DoJ Official Argued against Sending "Extensive Resources" to Lam

[RedEarth]

The administration has repeatedly argued that U.S Attorney for San Diego Carol Lam was fired because she failed to make immigration cases a priority. Either that's true, or it's a cover story.

Yesterday I laid out Lam's performance on immigration. It's clear that in another administration, Lam would have been commended, not fired.

But it's clear from the emails that certain senior Justice Department officials just didn't like Lam -- and seemed to harbor a wish that she not succeed.

"There are good reasons not to provide extensive resources to ," wrote Bill Mercer, a senior Justice Department official in May of 2006, responding to a suggestion that the Department provide Lam with more prosecutors. "Other border districts have done substantially more. It will send the message that if your people are killing themselves, the additional resources will go to folks who haven't prioritized the same enforcement priority."

Five days later, Mercer suggested a "range of options" for dealing with Lam, the first one being "replace Carol." The third one was to add prosecutors "immediately after Carol's successor is named."

Let's frame the conflict here once again: as I reported yesterday, the number of immigration cases in Lam's district had dipped as a direct result of her office's policy, not because of a lack of priority. Fully half of the prosecutors in her office were at work on immigration cases, but they targeted more serious offenses, which meant they filed fewer cases. (It's worth pointing out that measuring immigration enforcement simply by the number of cases is a superficial, arbitrary measure -- equally valid measures, for example, would be the length of sentences meted out and the seriousness of offenses charged, measures by which Lam exceeded other districts.)

So fixing the "problem" (fewer immigration cases) was as simple as requesting that Lam change her office's policy.

But, though making such a request was repeatedly suggested, they never did that.

On May 31, Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson asked if anyone had ever "called Carol Lam" and woodshedded her re immigration enforcement." And on June 1, Sampson relayed Gonzales' desire that someone have a "heart-to-heart with Lam about the urgent need to improve immigration enforcement" and that she be put "on a very short leash."

more........

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002879.php

[Old and In the Way]

1. Can't very well micromanage her case load, right?

You know, divert resources from a huge national corruption case to bagging $3.00/hour laborer's smuggled in from Mexico. I sure would like to see all the e-mails that were discussing Lam in that time frame..especially the ones that were on non-.gov servers.

[rfranklin]

2. But those are Republican priorities....

prosecute the dime bag cases while the kingpins rake in the dough and finance Republican campaigns. (Some hyperbole there--but not much.)

[napi21]

3. Unfortunately, it is every admins decision to set their own

priorities. I would be interested in several things in this case.

"Other border districts have done substantially more."

1. How did her office compare to the others by % of staff assigned to immigration v/s other cases?

2. Was her office always "under performing" in total cases not only prosecuted but WON compared to the others, or were he tactics working better therefore there were fewer cases to prosecute?

3. What were the other 50% of the staff working on? Public corruption, maybe?

4. Are the Public Corruption cases Carol was working on continuing under a new USA, or have they gone away?

The answers to the above questions would certainly help clear the picture here,but unless some emails or testimony comes forth proving that Carol was asked to resign to save some Pub a**es, or that investigations actually stopped when she left, I don't think we'll able to prove there was any criminal activity going on. No matter how much you "know in you gut" that something is wrong, if you can't prove it, it's just TS.

[Old and In the Way]

4. There was no measurable priority.

If there was, I'm sure the DoJ would have released that the moment the questions started being raised. The only thing I've seen is a refute to Issa's contention that Lam was doing her job on immigration prosecution. And that was from the same people who now claim she was under-performing. What's obvious is that they made the decision to fire her and then started having an internal conversation on the justification.