Taking a HARD look at the Business of Politics

There’s a very disturbing op ed piece in the NY Times about a woman who was wrongly convicted by the DOJ in Wisconsin.

Members of Congress should ask whether it was by coincidence or design that Steven Biskupic, the United States attorney in Milwaukee, turned a flimsy case into a campaign issue that nearly helped Republicans win a pivotal governor’s race.

There was good reason for the appeals court to be shocked. Ms. Thompson, a 56-year-old single woman, seems to have lost her home and spent four months in prison simply for doing her job. Ms. Thompson, who spent years in the travel industry before becoming a state employee, was responsible for putting the state’s travel account up for competitive bid. Mr. Biskupic claimed that she awarded the contract to an agency called Adelman Travel because its C.E.O. contributed to Mr. Doyle’s campaign.

To charge her, Mr. Biskupic had to look past a mountain of evidence of innocence. Ms. Thompson was not a Doyle partisan. She was a civil servant, hired by a Republican governor, with no identifiable interest in politics. She was only one member of a seven-person committee that evaluated the bidders. She was not even aware of the Adelman campaign contributions. She also had a good explanation for her choice: of the 10 travel agencies that competed, Adelman submitted the lowest-cost bid.

While Ms. Thompson did her job conscientiously, that is less clear of Mr. Biskupic. The decision to award the contract — the supposed crime — occurred in Madison, in the jurisdiction of Wisconsin’s other United States attorney. But for reasons that are hard to understand, the Milwaukee-based Mr. Biskupic swept in and took the case.

There are other disturbing facets of this case. Biscupic took it to the press, despite it being against DOJ policy to do so. That press coverage is what came close to swinging the election for Governor toward the Republican candidate. And the press ran with it, stamping the woman as guilty, labelling her (inaccurately) as an aide to the incumbent governor, and in general smearing the both of them.

The article also pointed out that Wisconsin is a swing state in elections. Even more onerous, all states where a DOJ attorney was fired are also swing states.

I think we’re just seeing the tip of this iceberg. And the recovery of all those missing emails will tell the tale. I just hope investigators snag the hard drives before somebody pays for them to disappear into a crusher.

Impeach now.

Technorati Tags: DOJ, Georgia Thompson, Gov. Jim Doyle, Biscupic, missing email

BitchSlapped on 04/17/07, 9:12 AM
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