Ashcroft Deal Brings Scrutiny in Justice Dept.

[cal04]

Source: NYTimes

When the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey needed to find an outside lawyer to monitor a large corporation willing to settle criminal charges out of court last fall, he turned to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, his onetime boss. With no public notice and no bidding, the company awarded Mr. Ashcroft an 18-month contract worth $28 million to $52 million.

That contract, which Justice Department officials in Washington learned about only several weeks ago, has prompted an internal inquiry into the department’s procedures for selecting outside monitors to police settlements with large companies.

The contract between Mr. Ashcroft’s consulting firm, the Ashcroft Group, and Zimmer Holdings, a medical supply company in Indiana, has also drawn the attention of Congressional investigators.

(snip)
The disclosure of the monitoring agreement, in which Mr. Ashcroft’s fees are paid directly by Zimmer, prompted Democratic lawmakers from New Jersey to question if the contract was new evidence of political favoritism in the Bush administration’s long-embattled Justice Department.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/washington/10justice.html?hp

[Didereaux]

1. sigh, put it on the list of things the Democratic Congress will never address.

Worse at least one of the three dem candidates has already declared in a speech that he would NEVER use the DoJ to investigate past activities of the previous administration. Obama, So Carolina summer '08

[Lint Head]

2. There will be hearings then everyone will go deaf.

:dem:

[gateley]

3. And sigh, add it to the list of Bushco's 'political favoritism'. nt

[defendandprotect]

4. Sounds like there's something they want Ashcroft to be quiet about . . .

[lurky]

7. Ding Ding Ding!

[Supersedeas]

10. that was my first thought too -- a little quid pro quo

[seemslikeadream]

5. "What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people

They Thought They Were Free - Read by Dave Emory

The Germans, 1933-45

Excerpt from pages 166-73 of "They Thought They Were Free" First published in 1955

By Milton Mayer

But Then It Was Too Late

"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn’t make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.

....

"Yes," I said.

"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, THE SHOCK DOCTRINE will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

[countmyvote4real]

6. The Mafia has nothing compared to the BFEE or however this network is addressed.

Sleep with these dogs and fleas will be a gift if you're not murdered.

[krkaufman]

8. What an opportunity for corruption.

Ashcroft's paycheck is coming from the company he's supposed to be monitoring (auditing). Hmmm... Can you say "Enron and Arthur Andersen"?

I would think such a "structure" would be disallowed. Just nonsensical.

[seafan]

9. Debra Wong Yang is also involved in this deal. Glad the NYT finally noticed.

Former USA Debra Wong Yang in huge money deal to monitor artificial hip/knee replacement makers., November 27, 2007



Ashcroft Deal Brings Scrutiny in Justice Dept.

By PHILIP SHENON
Published: January 10, 2008

WASHINGTON — When the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey needed to find an outside lawyer to monitor a large corporation willing to settle criminal charges out of court last fall, he turned to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, his onetime boss. With no public notice and no bidding, the company awarded Mr. Ashcroft an 18-month contract worth $28 million to $52 million.

That contract, which Justice Department officials in Washington learned about only several weeks ago, has prompted an internal inquiry into the department’s procedures for selecting outside monitors to police settlements with large companies.

The contract between Mr. Ashcroft’s consulting firm, the Ashcroft Group, and Zimmer Holdings, a medical supply company in Indiana, has also drawn the attention of Congressional investigators.

The New Jersey prosecutor, United States Attorney Christopher J. Christie, directed similar monitoring contracts last year to two other former Justice Department colleagues from the Bush administration, as well as to a former Republican state attorney general in New Jersey.

.....

Often, the names of corporate monitors are not made public. The internal inquiry started after Zimmer Holdings revealed in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in late October that it had hired Mr. Ashcroft’s consulting firm, based in Washington, to monitor its settlement of criminal charges based on accusations of kickbacks to doctors involving the company’s knee and hip implants.

The firm said Mr. Christie had directed it to hire Mr. Ashcroft. Mr. Christie has acknowledged that he chose Mr. Ashcroft for the assignment. The disclosures in Zimmer’s filings about Mr. Ashcroft were first reported several weeks ago by The Star-Ledger of Newark and other New Jersey news organizations.

Mr. Christie directed similar contracts in settlements with other medical-supply companies to two other former Justice Department colleagues — David N. Kelley, the former United States attorney in Manhattan, and Debra Wong Yang, his counterpart in Los Angeles — and to David Samson, the former Republican attorney general in New Jersey.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Christie said he chose Mr. Ashcroft and the others for the monitoring assignments because they had impeccable legal credentials and he knew and trusted them.

.....

[lovuian]

11. its Johnny boys payoff and they think this is pretty obvious

no da

its pretty obvious Johnny is getting paid off for his work in 911