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. 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 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.

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. Yet 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."

The Supreme Court vacated much of Siegelman's conviction last month after years of controversy, including charges by Republican whistleblowers that he was prosecuted primarily because he was a Democrat. As a result, House Judiciary Committee leaders and Siegelman’s first trial judge, U.W. Clemon, last year separately urged Attorney Gen. Eric Holder to investigate suspected DOJ prosecution irregularities in what Clemon called “the most unfounded” prosecution he’d witnessed in nearly three decades on Alabama’s federal bench.

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Dannehy’s probe, my reporting suggests, was compromised from the beginning.

She was appointed by Bush Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on Sept. 29, 2008. On Sept. 25, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City found misconduct in a 2003 trial she had led.

The court found that the prosecution suppressed evidence that could have benefited the defendant, Connecticut businessman Charles B. Spadoni. Spadoni, below, had been convicted of participating in a plot by his employer to bribe former state Treasurer Paul Silvester to invest $200 million of state pension money with his firm.

But the appeals court found that prosecutors had failed to turn over to the defense an FBI agent’s notes of a key interview they conducted with Silvester's attorney. In doing so, the court ruled, “the government deprived Spadoni of exculpatory evidence going to the core of its bribery case against him.” he court reversed Spadoni’s convictions on seven counts of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, bribery and wire fraud, leaving intact only an obstruction of justice conviction. Prosecutors found by a court to have committed misconduct typically face some sort of internal investigation within the Justice Department. But whether there was any such investigation, and why or why not, is not publicly known.

Until now, neither DOJ nor anyone else has linked Dannehy and Durham by name to the prosecutorial misconduct against Spadoni, as far as I can determine. The court decision doesn’t cite specific actions by the two. But it clearly refers to their case, and the information is readily available online in Lexis and in any good law library.

In April, as the acting U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, Durham signed a DOJ filing denying the merit of the appeals court finding of prosecution misconduct, while calling for Spadoni’s continued prosecution for the remaining charge of obstruction of justice for deleting computer files in advance of a potential subpoena.

I sought additional comment beyond the court filings from Dannehy, Durham and Thomas Carson, DOJ’s spokesman for its Connecticut office. Carson wrote me, “We have no further comment, as the matter is still pending.”

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