Bush Gang Cuts Down Sheriff of Wall Street

The big news story of the past week was that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer had been patronizing prostitutes, and, in the glare of the media spotlight, quickly gave up his office.x40 But evidence points to a bigger story—that the Bush Justice Department did a hit on a Democratic enemy of its crony financial corporations. Consider that:

• Bush has put in place a warrantless wiretapping program, where the NSA is hooked into phone company data switches.x41 So the investigation could have started with a phone call or email turned up by that program, rather than a bank routinely notifying the feds of a suspicious money transfer, as has been reported.x42

• The FBI has charged the prostitution ring operators under the notorious Mann Act, a law against taking a woman across state lines for illegal sexual activity.x43 That musty law has a history of use for political hits, such as in 1944 when the feds prosecuted Charlie Chaplin for having an affair, in an attempt to run that politically progressive movie maker out of the country.

• Instead of targeting crime, such as the unsolved September 2001 anthrax attack on Congress, the Bush Justice Department has targeted persons.x44 Bush fired department prosecutors who did not prove themselves “loyal Bushies” by rushing prosecutions of Democrats before the 2006 election.x45x46

• The Spitzer case came from a full-blown investigation by the Justice Department’s tainted Public Integrity Section. During the Bush era, when Republican cronies have wasted many billions of taxpayer dollars, that division has opened six cases against Democrats for every one against a Republican.x47x48

• Before notching Spitzer, the Bush regime had already brought down a Democratic governor, Don Siegelman of Alabama. On election night 2002, Siegelman went to bed thinking he was re-elected governor, but some Republicans officials stayed up, found a “glitch” in the voting machinery, and flipped 6,000 votes to the Republican candidate, putting him on top. Siegelman proclaimed the election stolen.x49x50 Then in 2006, while running to reclaim the governorship, federal prosecutors got a loyal Bushie judge to take flimsy bribery charges (based on false evidence), and run Siegelman straight into federal prison, where he sits today.x51

• Spitzer, who made his reputation as the “Sheriff of Wall Street”, fighting big-time financial fraud, tied the Bush regime to the the sub-prime mortgage crisis.x52 Last month he wrote: “The [sub-prime lending] tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, [the Bush administration] will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers.”x53

• One day after the sex scandal broke, and effectively silenced Spitzer, the government turned another page in the sub-prime mortgage scandal.x54 The Federal Reserve Board pledged to lend out 200 billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to banks, taking shaky mortgages as collateral.x55

So, weighing this evidence, which was the bigger story last week: “Politician Caught with Pants Down” or “Bush Gang Cuts Down Sheriff of Wall Street”?