Rick Renzi indicted

Well, it took some time.

In spite of all that Alberto Gonzalez and George W. Bush did to help their friend Rick Renzi, including pushing aside one of the most effective U.S. attorneys they had this morning came the announcement that Congressman Renzi has been indicted.

Renzi created a complex tangle of numbers to try and hide a land deal that helped James Sandlin, one of his friends, violate campaign finance laws by overpaying Renzi for a piece of land so he could quickly raise the money in 2002 to get elected to Congress, where he paid Sandlin back by misusing his position to, among other things, write legislation that helped increase the value of another piece of land that Sandlin owned. Renzi, even before the Sandlin land deal was known, was already considered one of the most corrupt congressmen in Washington for such other ethical lapses as using his official position to help steer up to a billion dollars in Federal contracts to his father's business. As it later turned out even that was part of the web he was weaving to try and cover up the original land deal.

Renzi's scheme to cover up the land deal actually resulted in two separate probes into two pieces of his scheme, and as I predicted eventually merged into one giant investigation.

Unfortunately not enough was known about the deal to prevent Renzi from getting re-elected last time when he ran for Congress. He ran his usual smear campaign against Ellen Simon by using lies, innuendos and distortions just as he has always done in his electoral campaigns. But last year it all broke open when the FBI raided Renzi's wife's business (where he had apparently hidden some of the evidence), ironically at the very same time as Alberto Gonzalez was on Capitol Hill answering questions about the firing of U.S. attorneys, in which Renzi's name figured prominently in connection with the firing of Paul Charltonn who had been investigating him. Last year Renzi finally was forced to announce that he would not seek re-election though he still is trying to remain in Congress (maybe he can have lunch with Larry Craig, because no one even in their own party is talking to either of them.)

Rick Renzi apparently thought that he was smarter than other people. He thought he was smart enough to create such a murky cloud of obfuscation around his financial misdeeds that no one would be able to figure out what he had done. He thought he could get away with it.

But criminals always think that way. But eventually justice does catch up to them. Just ask Renzi's former colleagues, Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney.

Paul Charlton's fatal flaw-- he was too effective

It is out now, officially. The departure of Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton is a direct result of the concerns about the Renzi investigation. Recall that last year, Congressman Renzi was being investigated for corruption (the same charges that sent his congressional colleagues Duke Cunningham and Bob Ney to prison.) Once Paul Charlton started digging, it became clear that what appeared to be two different Renzi investigations were in fact two angles on a much larger and more complex investigation.

So in December, Paul Charlton abruptly resigned. I remembered then about how the Bush administration had previously called off an attack dog, when they had given a promotion to Noel Hillman, the Justice Department prosecutor who was working the Abramoff case, to the Federal bench in order to get him off of the case. So I figured that they had given Charlton an opportunity (since he was going to work for the law firm where his wife works.) Turns out I was wrong about the opportunity-- we now know that his resignation was requested, but we also now have confirmation it was to get him off of the Renzi case. That is provided by a memo which D. Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez's chief of staff, wrote to then White House Counsel Harriet Miers on September 16, shortly after he opened the Renzi investigation. In it he says that Charlton needs to go.

Paul Charlton, you see, is not an easy man to intimidate or get rid of. I've always respected him, and in fact I wrote at the time (in the second link in the last paragraph)

Charlton, though I know some people who don't like him, has always impressed me. Maybe it's because I remember his investigation into Valinda Jo Elliot after the Rodeo Chedeski fire had destroyed hundreds of homes; Elliott had started the Chedeski half as a signal fire after being lost in the woods following a vehicle breakdown. Elliott took her cell phone, and had reached some stupid person with a clerk mentality with the Bureau of Land Management; they figured out where she was and informed her that since she was over the line in the national forest she had to call the national forest headquarters. The HQ of course had long since been evacuated because of the nearby Rodeo fire and the national forest was closed, so Elliott got a recorded message. Then her cell ran out of power after having been put on hold for so long by automated machines between the two calls. Anyway, Charlton was the guy who was willing to go to Heber after the Chedeski fire and face an auditorium full of enraged people and tell them that he wasn't going to prosecute Valinda Jo Elliott (which was the right call by the way; if anyone should have been prosecuted it was the one person she actually talked to, the clerk with the ultimate 'that's not my department,' mentality even while talking to a desperate person in a life and death emergency.)

Heck, just last year the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the Arizona U.S. Attorney's Office would serve as a national "Model Program." In other words, they thought he was the best of the best.

So Charlton, who had been recognized not long before as one of the Justice Department's most effective prosecutors, wasn't afraid to do his job then, and he wasn't going to be afraid to do it when it came to Rick Renzi.

So Alberto Gonzales, together with Karl Rove and who knows who else, determined that Charlton had to go. What is really interesting is that the Justice Department emails suddenly started naming him as one that needed to go. And simultaneously Rick Renzi hired former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods (and former A.G.'s are expensive) as his legal representative. Since then, he has retained attorney Patton Boggs and spent over $100,000 on legal bills (source Federal Elections Commission via Lofty Donkey. If there was nothing there, I doubt if all that would have happened. They knew they had a problem, and they knew the only way to solve it was to get rid of the same man they had just recently acknowledged as the best they had.

Of course since then-- there has been nothing new on the Renzi investigation. So it appears that calling Charlton off worked.

Wanna bet they appoint Inspector Clouseau to the Renzi case?

There is news regarding the ongoing investigations involving my congressman, Rick Renzi. I say that in the plural because they were reported originally as two separate investigations. One was reported as Renzi using his office to steer Federal dollars to his father's company, and the other as Renzi arranging a land swap with James Sandlin in an influence peddling scheme as he quickly raised money to run for Congress in 2002. As I blogged in October, these two investigations may be one complicated one.

The news is that U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, who is handling the Renzi investigation, is leaving his position to join the Phoenix based law firm of Kennedy and Gallagher in January.

In that position, he will join his wife, and not coincidentally earn quite a bit more money in all likelihood than he was earning as a U.S. Attorney.

Charlton, though I know some people who don't like him, has always impressed me. Maybe it's because I remember his investigation into Valinda Jo Elliot after the Rodeo Chedeski fire had destroyed hundreds of homes; Elliott had started the Chedeski half as a signal fire after being lost in the woods following a vehicle breakdown. Elliott took her cell phone, and had reached some stupid person with a clerk mentality with the Bureau of Land Management; they figured out where she was and informed her that since she was over the line in the national forest she had to call the national forest headquarters. The HQ of course had long since been evacuated because of the nearby Rodeo fire and the national forest was closed, so Elliott got a recorded message. Then her cell ran out of power after having been put on hold for so long by automated machines between the two calls. Anyway, Charlton was the guy who was willing to go to Heber after the Chedeski fire and face an auditorium full of enraged people and tell them that he wasn't going to prosecute Valinda Jo Elliott (which was the right call by the way; if anyone should have been prosecuted it was the one person she actually talked to, the clerk with the ultimate 'that's not my department,' mentality even while talking to a desperate person in a life and death emergency.)

There could be more to this than meets the eye though. Remember Noel Hillman? He was the prosecutor assigned to investigating the Jack Abramoff case. Hillman was doing such a good job that the Bush administration had to find a way to deal with that. They appointed him to the Federal Bench, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that most prosecutors dream about but never get the call for.

And now suddenly Paul Charlton gets a phone call offering him a lucrative position where he can work with his wife. You have to wonder what he was working on in regard to Rick Renzi when that call came through.

Well, maybe there is something to be said for investigating allies of the Bush administration. It can be a great career boost, when they decide it's time to buy you out.