Rep. Hodes: Was the phone jamming case oddly free of pressure?

Great Post (0.00 / 0)

Thank you sir.

Next time, there may be no next time.

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by: Jon Bresler @ Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 17:48:58 PM CST

Am I out of line? (0.00 / 0)

There's no evidence to suggest that the prosecutors were pressured. Is it unfair to raise that as a possibility?

Personally, I think we've crossed into territory where the normal assumptions that "the rules were followed" in the Justice Department and in the GOP-controlled Congress of the time cannot be accepted without double-checking.

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by: elwood @ Sat Mar 10, 2007 at 16:40:09 PM CST

Great minds. (4.00 / 1)

The answer to your question is here, in spades.

Check out the US Attorney in charge of the NH phone-jamming, Thomas J Colantuono. Does Gonzales give prizes for slow response to Republican dirty tricks? It took Colantuono's people more than a year before the FBI questioned their top/only suspect in the NH phone-jamming, a crime by Republicans.

But in other matters, Colantuono could move fast.  Just before the 2004 elections, he moved fast to block Democrats from questioning phone-jamming suspects--and fast again to file corruption charges against a NH Democrat.

In 2006, right after the Democrats' landmark electoral victory, Colantuono also moved fast to shut down his phone-jamming enquiries, making a guilty plea deal with the last defendant that gave the Feds nothing and the Republicans everything. Let me back this sordid story up with more detail.

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by: hannah @ Sun Mar 11, 2007 at 06:44:20 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Ashcroft v. Gonzales (4.00 / 1)

may be the key here.

At the time that Ashcroft stepped down as AG, I speculated, based on Bush's choice of Gonzales, that Ashcroft was a liability to the Bush Crime Family.  In fact, we ultimately may have Ashcroft to thank for publicly recusing himself from the Plame leak and handing it off to Fitz.  I remember watching the press conference and thinking at the time that this was his way of burying it, but now I think it was his way of washing his hands of it.

Ashcroft is a wingnut's wingnut, but he is a principled one.  Gonzales couldn't be more different.  He is a toadie with no principles.  If Gonzales had been presented with the leak case, it seems likely that he would have ignored it as much as he could while waiting for it to fall under the radar.

So:

This very interesting look at phone jamming and the current prosecutor purge story, for me, hinges mostly on the actions of the Justice dept. after Gonzales took over.  Is there a greater degree of foot dragging and reluctance in 2005-2006 than before that time?  I don't know until I go through Betsy's and TPM Muckraker's work more carefully, but to me that would be a clear sign that the purge story merits looking into not only those purged, but those who weren't.

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by: Dean Barker @ Sun Mar 11, 2007 at 09:39:40 AM CDT

Even while in the NH State Senate.......... (0.00 / 0)

.....Tom Colantuono was quite a foaming-at-the-mouth winger; whenever an AP story sought comments from various legislators on a proposed piece of legislation, you could count on him to parrot a soundbite version of whatever the conservative movement thought about the subject.

  And his wife is no slouch, either:

  * first sending an e-mail to church leaders asking them to campaign for Bush-Cheney in 2004, and

  * more recently, testifying against the (watered-down) version of civil unions in the NH Legislature as watering down of our culture  and "running amok like Massachusetts".

  So it's hardly surprising that Tom would run the U.S. Attorney's office as a movement conservative. He couldn't do it any other way, could he?.

 

 "We should pay attention to that man behind the curtain."

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by: Ed Tracey @ Sun Mar 11, 2007 at 12:07:26 PM CDT