by TChris

U.S. Attorney Thomas M. DiBiagio asked his staff to produce "Three 'Front-Page' White Collar/Public Corruption Indictments" by November. Whether there were actually three meritorious cases to prosecute in his Maryland district seemed unimportant; only the headlines mattered.

In an e-mail to prosecutors July 1, DiBiagio described a municipal corruption indictment in Philadelphia. "Why aren't we doing cases like this," he wrote in the e-mail quoted in the [Baltimore] Sun. "Am I the only one embarrassed by the fact that this Office has not convicted an elected official of corruption since 1988?"

When prosecutors are more concerned about headlines than justice, their prosecutions become inherently suspect. That point isn't lost on the chairman of Maryland's Democratic Party, Isiah Leggett, who is also a professor at Howard University School of Law. He says DiBiagio is using his office as "a political weapon."

Leggett said the documents confirmed what he and other critics already believed of DiBiagio: that he wanted headlines and wanted to indict "most notably" Democratic officials.

The Justice Dept. responded to DiBiagio's pronouncements by taking away his ability to pull the trigger on political prosecutions. Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey advised DiBiagio that he can't bring a public corruption case without first submitting the proposed indictment to Comey for approval. A former federal prosecutor calls the Justice Dept. rebuke "a major [butt] kicking" that is "highly unusual but well justified."