WASHINGTON - The U.S. attorney in Milwaukee said Saturday that political self-preservation was never a factor in his decision to prosecute a Democratic state official for corruption before last year's election, and that he was never pressured by the Bush administration or the president's political aides to pursue the case.
Steven M. Biskupic also said in his five years as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, he has brought at least a dozen cases against Republican contributors or individuals with party ties. Further, he asserted he has declined to prosecute several allegations of Democratic voter fraud pushed by Republicans.
Biskupic's remarks came in response to a report by McClatchy Newspapers that congressional investigators saw his name on a Justice Department list targeting certain U.S. attorneys for removal because of perceptions they had performed poorly or were disloyal to the administration.
In a prepared statement and a telephone interview, Biskupic did not assert that he was targeted as political retaliation. "I have no idea either when, how, or why I was on this list," he said.
You can read Biskupic's statement here. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has some background details on the issue here and here.
The bottom line here is that we don't know yet if Biskupic had any involvement in this attorney scandal. Biskupic claims he had no involvement, but his name has surfaced in the White House / DOJ emails regarding this scandal--he was on the attorney hit list, and then taken off of it. Something happened to cause Biskupic's name to be removed from that hit list--perhaps without Biskupic's knowledge of this entire issue. The congressional Democrats are going to have to subpoena the Bush White House, and the Department of Justice, for more emails and records regarding this detail of the attorney scandal.
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