Four days before Nora Dannehy was appointed to investigate the Bush administration’s U.S. attorney firing scandal, a team of lawyers she led was found to have illegally suppressed evidence in a major political corruption case. This previously unreported fact calls her entire investigation into question as well as that of a similar investigation by her colleague, John Durham, of DOJ and CIA decision-making involving torture. Read this exclusive report by the Justice Integrity Project via Nieman Watchdog.
By Andrew Kreig
In September 2008, the Bush Justice Department appointed career federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy to investigate allegations that Bush officials in 2006 illegally fired nine U.S. attorneys who wouldn’t politicize official corruption investigations.
But just four days before her appointment, a federal appeals court had ruled that a team of prosecutors led by Dannehy illegally suppressed evidence in a major political corruption case in Connecticut. The prosecutors’ misconduct was so serious that the court vacated seven of the eight convictions in the case.
The ruling didn’t cite Dannehy by name, and although it was publicly reported it apparently never came up in the news coverage of her appointment.
But it now calls into question the integrity of her probe by raising serious concerns about her credibility -- and about whether she was particularly vulnerable to political pressure from within the Justice Department.
Now, almost two years later, Dannehy has provided arguably the most important blanket exoneration for high-level U.S. criminal targets since President George H.W. Bush pardoned six Iran-Contra criminals after the 1992 Presidential vote.
The DOJ announced on July 21 that it has “closed the case” on the nine unprecedented mid-term firings because Dannehy found no criminal wrongdoing by DOJ or White House officials.
But the official account indicates that she either placed or acceded to constraints on the scope of her probe that restricted it to the firing of just one of the ousted U.S. attorneys, not the others -- and not to the conduct of the U.S. attorneys who weren't ousted because they met whatever tests DOJ and the White House created.
And although reaction to the closing of the inquiry has been muted, some observers are accusing her of a whitewash.
“This is an outrageous act of cowardice and cover-up!” former Alabama governor and political prosecution victim Don Siegelman emailed me regarding DOJ’s decision, and its failure to interview him. "The Justice Department has all the resources in the world to go after Lance Armstrong [for a multi-year, multi-million dollar investigation of unproven claims of cheating during bike races] but doesn't have the balls to go after Karl Rove."
Read more: New questions raised about prosecutor who cleared Bush officials in U.S. Attorney firings











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