U.S. Attorney in Wisconsin in the Hotseat

By Scott Horton

For legal affairs analysts around the country, one question is weighing very heavily right now: If eight U.S. attorneys were cashiered for not giving in to pressure to use their office for political gamesmanship, what does this say about the 85 U.S. attorneys who were left in place? Surely a good many of them are responsible career professionals. But the case of the Gonzales Eight has put an enormous cloud over U.S. attorneys' offices from coast to coast.

And in Wisconsin, that cloud just unleashed a thunderbolt. In the midst of a bitter contest for the Wisconsin governorship, U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic suddenly began the furious prosecution of a corruption case against a state employee named Georgia Thompson. She was accused of throwing business to a firm whose top officials were close to Wisconsin's Democratic Governor, Jim Doyle. The case seems to have been remarkably choreographed to suit the needs of Republican challenger Mark Green. It was pursued with great media fanfare and provided the essential grist for Green's charges that the Doyle administration was corrupt. Local media ate it up, and Thompson was convicted.

Now the Court of Appeals has reversed the conviction and directed acquittal and immediate release and reinstatement of Ms Thompson. The result had been expected ever since oral argument, at which judges took turns lashing out at the U.S. Attorney. The Wisconsin State Journal reports:

“I have to say it strikes me that your evidence is beyond thin,” federal Appeals Judge Diane Wood told prosecutors. “I'm not sure what your actual theory in this case is.”

Perhaps the theory of the case was furnished by Karl Rove. Putting Biskupic's prosecution effort in perspective against the pressure we now know was brought to bear on David Iglesias in New Mexico and Carol Lamm in California, for instance, no one can doubt that it would score points with the President's chief campaign strategist. The Seventh Circuit's decision raises an uncomfortable question: was Biskupic serving the interests of justice in prosecuting this case, or was it the political aspirations of the Republican party?