Former Justice official charged in Abramoff lobbying probe

Stories like this are just the tip of the iceberg, in my opinion. Too many prosecutors are politically-motivated.



By Erica Werner
ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 21, 2008

WASHINGTON – A former high-ranking Justice Department official was accused Monday of criminal conflict of interest in the latest case stemming from the investigation of disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Robert Coughlin was deputy chief of staff of the Justice Department's criminal division – the same division handling the Abramoff probe – before resigning a year ago, citing personal reasons. He was due in federal court in Washington on Tuesday for a plea hearing.

Prosecutors accused Coughlin in court papers Monday of providing assistance from 2001-2003 to a lobbyist and the lobbyist's firm while receiving gifts from the firm and discussing prospective employment there.

The lobbyist isn't named but The Associated Press has previously reported that Coughlin was lobbied during the period in question by Kevin Ring, a member of Abramoff's lobbying team who also is under investigation. At the time Coughlin worked for the Justice Department's office of legislative affairs and its office of intergovernmental and public liaison, and Ring worked for Abramoff's Greenberg Traurig firm.

Coughlin talked with Ring about going to work for Greenberg, according to an attorney with knowledge of the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. Ring also provided Coughlin with meals and tickets to events, the AP has reported.

Attorneys for Coughlin declined comment and Ring's attorney didn't immediately return a call for comment.

The investigation of Coughlin's conduct was handled by federal prosecutors in Maryland because of his ties at Justice Department headquarters. The document filed in court Monday is known as an information and is normally filed as part of a plea deal.

Ring and Coughlin worked together for John Ashcroft when he was a Republican senator from Missouri, before he became attorney general in 2001. Ring lobbied Coughlin and other Justice Department officials on a variety of issues, including getting federal money for a jail for the Choctaw tribe.

The Justice Department probe of Abramoff and his team of lobbyists has led to convictions of a dozen people, including former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles. At least one current member of Congress, Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., remains under investigation.

Ring worked for Doolittle, who is retiring from Congress at the end of this year, before going to work for Abramoff.

Abramoff is serving prison time for a criminal case out of Florida and has not yet been sentenced on charges of mail fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion stemming from the influence-peddling scandal in Washington.



Associated Press writers Lara Jakes Jordan and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.

Patrick O'Toole goes looking for a friend--and finds one!

Patrick O'Toole, head of the Public Integrity Unit in Bonnie Dumanis' San Diego District Attorney's office, has been having a hard week. He's been trying to convince a juror that when Steve Castaneda asked how much a condo would cost, that proved he intended to buy one. And that even though O'Toole didn't uncover wrongdoing during his lengthy investigation, Castaneda should be convicted of perjury FOR SAYING HE DIDN'T INTEND TO BUY A CONDO, WHICH HE, IN FACT, DID NOT BUY.

So you can see how O'Toole would be going around scouting up someone who would make him look professional.

O'Toole found Martin Garrick, R-Carlsbad, who agrees that O'Toole needs not one, but TWO, grand juries to help him find public officials who might say something he disagrees with during grand jury proceedings.


Martin Garrick is the sponsor of the two-criminal-grand-juries-for-San Diego bill, who apparently thinks that San Diego prosecutors have done such a fine job with the Public Integrity Unit and cases such as the indictment by a grand jury of the innocent 15-year-old brother of murder victim Stephanie Crowe, that we really should skip preliminary hearings more often.

After all, who needs a judge deciding if prosecutors should go to trial?


Garrick and O'Toole seem like petty, malicious versions of Don Quijote, tilting at people who oppose their favorite politicians.

They say a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. Maybe Martin Garrick thinks there are too many ham sandwiches walking around free.

Or maybe he needs another grand jury to investigate Cheryl Cox?

A public entity abuses courts to advance a personal agenda

The EEOC under George W. Bush hasn't done much for people whose civil rights have been violated, so it had to find something to do, right? Here's what it did.

Judge orders EEOC to pay $1 million to Pasadena law firm

Click HERE to see original article in San Diego Union Tribune.


ASSOCIATED PRESS

5:40 a.m. January 25, 2006

LOS ANGELES – The U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission must pay more than $1 million to a Pasadena law firm that it sued unsuccessfully last year for sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian, in a ruling released Monday, found that the EEOC filed a "frivolous" lawsuit against Robert L. Reeves & Associates, which practices immigration law.

Reeves maintained that the EEOC should have known that the harassment and discrimination allegations were part of a scheme to destroy his firm by two of his former law associates, according to a statement from the law firm Ballard, Rosenberg, Golper & Savitt, which represented Reeves.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge in 2001 ordered the associates to pay Reeves $200,000 for interfering with his business and misappropriating trade secrets, among other things, the firm said.

Tevrizian found that "either the EEOC knew it was being used as a primary weapon in (the former associates') campaign to destroy (Reeves' firm), or it maintained a studied and inexcusable ignorance of this fact."

A telephone message left at the EEOC's Los Angeles field office before business hours Wednesday was not immediately returned.