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DoJ to Feinstein: Lam Is A-OK
During her opening statement during this morning's hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) revealed that the Justice Department had written to her last year and assured her that Carol Lam was doing a fine job prosecuting border cases -- even though they've said that the reason for Lam's firing was her poor performance on border cases.
From Feinstein's statement:
The Department has used the fact that I wrote a letter on June 15 to the Attorney General concerning the San Diego region, and in that I asked some questions: What are the guidelines for the U.S. Attorney Southern District of California? How do these guidelines differ from other border sections nationwide? I asked about immigration cases.Here is the response that I got under cover of August 23, in a letter signed by Will Moschella. And I ask that both these letters be added to the record.
“That office [referring to Mrs. Lam’s office], is presently committing fully half of its Assistant U.S. Attorneys to prosecute criminal immigration cases. Prosecutions for alien smuggling in the Southern District under USC sections 1234 are rising sharply in Fiscal Year 2006. As of March 2006, the halfway point in the fiscal year, there were 342 alien smuggling cases filed in that jurisdiction. This compares favorable with the 484 alien smuggling prosecutions brought there during the entirety of Fiscal Year 2005.”
The letter goes on to essentially say that Mrs. Lam is cooperating; that they have reviewed it and the Department is satisfied.
Update: You can read the letter here.
Comments (6)
calipendence wrote on March 6, 2007 1:53 PM:One interesting response that I saw from Carol Lam when towards the end they were asked if they all were being asked if other congressmen, etc. whether they'd received calls asking for info or trying to influence prosecutions they had. Most of them responded saying either "no" or some of the known cases they testified about earlier. Carol Lam responded by saying "Specific cases? No.". Which has me wondering if there was some "general" coaching attempts towards her that she was preferring not to address with her answer. Like someone saying "Back off on all of that stuff you have on Duncan Hunter". We want you to not be doing anything against him until at least after the election. I've heard concerns from others that there was pressure to delay what some had claimed was going to be an "indictment" until after the election, so that it could be a special election to replace him (ala Cunningham), instead of likely losing the seat in the general election of 2006.
Robin Boerner wrote on March 6, 2007 2:05 PM:"Here is the response that I got under cover of August 23, in a letter signed by Will Moschella. And I ask that both these letters be added to the record."
Patience wrote on March 6, 2007 9:05 PM:In typical Bush/Gonzales style, Mr. Moschella will be out soon for "performance problems" as well.
Four out of five times Feinstein disappoints me, but then she does something awesome like revealing DOJ's total ineptitude in keeping its stories straight.
I keep wondering how much worse things would be if it weren't for a Democratic Congress.
Stephen wrote on March 14, 2007 9:55 AM:You report: "Dianne Feinstein revealed that the Justice Department had written to her last year and assured her that Carol Lam was doing a fine job prosecuting border cases."
I read the entire letter. I found no such assurances. The letter merely reported statistical facts regarding prosecution of immigration cases. It said nothing at all about Lam.
windansea wrote on March 19, 2007 5:13 PM:I would like to see Feinstein's letter to DOJ prompting this response, why isn't Diane sharing?
Juli wrote on March 20, 2007 5:06 PM:DiFi's original letter was released as part of the DOJ info dump on 3-19. Doc 2-8.