A Passion for Prosecuting Democrats

By Scott Horton

Today’s New York Times features a look by Eric Lipton at how U.S. attorneys in several districts—Detroit, Birmingham and Pittsburgh—displayed the Bush Administration’s signature seven-to-one preference for prosecuting Democrats over Republicans. Lipton takes an in depth look at one case out of Detroit, a thin-as-water bribery prosecution against county attorney Carl J. Marlinga which was openly fomented by Michigan Republican Party officials. Marlinga had decided to stand as a Democratic candidate for Congress when the charges were brought, and they predictably dominated press coverage through the campaign. Lipton documents similar cases of election-related prosecutions, including the investigation and prosecution of Alabama governor Donald Siegelman—already identified as a political vendetta by papers in Alabama like the highly respected Decatur Daily —and a series of curiously timed prosecutions brought by Ashcroft-favorite Mary Beth Buchanan in Pittsburgh. In each case, the prosecutions were highly touted to the press and timed suspiciously to coincide with campaign schedules. “There was no political calculus that went into that prosecution,” says U.S. attorney Stephen J. Murphy in Detroit. You might believe that—especially if you think that the United States found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, and that Brownie did a heckuva good job in New Orleans. But those who actually take note of the facts will see a sweeping betrayal of the public trust, and one man behind it all: Karl Rove.