Fallows on Attorney Purge
He tells two new stories. The first, I will let you read in his post, as I don’t want to paraphrase his highly personal account. As Sullivan comments, if true, it’s pretty disturbing. The second, is summed up in his concluding para:
Oh, yes, the hometown case: The ninth U.S. attorney. She is Debra Wong Yang, a U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles who resigned just before last fall’s midterm elections. Before she resigned, she had been reportedly investigating corruption charges against Republican Rep. Jerry Lewis, who was then head of the House Appropriations Committee and who was then head of the House Appropriations Committee and who since 1978 has been a safe-seat Congressman-for-life from inland southern California. After she resigned, Ms. Yang reportedly received a $1.5 million bonus to join the well-known L.A. firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. As Adam Cohen pointed out in the New York Times:
She was hired to be co-leader of the Crisis Management Practice Group with Theodore Olson, who was President Bush’s solicitor general and his Supreme Court lawyer in Bush v. Gore. Gibson, Dunn was defending Mr. Lewis in Ms. Yang’s investigation… [A] possibility is that the timing of her departure was coincidental. That would make her lucky indeed: after more than 15 years of working for government, she decided to take a private sector job precisely when the White House counsel was apparently trying to fire her.