NYT: Ousted California Prosecutor (Lam) Previously Had Disputes on Strategy

[babylonsister]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/us/politics/21lam.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Ousted California Prosecutor Previously Had Disputes on Strategy

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and ERIC LIPTON
Published: March 21, 2007

LOS ANGELES, March 20 — Among the cases of the eight federal prosecutors dismissed by the Department of Justice last year, none brought more accusations of egregious political retaliation than that of Carol C. Lam.

Democrats in Congress and others have suggested that Ms. Lam, the former United States attorney in San Diego, was ousted largely to stymie her investigations of Republicans and Defense Department officials, after a prosecution of a Republican congressman from California.

But interviews with law enforcement officials in California and an examination of e-mail released by the Justice Department demonstrate that Ms. Lam was a source of longstanding vexation to the department, with which she differed on strategy.

Ms. Lam ran afoul of local officials and the department as far back as 2004 over her decision to pursue far fewer illegal immigration cases than similar districts did, choosing instead to personally prosecute a case against a health care company. She also prosecuted too few gun-crime cases for the administration’s taste.

“Have a heart-to-heart with Lam about the urgent need to improve immigration enforcement,” said a June 2006 e-mail message that D. Kyle Sampson, the chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, wrote to another senior department official. “If she balks on any of the foregoing or otherwise does not perform in a measurable way by July 15 remove her.”

The dismissal of Ms. Lam, who declined to comment for this article, still came as a shock to many of her colleagues in California. They said that they never saw her problems with the Justice Department as serious enough to warrant removal and that her record on white-collar prosecutions, including that of former Representative Randy Cunningham, was considered exemplary.

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[robinlynne]

1. This is an outright LIE. And it is easy to prove from the emails in the dump.

1. It was not justice but a group of 18 republican congress/senators including Cunningham and Jerry lewis, both of whom were being investigated by LAm at the time who complained about her not doing enough illegal immigration cases. This charge was based on a fake document written by one border patrol agent, then altered. the border patrol head absolutely denied the authenticity of this claim!
This letter is in the emails.
2. This charge was immediately refuted by the DOJ in writing who said that she was doing an exemplary job.
this letter is in the emails.
3. The FBI and local law enforcement also disagreed.

[robinlynne]

2. and I'll say more. This article uses exactly the DOJ talking points. with NO

reagard whatsoever for the facts. the border patrol document was immediately shown to be a fake. Yet it is used here as proof. The republicans backed off of that argument several years ago! This is just like the WMD article. if I were a good writer I would write right now! Anyone want to work with me on this. I can find the documents from the email dump which tell the story.