Madison, WI—Now we know. McClatchy Newspapers reports that US Atty Biskupic "who prosecuted a state Democratic official on corruption charges during last year's heated governor's race was once targeted for firing by the Department of Justice, but given a reprieve for reasons that remain unclear ...
"Congressional investigators looking into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys saw Wisconsin prosecutor Steven M. Biskupic's name on a list of lawyers targeted for removal when they were inspecting a Justice Department document not yet made public, according to an attorney for a lawmaker involved in the investigation."
The timeframe is unclear, but something turned the DoJ around favorably on Biskupic. I'm voting for his prosecutions of voting fraud and Georgia Thompson, and an attentiveness to Republican electoral concerns.
Josh Marshall, whose Talking Points Memo has been all over the Biskupic story, says of the development, "This will be big."
Update: Today’s New York Times reports that DoJ e-mails obtained reveal the partisan nature of DoJ deliberations on which US Attys were to keep their jobs.
“Some of the new documents show the department’s acute awareness of individual United States attorneys’ political and ideological views. An undated spreadsheet attached to a Feb. 12, 2007, e-mail message listed the federal prosecutors who had served under President Bush along with their past work experience.
“The chart included a category for Republican Party and campaign work, showing who had been a delegate to a Republican convention or had managed a Republican political campaign. The chart had a separate category indicating who among the prosecutors was a member of the Federalist Society, a Washington-based association that serves as a talent pool for young conservatives seeking appointments in Republican administrations.”
Biskupic’s rating on the right-wing ideological chart is low, the man had something about which to be worried, were he interested in maintaining his US Atty position.
- Regards to Folkbum for deriving the chart from the US House of Rep. Comm on the Judiciary, and for his excellent piece on Biskupic. -
Update II:
Study Reveals Partisan DoJ
This has been out for awhile, but it is worth noting the politicized DoJ context in which US Atty Biskupic functions.
An ongoing study by Donald C. Shields and John F. Cragan notes that “(d)ata indicate that the offices of the U.S. Attorneys across the nation investigate seven times as many Democratic officials as they investigate Republican officials, a number that exceeds even the racial profiling of African Americans in traffic stops.”
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Showing posts with label litigation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label litigation. Show all posts
Apr 13, 2007
Bice Runs Data on Biskupic Prosecution
Madison, WI—Biskupic did pursue voter fraud, futilely, writes Bice in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. And he has the data on the prosecutions, and the data do not paint a flattering picture of Biskupic.
Update: Bice's work is doubly important because the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's editorial board is bending over backward to give US Atty Biskupic the benefit of the doubt. And, as their editorial notes, Biskupic does have (or had) a lot of liberal friends in the state.
But let's clear about what is being asked of Biskupic in these matters: Full cooperation from his office, the DoJ and the White House with the judiciary committees, and full production of requested documents for congressional oversight.
We have not had anything like cooperation from Biskupic's overseers, and Biskupic's prosecution-voting fraud data, and an innocent human being like Georgia Thompson, hardly argue towards giving Biskupic the benefit of the doubt.
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Update: Bice's work is doubly important because the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's editorial board is bending over backward to give US Atty Biskupic the benefit of the doubt. And, as their editorial notes, Biskupic does have (or had) a lot of liberal friends in the state.
But let's clear about what is being asked of Biskupic in these matters: Full cooperation from his office, the DoJ and the White House with the judiciary committees, and full production of requested documents for congressional oversight.
We have not had anything like cooperation from Biskupic's overseers, and Biskupic's prosecution-voting fraud data, and an innocent human being like Georgia Thompson, hardly argue towards giving Biskupic the benefit of the doubt.
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Apr 12, 2007
Nation’s Eyes on Biskupic and Corruption
By Michael Leon
Madison, WI—Adding up Biskupic so far; he conducts a joint investigation with former Milwaukee Co. DA Michael McCann into voting fraud in 2004, and concludes there is no basis for voting irregularities and organized voting fraud.
Now, we find that despite this finding, Biskupic prosecuted vigorously, in accordance with the priorities of the Republican Party and Karl Rove (SOP for the man) and state Republican activists, and the DOJ, including in one prosecution a single occurrence of one person voting illegally once (while on probation), drawing the ire of the 7th circuit.
“I find this whole prosecution mysterious,” Judge Diane P. Wood of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, said at a hearing in Ms. Prude’s case. “I don’t know whether the Eastern District of Wisconsin goes after every felon who accidentally votes. It is not like she voted five times. She cast one vote.” (From the New York Times' April 12, 2007 piece on non-existent “voter fraud)
“In Wisconsin, where prosecutors have lost almost twice as many cases as they won, charges were brought against voters who filled out more than one registration form and felons seemingly unaware that they were barred from voting,” read the Times piece.
Not Honorable
Days prior to the 7th Circuit's Thompson decision on April 5, I asked around about Biskupic among several liberal Wisconsin attorneys and activists, and they pooh poohed the notion that Biskupic was a Rovian.
No more. Biskupic’s reputation as a public servant is shot for good.
Talking Points Memo, as usual, is hot on the trail noting just now that “House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and subcommittee chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA) wrote to the chairman of the Republican National Committee today to demand White House officials' emails related to the U.S. attorney firings investigation.”
Apparently Conyers has his hands or awareness of a paper trail.
US Atty Press Release
I just did a search of press releases (using keyword “voter fraud) at the US Atty Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin and came up with this one announcing that “Richard G. Frohling, an Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, will lead the efforts … in the connection with the Justice Department’s nationwide Election Day Program for the upcoming November 7, 2006 general elections. AUSA Frohling … is responsible for overseeing the District’s handling of complaints of election fraud and voting rights abuses in consultation with Justice Department Headquarters.”
The PR reads at the bottom:
For more information contact:
Assistant United States Attorney Richard G. Frohling
Criminal Chief Paul L. Kanter
414-297-1700
I encourage that we all contact these agents of corruption, and let them know how we feel about the conduct of their office.
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Madison, WI—Adding up Biskupic so far; he conducts a joint investigation with former Milwaukee Co. DA Michael McCann into voting fraud in 2004, and concludes there is no basis for voting irregularities and organized voting fraud.
Now, we find that despite this finding, Biskupic prosecuted vigorously, in accordance with the priorities of the Republican Party and Karl Rove (SOP for the man) and state Republican activists, and the DOJ, including in one prosecution a single occurrence of one person voting illegally once (while on probation), drawing the ire of the 7th circuit.
“I find this whole prosecution mysterious,” Judge Diane P. Wood of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, said at a hearing in Ms. Prude’s case. “I don’t know whether the Eastern District of Wisconsin goes after every felon who accidentally votes. It is not like she voted five times. She cast one vote.” (From the New York Times' April 12, 2007 piece on non-existent “voter fraud)
“In Wisconsin, where prosecutors have lost almost twice as many cases as they won, charges were brought against voters who filled out more than one registration form and felons seemingly unaware that they were barred from voting,” read the Times piece.
Not Honorable
Days prior to the 7th Circuit's Thompson decision on April 5, I asked around about Biskupic among several liberal Wisconsin attorneys and activists, and they pooh poohed the notion that Biskupic was a Rovian.
No more. Biskupic’s reputation as a public servant is shot for good.
Talking Points Memo, as usual, is hot on the trail noting just now that “House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and subcommittee chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA) wrote to the chairman of the Republican National Committee today to demand White House officials' emails related to the U.S. attorney firings investigation.”
Apparently Conyers has his hands or awareness of a paper trail.
US Atty Press Release
I just did a search of press releases (using keyword “voter fraud) at the US Atty Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin and came up with this one announcing that “Richard G. Frohling, an Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, will lead the efforts … in the connection with the Justice Department’s nationwide Election Day Program for the upcoming November 7, 2006 general elections. AUSA Frohling … is responsible for overseeing the District’s handling of complaints of election fraud and voting rights abuses in consultation with Justice Department Headquarters.”
The PR reads at the bottom:
For more information contact:
Assistant United States Attorney Richard G. Frohling
Criminal Chief Paul L. Kanter
414-297-1700
I encourage that we all contact these agents of corruption, and let them know how we feel about the conduct of their office.
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US Atty Biskupic the Machiavellian
Madison, WI—Salon’s Sidney Blumenthal casts the Biskupic/Thompson prosecution as a component of the Bush “Mayberry Machiavellis”—cut-throat, provincial, amoral ignoramuses who would not endure a classical liberal democracy to save their lives.
In Biskupic’s case, he saw the writing of the walls of Mayberry, threw away 16 years of service as a prosecutor, resulting in, as Thompson’s attorney, Stephen Hurley, told me, “The great irony of the case … having been wrongfully prosecuted for doing her job for allegedly political reasons, now the question is being asked whether (Biskupic) engaged in this same behavior.”
In Biskupic’s case, he saw the writing of the walls of Mayberry, threw away 16 years of service as a prosecutor, resulting in, as Thompson’s attorney, Stephen Hurley, told me, “The great irony of the case … having been wrongfully prosecuted for doing her job for allegedly political reasons, now the question is being asked whether (Biskupic) engaged in this same behavior.”
Update: From today New York Times' piece on non-existent “voter fraud,” specifically citing a baffling case of one citizen voting while on probation federally prosecuted by none other than US Atty Stephen Biskupic:
“I find this whole prosecution mysterious,” Judge Diane P. Wood of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, said at a hearing in Ms. Prude’s case. “I don’t know whether the Eastern District of Wisconsin goes after every felon who accidentally votes. It is not like she voted five times. She cast one vote.”
The Justice Department stand is backed by Republican Party and White House officials, including Karl Rove, the president’s chief political adviser. The White House has acknowledged that he relayed Republican complaints to President Bush and the Justice Department that some prosecutors were not attacking voter fraud vigorously. In speeches, Mr. Rove often mentions fraud accusations and warns of tainted elections."
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