Just...incredible...

[Jarlaxle]

All I can say to this is: what the FUCK?!

Corrupt federal prosecutors presenting false evidence in order to shake down a blameless corporation and bring in tens of millions of dollars seems like a pretty dramatic story. Especially when former prosecutors support the charge and a chief judge acts on the allegations and takes dramatic action. Yet the media silence is deafening.

Eric Holder’s Justice Department is implicated in a dramatic and shocking case of alleged corruption that is so bad that the Chief Judge of the Eastern District of California has taken what can rightly be called the “nuclear option” and recused all the judges in the district from the case because they may have been defrauded by the DoJ prosecutors.

Link to the rest of the article.

[Crackpot]

Not really a reliable source.

[MajGenl.Meade]

The Sacramento Bee??? (See link in the link)?

[Crackpot]

You have a non linked source and a linked opinion piece. The rest is your standard hyper partisan hyperbole. I give it a reliability of 2/10. There is probably some truth in there but I doubt it leads to anywhere near grand conspiracy they're selling.

[Sue U]

There's a whole lot less here than what the (alleged) "American Thinker" tries to whip into frothy Eric Holder hysteria.

This whole thing is about the Moonlight Fire that started September 3, 2007, and which burned 65,000 aces of forest land, including tracts in the Plumas National Forest. It was alleged by both the State and Federal governments (as well as numerous private plaintiffs) in various civil -- not criminal -- actions that logging company Sierra Pacific Industries and other contractors working at the site of the fire were responsible.

Putting the lie to the linked article is ridiculously easy. If Holder were bent on "shak[ing] down a blameless corporation" in this case, he would have to have started more than a year before Obama was even elected -- and while Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor and George W. Bush was president. The federal case was actually prepared by the Justice Department under Attorney General Michael Mukasey, appointed by Bush to succeed Alberto Gonzales, and was filed in February 2009 -- at virtually the same time Holder took office.

Obviously, Eric Holder is a time-traveling wizard who actually directed the Bush Justice Department.



There are not enough eyerolling emoticons on the whole interwebs to accompany this stupidity.

[rubato]

The Sacramento Bee??? (See link in the link)?

Thomas Lifson, a self-parodizing R-W blogger, not the Sacramento Bee.


yrs,
rubato

[Guinevere]

There's a whole lot less here than what the (alleged) "American Thinker" tries to whip into frothy Eric Holder hysteria.

This whole thing is about the Moonlight Fire that started September 3, 2007, and which burned 65,000 aces of forest land, including tracts in the Plumas National Forest. It was alleged by both the State and Federal governments (as well as numerous private plaintiffs) in various civil -- not criminal -- actions that logging company Sierra Pacific Industries and other contractors working at the site of the fire were responsible.

Putting the lie to the linked article is ridiculously easy. If Holder were bent on "shak[ing] down a blameless corporation" in this case, he would have to have started more than a year before Obama was even elected -- and while Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor and George W. Bush was president. The federal case was actually prepared by the Justice Department under Attorney General Michael Mukasey, appointed by Bush to succeed Alberto Gonzales, and was filed in February 2009 -- at virtually the same time Holder took office.

Obviously, Eric Holder is a time-traveling wizard who actually directed the Bush Justice Department.



There are not enough eyerolling emoticons on the whole interwebs to accompany this stupidity.

The whole incorrect implication that civil lawyers have a duty to bring forth exculpatory evidence made me roll my eyes too.

[wesw]

I ll take april in the month of holder s indictment pool.....

[Jarlaxle]

The judge clearly thinks there is something fishy...otherwise, why would he boot ALL the judges?!

[Sue U]

The judge clearly thinks there is something fishy...otherwise, why would he boot ALL the judges?!

It's not that the judge thinks anything of the sort. What happened here is that in their motion to set aside the judgment that was entered to enforce the settlement agreement, the defendants alleged that there had been a fraud on the court that compromised its ability to administer justice. Regardless of whether that allegation is actually true, if the allegation suggests there could be even an appearance of impropriety, or that a judge's impartiality could be questioned, the court has to recuse itself. From the order for recusal:

According to Defendants, the government's misconduct compromised the judicial process and amounts to an unconscionable scheme designed to improperly influence the Court's decisions in this case.3 Id. In fact, Defendants state that they perceive the Court itself as a victim “as it has neither had the chance to fully assess the trust it naturally placed in certain federal prosecutors nor the ability to do so in the context of all that was eventually discovered about the thoroughly corrupt and financially driven Moonlight Fire investigation.” ECF No. 593-3. Defendants ask that the Court set aside the judgment and the Settlement Agreement and dismiss this action in its entirety. ECF No. 593. Defendant’s Motion is currently set for hearing before Judge Kimberly J. Mueller on November 21, 2014.

Based upon facts alleged in the Motion and accompanying Declarations and Exhibits, the impartiality of the District and Magistrate Judges in the Eastern District might reasonably be questioned. Therefore, on the Court’s own motion and pursuant to the Code of Conduct for United States Judge, Canons 2 and 3, in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety, and because a judge has a duty to disqualify him or herself if his or her impartiality could be reasonably questioned, whether or not such impartiality actually exists, the Court recuses itself from the above-captioned case. See 28 U.S.C. § 455(a). Accordingly, all District and Magistrate Judges in the Eastern District of California are RECUSED from hearing case number 2:09-cv-02445 and all related matters.

(Emphasis added.)