In the fall of 2006, one day after the Justice Department granted permission to a U.S. attorney to place a wiretap on a Republican congressman suspected of corruption, existence of the investigation was leaked to the press — not only compromising the sensitive criminal probe but tipping the lawmaker off to the wiretap.
Career federal law enforcement officials who worked directly on a probe of former Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) said they believe that word of the investigation was leaked by senior Bush administration political appointees in the Justice Department in an improper and perhaps illegal effort to affect the outcome of an election.
At the time of the leak, Renzi was locked in a razor-thin bid for reelection and unconfirmed reports of a criminal probe could have become politically damaging. The leaked stories — appearing 10 days before the election — falsely suggested that the investigation of Renzi was in its initial stages and unlikely to lead to criminal charges.
You know the drill: Americans want to look forward, not backwards, we’ve got enough on our plate right now, etc.
Michael
You act like you think that those Christian Conservative Regency U Law grads that were salted throughout the DOJ might do something wrong…..
They love Jesus and stuff, so they’re absolutely trustworthy.
Zifnab25
He’s a Republican under indictment, but we still want to make sure he gets elected.
Ooooooh. REPUBLICAN under indictment. IC. Clearly those corrupt Democrats in the justice department are to blame.
Mojotron
not according to ABC.
about two months old and no one bothered to correct it.
blogenfreude
If Obama created an agency devoted to investigating and prosecuting Bush-era crimes, imagine how many jobs that would create.
Napoleon
Good thing we now have a president who refuses to enforce the law against lawbreakers unless they are the unwashed masses.
Obama has become worse then useless, and something like this will prove it again when he does nothing.
maya
We’ll just have to wait until Cheney’s massive, and definitive, tome appears on the shelves next year to get the answer to this and all the other BushCo stuff everyone’s been wundering about.
I hope it has pictures.
Brian J
I will give $1000 to each person who posts in this thread if more than ten percent of the country that doesn’t live in Arizona can identify Rick Renzi. Thus, he’s not that integral to the future of the country.
If Ted Stevens can get off because of improper conduct based on the part of prosecutors, then we can figure out if there was anything improper done in the name of a man’s reelection effort. I’m no legal expert, but if it’s more important to let a small fish go and clean up the Justice Department, then it’s probably equally important to possibly take down a congressman–and a minor one at that–for what could have been a pretty significant breach of the law.
r€nato
@Napoleon:
*sigh* this “Obama is as bad as Bush” crap is really, really tiresome.
Maybe folks like you didn’t get it after 8 years of Bush/Cheney. Maybe folks like you really did need a subsequent 8 years of McCain/Palin.
Bootlegger
@blogenfreude: Stimulus! Brilliant!
I see green shoots….
r€nato
@Brian J: If Rick Renzi appears to be small potatoes, then perhaps it’s due either to the fact that there’s not a lefty equivalent to the right-wing noise machine to turn him into a household name, or to the fact that his shenanigans get lost in the tidal wave of GOP corruption (or just aren’t as interesting as Republicans busted getting down-low gay sex in men’s rooms).
Just a reminder – this scumbag embezzled money from his insurance agency clients in order to finance his run for Congress. He then schemed to forge documents to mislead his clients to believe they had insurance coverage when they in fact had none. (And we’re not talking run-of-the-mill auto insurance policies here; we’re talking about businesspeople who unwittingly had their asses hanging to the wind to the potential tune of millions of dollars.)
Once in Congress, Renzi schemed to ram through a land swap to benefit himself and a business partner.
In short, unlike some Congresscritters who get elected with good intentions and later turn corrupt, this douchebag sole intention from the word ‘go’ in running for office, was to defraud his clients and the taxpayers of this nation.
But, you know, Clinton lied about a blow job so of course the Dems are worse.
JackieBinAZ
But for those of us who DO know him, there’s enough visceral disgust to supply every man, woman and child in America.
Brian J
@r€nato:
I didn’t mean to indicate that what he may have done was any small transgression. I was mocking the idea that we can’t spend time investigating and punishing accordingly any wrongdoing because it would be a big distraction to what needs to be accomplished. I’d say that’s a bullshit response even if we were talking about someone who had relative significance in his or her position, like John Boehner, but it’s even more true for someone who is a pretty minor influence in Washington as a whole.
Brian J
I’ll see you one Rick Renzi and raise you one Rudy(!) Giuliani, who, after three marriages, came out leading the charge against gay marriage in New York and advocated that the state adopt some sort of tax cap scheme like the one California has. As someone here pointed out, that’s worked wonders for that state, hasn’t it?
If I’m still in New York if and when he runs for governor or the Senate, it’ll bring me no small amount of pleasure to vote against that guy.
binzinerator
@Brian J:
Justice is integral to the future of the country. As is the rule of law, upon which it is derived from.
When a party or a cabal or a political faction can consistently and with impunity put their thumbs on the scales of justice we’ve reached the end of this experiment in democracy. We’re finding out this has been endemic in the Bush DOJ.
I do not see why one should continue to expect justice to be done by the DOJ. It throws every conviction into doubt.
Bushism. Still the greatest threat to this country.
Napoleon
. . . and other parties and political factions take no steps to remedy the situation. It’s bad enough the Republicans do what they do, but the Democrats have no intention of trying to remedy the situation. And Obama apparently has every intention of continuing to run the unlawful domestic spying started by Bush and evade responsibility by invoking the states secret “privilege” and unlawfully withholding the release of documents under FOIA.
Brian J
@binzinerator:
Maybe I wasn’t clear, but I do think we should investigate if Renzi did anything wrong. Again, I was mocking the idea that some people are too important and that some things take precedent over the rule of law. Even if that were true, and it isn’t, it certainly doesn’t apply to Renzi.
par4
I think Eric (tits on a bull) Holder may as well take over Cheneys’ old undisclosed location.
AkaDad
Instead of solving important problems, Liberals are always playing the blame game. And the great Ronald Reagan. Also.
RememberNovember
Agreed. Rudy G started out as a straightforward guy untill we dug a little deeper and found the Fascist in him.
One need only spend an hour on 42nd at Madame Tussauds to see the contempt thrown at his waxy likeness.
RememberNovember
@AkaDad: Umm, no. They are trying to clean up the trashed frat house after 8 years while the frat boys keep telling them to clean faster. Time for the firehose to wash the do-nothings down the street.