Patterico keeps updating us with his usual excellent analysis of this silly Gonzales witchhunt with his latest post today:
One thing that bothers me about the U.S. Attorney scandal is this: if you are out to see every prosecution and failure to prosecute as politically motivated — and if you are willing to overlook obvious major flaws in your theory, such as that the timing is implausible — you can find suspicious activities everywhere!
For example: this entire controversy began with a silly fraudulent claim: that former USA Carol Lam was targeted because of her investigation into Republican lawmaker Randy “Duke” Cunningham, together with various offshoots of the investigation. There is a big fat gaping hole in the logic: Lam was on a list of prosecutors to be fired long before anyone knew that Randy Cunningham had done anything illegal. Yet leftists have uniformly brushed aside that major flaw in the theory as though it were completely irrelevant.
Here’s an analogy: the defendant in a criminal case is accused of receiving money from Mr. Smith to kill Mr. Smith’s wife. The prosecution introduces evidence that Mr. Smith gave the defendant $50,000 — without noting that Mr. Smith gave the defendant the money two years before Mr. Smith even met his wife. It could be a nice piece of evidence — if the timing didn’t render it completely ludicrous.
And so it is with the Democrats’s nutty theory involving U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic.
He then goes on to detail the obvious evidence that the Democrats are spinning this thing into a manufactured scandal. In a nutshell the lefties are hemming and hawing that Biskupic was added to a list to be fired but then taken off when he successfully prosecuted a Democrat. Problem is the timing, as usual.
He makes the case that Biskupic’s name was added to the list of attorneys to be fired on or after October 17, 2006. But if Biskupic was placed on a list on or after October 17, that is well after the Georgia Thompson case was long over. Here’s the timeline:
- January 24, 2006: Thompson is indicted
- June 2006: Thompson is convicted
- On or after October 17, 2006: Biskupic’s name added to list of potential U.S. Attorneys to be fired, according to Marshall’s analysis.
Hmmm. So if this scandal is all about rewarding U.S. Attorneys who toe the line on political prosecutions, why would the Bush Administration have added Biskupic’s name to the list after he successfully prosecuted a Democrat in a tough case?
To any rational person with no political axe to grind, the message is clear: the Biskupic/Thompson saga is a piece of evidence against the contention that U.S. Attorneys were targeted because they didn’t please the Administration on political prosecutions.
But the kind of reporting we are seeing from the MSM is of the usual Republican skulldaggery fare. They know little about the inconsistencies since they pretty much just report the Democrats talking points. Do they want to do some digging and get the REAL story? Nope. Just not as sexy.
So as the days roll by after the November election we are witnessing what they promised they would do. Investigation after investigation on manufactured scandals.
See author page
