More on Wisconsin U.S. Attorney Biskupic, a "Loyal Bushie"?

By Scott Horton

Following the amazing Seventh Circuit decision sounding an alarm over politicized federal prosecution in Wisconsin, Milwaukee's Journal Sentinel has been asking about U.S. Attorney Steve Biskupic's relationship to the current Justice Department scandal. Daniel Bice reported this weekend that the chair of the Wisconsin GOP went straight to the White House, and specifically to Karl Rove, with a complaint that Biskupic was not aggressive enough in his support of the Republican voter suppression project in the Badger State. Bice asks whether this was sufficient to have put Biskupic on the chopping block. Kyle Sampson previously testified that the attorney general had received complaints about unsatisfactory performance in voter suppression from three U.S. attorneys from the White House – he named New Mexico's David Iglesias but never identified the other two. The timeline would suggest that Biskupic may have been one. That would suggest that Biskupic's decision to pursue and publicize the corruption prosecution was designed to keep his name off the chopping block.

Meanwhile, the Journal Sentinel's Gregory Stanford gives us a detailed rundown of the Georgia Thompson case. He concludes that no reasonable prosecutor would have ever brought the case, raising the concern that the prosecution had nothing to do with law enforcement. Among other things, he points to the fact that Thompson got her civil service appointment in a Republican administration and had no connections with Doyle or his campaign, notwithstanding false insinuations made by prosecutors. As Stanford puts it "Biskupic has some explaining to do."

The New York Times today calls for a full probe of the Biskupic case. They write: "It just might shed some light on a question that lurks behind the firing of eight top federal prosecutors: what did the surviving attorneys do to escape the axe?" The Times also looks at the suspiciously timed and publicly flogged corruption investigation opened by the New Jersey U.S. Attorney against Democratic senator Robert Menendez. That investigation fizzled away as soon as the election passed and seems to have been keep going just to provide grist for GOP campaign ads. Is this more evidence of how "loyal Bushie" U.S. attorneys comport themselves during the election season?