, in bureaucracies large and small, thumb their noses at any individual or even group of mere citizens who seek justice when purported public servants have aborted justice.  The force of government power remains first and foremost to protect those in the government, rather than those whom they are charged with serving.

This is the level at which the change has to happen to become real.

I get why Mason and Miller said what they said.  The general argument is that if they don’t protect people who have served in those roles in the past, then what’s to prevent someone from coming after them in the near future?  And I suppose there’s little to prevent someone from coming after them, but there damn sure is something that will lessen the likelihood such an action will do great damage: lawful, ethical performance of one’s job, which one thoroughly documents.

Until people at the DOJ are so committed to justice as to be willing to face the prospect of having their own feet held to the fire in the U.S. justice system, they may as well rename the DOJ to the Department of However Much Justice Is Possible After We’ve Covered Our Own Backsides.

In the meantime, all us mere citizens may as well go suck rotten eggs.

Peace and justice.

Deborah Alicen