A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

We know the fired U.S. Attorneys were booted for political reasons, but at this point there is simply no way to know exactly what those reasons were. For example, several possible explanations are floating around surrounding the ouster of ex-San Diego prosecutor Carol Lam. Here's a few:

Duke Cunningham Conviction
Lam was responsible for the investigation and conviction [1] of disgraced Republican congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Cunningham got eight years in federal prison for taking more than $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors just a few months before the midterm elections, a significant blow to the party.

Kyle Foggo Indictment
Lam didn't stop with Cunningham. Among the other indictments was Kyle Foggo, the third-ranking official in the CIA. Foggo was involved in corruption and bribery [2] with the same defense contractor as Cunningham. The day after Lam notified the Justice Department that search warrants would be issued, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff wrote the following in an email:

"The real problem we have right now with Carol Lam ... leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her four-year term expires."

Rep. Jerry Lewis Investigation
The above email did not mention what the "real problem" was. While some stories tie it to Foggo, others tie it to the investigation of Rep. Lewis [3], the former chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee who was also tied by Lam into the Cunningham case. The email was sent the very day the New York Times identified that Lam had begun investigating Lewis.

Dick Cheney Implicated in Scandal
Lam may have been getting close to uncovering a possible role by Dick Cheney himself in the Cunningham case. [4] Mitchell Wade, the convicted defense contractor involved in the scandal, got $140,000 from the White House on July 15, 2002 to provide Cheney with "office furniture and computers." It was his very first federal contract. Just two weeks later Wade bought a yacht for Cunningham for the price of exactly $140,000.

There are also a number of possible Cheney connections to the corrupt GOP types that Lam was prosecuting, including a politically and environmentally charged sewage treatment project in Tijuana to alleviate San Diego's growing need in this area.

Freak coincidence or illegal corruption conspiracy? You decide- Carol Lam can't because she was fired.

She appears to be the woman who loved justice too much for the Busheviks.

Chafing with Bush Policies
This explanation seems to be the most "legitimate" excuse for Lam's firing. Karl Rove explained that Lam was forced out because she refused to make immigration cases a priority [5] at the insistence of the Administration. The only problem is that Karl Rove just made this excuse up, according to TPMmuckraker.com [6]. Apparently no one ever asked her to focus more on immigration, and no one else is now saying she was fired for this reason.

However, the same site also reports [7] that a few members of Congress "signed on to a letter criticizing U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's 'lax' handling of immigration crimes" in 2005. Among the signees were Reps. Jerry Lewis and Duke Cunningham, who was already being investigated at the time. The immigration excuse sure seems like a popular scapegoat for those in trouble.

Especially since the Gonzales DOJ praised Lam's work on immigration enforcement in a letter to California Senator Dianne Feinstein.

* * *

The conservative National Review Online thinks it can refute the entire Carol Lam matter [8] because of timing concerns. They think that the political explanations do not hold water because many of these events occurred after Lam had already been "targeted" by the Justice Department in an email. But the fact remains that Lam was not actually fired until after these matters came to light.

Until there is a full investigation with full disclosure, we can’t be sure exactly why Carol Lam or her former colleagues were fired. But what has been uncovered so far more than just raises questions. Look at Bud Cummins, who was booted without explanation just months after investigating Republican Missouri Governor Matt Blunt [9] for corruption ahead of a tight Senate race.

In the end, it appears the prosecutors were fired for one of two reasons: either they were holding up Republicans to the rule of law (and digging deep enough to reach the White House); or they refused to indict Democrats for purely partisan purposes.

It's all part of an administration that sees every branch of government as an extension of the Bushevik GOP totalitarian government.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

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