Photo via Lokacid.

Can someone please explain to me how Alice Fisher somehow ends up in charge of every high profile DOJ corruption case in which resolution is in the public interest. Except that a resolution is never truly achieved and the case, instead, gets buried? No questions asked?

Lo and behold, former corporate counsel Alice Fisher got her hands on controlling the corporate caseload at DOJ. Eric Lichtblau gives an overview of the long-term effects of Alice’s "management" stylings:

Some lawyers suggest that companies may be willing to take more risks because they know that, if they are caught, the chances of getting a deferred prosecution are good. “Some companies may bear the risk” of legally questionable business practices if they believe they can cut a deal to defer their prosecution indefinitely, Mr. Khanna said.

Legal experts say the tactic may have sent the wrong signal to corporations — the promise, in effect, of a get-out-of-jail-free card. The growing use of deferred prosecutions also suggests one road map the Justice Department might follow in the subprime mortgage investigations. (emphasis mine)

Fox, please guard the already looted henhouse. Scott Horton raises an enormous destruction of evidence red flag:

…One of the targets, knowing it was in the crosshairs, put a settlement deal worth “a nine-figure sum” (so at least $100,000,000) on the table, together with a monitored compliance program. Career prosecutors rejected it as too little.

Then strange things started happening. Control over the case passed entirely to political appointees in Washington, Criminal Division head Alice Fisher and her seniormost subordinates. The prosecutor was told that his boss “was concerned about his health.” He was dropped from the case. And the team learned from his greenhorn replacement that the whole prosecution was over. It was being dropped.

The move became public and produced arched eyebrows and rude inquiries in the local press which started asking questions Justice didn’t want to answer. The reaction from main Justice? Suddenly an order went out to collect all the documents from the case and have them immediately incinerated. Someone was extremely nervous about having the decision not to prosecute studied. They wanted to ensure that no prosecution would ever happen. (emphasis mine)

I cannot wait for Scott’s long form piece on this. We’ve been pushing for some substantive oversight and probing questions on Alice Fisher’s real role at DOJ for years.

Remember the Abramoff plea deal, wherein Jack was going all "state’s evidence" and big bad Alice and her Justice posse were going to round-up all the Beltway bad guys? Except that case has been languishing in prosecutorial purgatory for two years.

And can anyone explain to me what exactly "socially close to DeLay’s defense team" means in Beltway speak, anyway?

I mean, hell, it took a local prosecutor in Guam to finally indict Abramoff and Greenberg Traurig on corruption charges there after that prosecution got buried by firing the local USAtty when things started to heat up. What about the Wives Club? The implicated congressional family members receiving "payments" from Jack and pals? The plethora of implicated members of Congress? All those imminent indictments that were supposed to come rolling out of the DOJ corruption shop after Jack Abramoff and former DeLay aide Tony Rudy took their plea deals?

We had a federal Grand Jury subpoena former DeLay top aide Ed Buckham’s financial and other records last September, but since then? *crickets* And not a peep about former Abramoff cronies Susan Ralston, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, or Ralph Reed. Nothing on Tom DeLay or the "K Street Project." Not a peep.

So much for follow the money, I suppose, but is it too much to ask that the public be informed just why such stench of corruption is allowed to simply linger for years? Because, thus far, the Abramoff net is rather thin for such a sweet plea deal for Jackie Boy.

Heckuva job, Alice, indeed. Ain’t no justice wonderland…

PS — The politicization questions raised by Dick Thornburg in the YouTube I posted the other day for the Western PA USAtty’s office? The defendant Thornburg mentioned, Cyril Wecht, had the case against him dismissed due to a deadlocked jury, the majority of whom were convinced he was innocent. The USAtty in question — Rick Santorum’s first choice for the job — has been making noises they may re-try the case. Scott spotted this as well.

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