Porn Cop vs. US Attorney

In September 2006, just weeks before pivotal Congressional midterm elections, Paul Charlton, US Attorney for the District of Arizona, opened a preliminary investigation into Rick Renzi, the Republican Congressman representing the state's 1st Congressional District, for an alleged pattern of corruption involving influence peddling and land deals. Almost immediately, Charlton's name was added to a blacklist of federal prosecutors the White House wanted to force from their jobs. Charlton is someone "we should now consider pushing out," Kyle Sampson, the Attorney General's chief of staff, wrote to Harriet Miers September 13. In his previously safe GOP district, Renzi barely held on in the election. On December 7 the White House demanded Charlton's resignation without offering him any explanation.

Internal Justice Department e-mails subpoenaed by Congress in early March provided evidence that the dismissals of Charlton and seven other federal prosecutors amounted to a political purge aimed in part at protecting Republican lawmakers like Renzi from corruption indictments. The Administration's claim that the ousters were "performance related" has been discredited by the e-mails--and especially proved false in the case of Charlton, whose office was honored with a Federal Service Award in 2002 and was declared a "Model Program" by the Justice Department this past December.

The Justice Department and the White House offered a host of flimsy excuses for firing Charlton, including his insufficient enthusiasm for pursuing the death penalty and prosecuting marijuana cases. Behind the scenes, a Justice Department official named Brent Ward, who claimed in a September 20, 2006, e-mail that Charlton was "unwilling to take good cases," appears to have played a key role in cooking up a pretext for his dismissal.

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