Conyers Cranky Over Oil Fraud; Drills DOJ With Letter
You knew this was coming, and since I simply can’t stomach any more Lurch Paulson discussion today, I bring it to you. Remember Marcy’s Drill, Baby, Drill post on sex, lies and oil at the Minerals Management Agency?
Clearly, John Conyers found it as titillating as we did. He wants to hear more. From McClatchy:
The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee demanded Tuesday that the attorney general provide an "immediate explanation" for a Justice Department decision that could have cost taxpayers up to $40 million in royalties from a major oil company.
Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers’ cited a McClatchy story Sept. 12 that detailed the department’s rejection of the Colorado U.S. attorney’s recommendation to intervene in a whistleblower’s suit against the Kerr-McGee Corp.
In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Conyers said charges that politics might have played a part in a decision favoring a major oil company "must be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated." Conyers said he wanted to question the officials involved in the case and that he sought access to all related records.
When Marcy last reported, the Inspector General’s reports had just been released, and they sure had some juicy material in them. Since that time, IG Earl Devaney is royally pissed that the DOJ prosecuted two line level scrubs at the MMA, but refused to prosecute the big dog managers he wanted nailed. And he let his displeasure be known:
"I would have liked a more aggressive approach, and I would have liked to have seen some other people prosecuted here," he said during a hearing before the House of Representatives’ Natural Resources Committee.
…
Devaney also recommended that the Justice Department prosecute RIK’s former Denver office director, Gregory Smith, and the former associate director of the Minerals Revenue Management office, Lucy Dennet.The reports accuse Smith of having sex with two subordinates and improperly accepting $30,000 from a private company for marketing its services to oil and gas companies.
Dennet is accused of helping Mayberry create the contract he was awarded after his retirement.
The Justice Department hasn’t explained why it declined to prosecute them.
But in today’s McClatchy report on Conyers’ letter, we learn just how mad IG Devaney really is with the DOJ:
Inspector General Earl Devaney was so displeased with the department’s refusal, Conyers wrote, that he pulled his investigators off a department task force examining disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s influence-peddling.
In the grand scheme of things, a pretty small act; however, a pretty telling one in these circumstances. There are a lot of people from both sides of the partisan fence that are hopping mad over this. Devaney is joined by loyal Republican US Attorney in Colorado Troy Eid and his Civil Division Chief, Lisa Christian; Conyers is joined by Pat Leahy and Sen. Ken Salazar from Colorado.
So why did Michael Mukasey squelch this prosecution that has so many authorities across the spectrum hot under the collar? Stay tuned, this could get fun.
Looking forward to this!
something’s gotta give sooner or later. No?
Mukasey is worthless. With Big Oil’s rep in the crapper the Bushies don’t want them to look any worse than they already are. Besides, think of all the Bush Dogs who need work when they get out in January.
Yep, it is kind of a distressing pattern with the Bush Administration. They propagate wholesale criminality and fraud, and then prosecute a couple of schleps at the low end so that their friends at the top, that created the hell, skate free. Tonight it was announced that a formal criminal investigation of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Bros and AIG was underway. Will it be another nail a couple of useless mid-level people and whitewash the rest? Personally, that is my supposition until they prove otherwise.
“Mukasey is worthless.”
Well, I guess it all depends on your perspective. What Bush & Cheney needed was a firewall at DOJ to replace their depleted firewall, AGAG. From their perspective, Mukasey is doing a great job, doncha think?
Bob in HI
Well, what’s $40 million in mineral rights at a time when Congress is being pressured to hand over $700 billion-no-strings-attached to Wall Street…?
Sex, Lies, and Mineral Rights seem so… quaint in comparison.
Unless there’s something weird about the sex…?
{/snark}
Why bother! Congress, both GOP & DINO’s, have rendered themselves redundant under the current Regime.
I thought all the fun had turned to desperation in this country.
Not a bail-out, but a rescue plan.
Add another addiction to the our free markets, gambling.
Morning in America, Death in the Afternoon.
$40M. Imagine anyone in government worrying about a teensy sum like that. How quaint. These days we barely break a sweat at $40B being frittered away.
When Buffet’s Berkshire is betting 5 billion on Goldman Sachs in terms of the government bailout, you know something is up.
bmaz, I’m sorry, I meant that for the previous thread. Need coffee.
Hey, I am glad Conyers is addressing this. To let some of the worst mid level government corruption go unpunished, sends a dangerous message. Although, I think Cheney will get tied to this at some point as well as Abramoff and potentially a funneling of funds to the GOP. I saw in this Interior Department MMA corruption some similarities to the inside corruption here in Ohio under Governor Taft.
Great post, bmaz.
Hey gang, the Digg on the previous thread is sitting at 99. Someone who hasn’t done it yet, please go back there and put us to the magic 100.
Done. Thanks for joggling my memory — I’m being very bad at the Digging lately.
And to the topic: I wonder whether we’ll ever know about those conversations Mukasey must have had with the elders last year. Is he going to walk off into the history books as a total mystery?
He certainly will go down as one of the biggest disappointments in history. They really seemed to have something on him.
I think Colbert summed it up well last night during “The Word” when a slide flashed on the screen saying that henceforth, DOJ will be known as “The Department”. Yep, “Justice” is gone, folks.
At least in part, lack of prosecution may be a politics-nepotism nexus.
Lucy Dennett is married to Paul Dennett, who is the Administrator of Federal Procurement Policy at the White House Office of Management and Budget. Paul has held this position since 2006, when he took over from Abramoff associate David Safavian – who was on his way to jail.
Before coming to OMB, Dennett was the procurement chief at Interior (MMS is a division of Interior) and Treasury.
If Lucy Dennett gave out a favored contract, was her husband involved since he oversaw all of Interior? Did her husband’s senior position at the White House protect her from prosecution?
I work for a DOI agency. What I have seen in this administration is an unprecedented level of corruption. Most agency managers fall all over themselves to give away government service and resources to the politically powerful. Those who insist on law-abiding behaviour, like me, are shunted aside brutally.
Loyal cronys are installed throughout the federal system and wield tremendous power over remaining government workers.
Fact is, your government is not working for you, but for the wealthy, connected few.
I hope the next administration has the hindsight to ferret out those who “burrowed in” during this Administration and, once found, those bonna fides will be closely scrutinized.
Congress and GAO used to order up a report about every two years on Ramspeck Act Appointments (the law which allows political appointees to leap to the front of the line for federal career jobs) and abuses. I haven’t seen one of those issued during the present Admin.
I doubt we’ll get much fun out of this. Someone will call hearings, nobody will appear. Congress will issue subpoenas, they’ll be ignored. Executive privilege will be claimed. Memories will become vague, then vanish entirely. Pardons will be issued, people will go work for Fox or Heritage.
And by early next month, it’ll be another forgotten drum in the toxic waste dump of BushCo.
Boxturtle (Feeling grumpy and depressed this morning)
We are all familiar here with the bright shiny object defense. But I am seeing a new wrinkle.
First, to extend the metaphor, think of the missile defense system that releases a swarm of bright shiny objects to make it difficult for a missile defense system to distinguish the real missile among the swarm of counterfeit.
But now suppose that the defense system gets smarter, and is not so distracted by the swarm of bright shiny objects. Then what?
We now switch metaphors to football, in which the offense reads the defense to be in a “zone” posture, so it sends 3 WR into one zone, making it impossible for the poor jerk responsible for that zone to cover everyone. Switch metaphors again: One escaped convict fleeing from one bloodhound has less chance of escape than 3 escapees who split up, planning to meet later at a safe location far away. The poor bloodhound cannot follow all three trails, so chances improve that two of them will escape.
Abandoning the metaphors, the bright shiny objects have now become multiple criminal conspiracies that have proliferated to the extent that no one can keep track of them all. In the confusion, some are sure to escape. Low hanging fruit? Oops, I’m reverting to metaphor again. From the perspective of the criminal conspiracy, the objective is to keep the
bloodhoundspublic preoccupied with the small fry, to keep attention away from the big kahuna.Bob in HI