A day after she declined to dismiss the government’s case against ex-Abramoff Associate Kevin Ring, U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle handed the government another win today.

Ring’s lawyers – Miller & Chevalier partners Richard Hibey, Andrew Wise and Timothy O’Toole – had moved to disqualify Public Integrity Chief William Welch II from case because he is under criminal investigation by a government witness. As we previously reported here , Welch voluntarily took himself off the case on June 9, though he will continue to be consulted to ensure the government fulfills its discovery obligations, according to court documents.

The judge had suggested  in a previous hearing that Justice should build a “wall” between Welch and the case against Ring, who is accused of lavishing lawmakers with free gifts, trips and meals, in return for helping his clients. Apparently, Welch’s partial recusal satisfied her.

“I don’t think there are any bias problems,” Huvelle said, swiftly denying the motion from the bench.

Welch is under investigation for his work on the prosecution of Ted Stevens, who’s case was dismissed after a fresh team of prosecutors dredged up documents — after trial — that could have aided in the former Alaska senator’s defense. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan appointed Henry Schuelke III of Janis, Schuelke & Wechsler, to investigate Welch, his deputy, Brenda Morris, and four other prosecutors. The alleged conflict is this: Ring’s firm, Greenberg Traurig, hired Schuelke to conduct and internal investigation when the Abramoff scandal exploded in 2004. Now, he’s a key piece of the government’s case against Ring.

The Stevens case was invoked on numerous occasions during today’s hearing. Ring’s lawyers have made a broad request for communications among prosecutors and agents that would show what inducements cooperating witnesses recieved and whether they had been threatened. Huvelle was initially warm to the idea.

“I’m hoping these things don’t exist, but I’m not so stupid to think they don’t ever,” she said.

Prosecutors said the defense team’s request was unreasonable considering the scale of investigation. The government has six cooperating witnesses, who have been interviewed by around 100 agents and prosecutors from eight law enforcement agencies, said Public Integrity prosecutor Michael Ferrara. The government has already agreed to hand over all the memos and 302s from witness interviews,  which the defense could use to at trial, if they find inconsistent statements, Ferrara said.

After Huvelle understood the defense lawyers’ request to require the prosecutors to go beyond a search for e-mails and documents memorializing their discussions, she said simply, “I pass.” But she also she gave the defense team an opportunity to sharpen its request. The brief is due by July 1.

House Judiciary Committee lawyer Elliot Mincberg said today at a forum on prosecution misconduct that Attorney General Eric Holder is considering prosecuting former Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division Bradley Scholzman, The Blog of Legal Times reported Friday. Holder had previously said at his confirmation hearing he’d review a decision by the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s office not to prosecute Schlozman for allegedly lying in sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2007 that he didn’t take political affiliation or ideology into account in DOJ personnel decisions.

Bradley Schlozman (DOJ)

We previously reported that a DOJ Inspector General report said Schlozman referred to liberal applicants for positions as “mold spores,â€� “commiesâ€� and “crazy pinkos.â€� The report concluded that he was “unsuitable for public service.â€�

Mincberg also said the House Judiciary Committee has obtained a “pretty good number of internal White House memos” as part of its probe into the U.S. Attorney firings of 2006, The BLT reported.

He said the memos provide more details on the firing of the nine U.S. Attorneys under the watch of then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, according to The BLT. He added that the documents are confidential for now. But Mincberg said the closed-door testimonies of former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and former Bush aide Karl Rove will be made public, according to The BLT. Miers met with the House Judiciary Committee this month. The panel has yet to say when it will meet with Rove.

“(The investigation) has already demonstrated, although it is not yet done, that there were clear improper political influence in the decisions being made by a Republican administration to fire Republican U.S. attorneys,” Mincberg said, according to The BLT.

The lawyer for imprisoned Mississippi trial attorney Paul Minor is the latest to allege that Public Integrity Section prosecutors supervised by William Welch II withheld favorable evidence from the defense, The Associated Press reported.

Paul Minor (Getty Images)

Minor was a major Democratic political donor who was convicted in 2007 of “honest services mail fraud” for guaranteeing loans for Mississippi Supreme Court  Justice Oliver Diaz and his wife. The loans were used for Diaz’s campaign for the state Supreme Court. Harper’s Scott Horton ridiculed the “honest services mail fraud” charge here in a skeptical analysis of the case.

In a June 24 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Minor lawyer Hiram Eastland Jr. said DOJ prosecutors “under the management of William Welch” improperly convinced a district court that the government didn’t need to prove any quid pro quo to win conviction. A jury failed to convict Minor in a first trial in 2005, when the government had been held to the higher standard of proof requiring prosecutors to prove that Diaz had taken official actions in exchange for Minor’s loan guarantee, Eastland wrote.

“The Justice Department prosecutors over whom Mr. Welch had senior management responsibility were overreaching in their representation of the law,” Eastland wrote. The letter was cc’ed to Criminal Division chief Lanny Breuer and Kevin Ohlson, Holder’s chief of staff.

Eastland also told The AP the corruption charges against his client should be thrown out due to Brady concerns. “This is like the Stevens case on steroids,â€� Eastland told The AP. One government witness never stated in 17 interviews with government agents and before grand juries that Minor had told him to lie to the FBI. But the witness gave testimony “to that effect” at trial, Eastland wrote.

Welch supervised the bungled prosecutions of former Sen. Ted Stevens (R- Alaska) and two Alaskan lawmakers, and also supervised the Minor prosecution team. Eastland said Welch “allowed ground level prosecutors to engage in the blatantly improper, unethical and unconstitutional trial tactic of withholding exculpatory evidence from defendants,” according to The AP.

Eastland has said the prosecution of Minor was politically motivated. The Office of Professional Responsibility is reviewing allegations of selective prosecution against Minor, Diaz and other Democrats in other states, including ex-Alabama Gov. Donald Siegelman, Georgia Thompson in Wisconsin and Dr. Cyril Wecht in Pennsylvania.

Diaz’s wife, Jennifer, recently filed allegations against former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi Dunn Lampton and his cousin, Leslie Lampton, accusing them of illegally obtaining and distributing her private financial records in an attempt to remove her husband from office. Diaz was twice acquitted of tax charges in Missisippi. Lampton’s office didn’t prosecute him but assisted in the case.

As for Minor, his appeal before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is pending.

Detroit City Council member Monica Conyers, the wife of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), pleaded guilty this morning in federal court to one count of conspiring to commit bribery. Conyers is out on bond as she awaits sentencing. She could face up to five years in prison.

We previously reported that Detroit businessman Rayford Jackson admitted to bribing a council member in 2007 to gain approval for a $1.2 billion waste disposal contract for Synagro Technologies, according to court documents he filed. Jackson allegedly bribed Monica Conyers with at least $6,000 to help win the contract, The Detroit Free Press reported.

John Conyers’s office released this statement to the Free Press today:

“This has been a trying time for the Conyers family. With hope and prayer, they will make it through this as a family. Public officials must expect to be held to the highest ethical and legal standards. With this in mind, Mr. Conyers wants to work towards helping his family and the city recover from this serious matter.”

Last week, Obama administration officials gave arguments for why former Vice President Dick Cheney’s 2004 interview with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald should remain secret. Fitzgerald was investigating how CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity got leaked. Ultimately, Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was convicted of obstruction of justice in the matter. The liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) wants to know why Cheney didn’t get prosecuted, and has sued for release of the interview.

But Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith said disclosure would have a “chilling effect� on future administration officials’ willingness to cooperate voluntarily with investigations, and that officials might not comply with future requests out of fear �that it’s going to get on ‘The Daily Show’.�

Read our report here.

Last night, Jon Stewart responded to the Justice Department’s newest justification for blocking transparency and protecting Cheney, and the irony was lost on no one:

U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle upheld all ten of the counts facing ex-lobbyist Kevin Ring, reports The BLT.  Ring is accused of lavishing lawmakers with free gifts, trips and meals, in return for helping his clients.

The government does not seek to criminalize ‘traditional’ lobbying activities such as constitutionally protected petitioning or even the provision of meals and drinks in order to cultivate goodwill,â€� Huvelle wrote in response to criticisms by Ring’s lawyers. “Nor does the government seek to criminalize Ring’s supposed failure to prevent public officials from violating ethics rules by accepting his gifts. What the indictment does charge is that Ring devised and assisted as scheme … to deprive the public of the honest services of certain identified public officials.

The case, as we’ve reported here, has strange ties to the Ted Stevens prosecution. In a court filing late last week, the Justice Department disclosed that Public Integrity chief William Welch II voluntarily pulled himself off the Ring case. Welch is under criminal investigation by Henry Schuelke III of Janis, Schuelke & Wechsler, for possible criminal contempt in the Stevens case. Schuelke was hired by Abramoff’s firm to conduct an internal investigation after the influence-peddling scandal broke in 2004, and he’s a government witness in the Ring case. Ring’s lawyers, Miller & Chevalier partners Richard Hibey, Andrew Wise and Timothy O’Toole, not only raised concerns about a conflict of interest but accused Welch of redacting information from documents he had turned over to them.

In the case of a Mexican businessman accused of drug trafficking, Zhenli Ye Gon, the Justice Department says U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan is taking this whole Brady thing a touch too far. Justice moved to dismiss the case earlier this week – not for any self-discovered violation of its obligation to turn over exculpatory material to the alleged drug trafficker’s defense team — but because they believe authorities south of the border have a better shot at putting him away for a long, long time.

But Sullivan, the judge who ordered a criminal investigation of the prosecutors who handled the Ted Stevens case, asked the government for a supplemental brief to explain why it waited until its June 22 motion to dismiss to disclose that two witness are recanting, reports The National Law Journal’s Mike Scarcella. Sullivan suggested the government had yet again trampled rights of the defendant.

The answer refuting Sullivan’s suggestion came from none other than Paul O’Brien, chief of the Narcotics and Dangerous Drug Section. In a strange coincidence, it was O’Brien who led the DOJ internal investigation of the handling of evidence by the Stevens prosecutors in Public Integrity. It was O’Brien who stood before Judge Sullivan in April and apologized in open court for the prosecution errors that led to dismissal of the high-profile public corruption case against the former senator from Alaska. “[W]e deeply, deeply regret this occured,” O’Brien said of the Stevens debacle. 

But in a brief filed Wednesday, O’Brien defended his section lawyers, Paul Laymon and Wanda Dixon, writing that Sullivan’s suggestions of impropriety in the Ye Gon case are not supported by law. 

O’Brien noted that in the Ye Gon case, “the government has turned over  more than 75 volumes of discovery materials, including forensic reports, reports of interviews, banking records, gambling records, shipping records, and so on,” beginning in 2007.

The Court has suggested that, despite the fact that we are four months before the scheduled trial in this case, the government’s compliance with a court-ordered deadline for producing Brady material nonetheless constitutes a failure to turn over Brady material. The court’s suggestions are not supported by the law. Indeed, courts have uniformly rejected the notion that Brady disclosures need to be made in pretrial proceedings, let alone immediately, as the Court appears to suggest; due process is satisfied as long as the material is disclosed in time for the accused to make effective use of it at trial.

Sullivan was also peeved that the government didn’t let him know about the problem witnesses. In a footnote, O’Brien said the government didn’t have to.

The government’s disclosure obligation runs to the defendant. We are not aware of any requirement under Brady that the government disclose the materially favorable information to the court.

If the Ye Gon case is transferred to Mexico, he will face charges of organized crime and the importation of and manufacture of psychotropic chemicals, among others. Ye Gon has been in U.S. custody since he was arrested in a restaurant in Westfield Wheaton mall in 2007. Mexico is seeking to extradite him, but his lawyers, Manuel Retureta and A. Eduardo Balarezo, are fighting to keep him here.

O’Brien also refuted any implication that the government’s case was too weak to stand in U.S. court.

We submit only that, as between the two countries’ prosecutions, there are sufficient reasons — including a less complicated set of charges and the prospect of a very lengthy sentence – to defer to Mexico’s request for the return of its citizens for trial there.

A status hearing is scheduled in the case for June 30 at 2 p.m.

The Senate Appropriations Committee passed a draft of a $27.4 billion Justice Department budget by a 30-0 vote this afternoon.

The Senate Appropriations Commerce Justice science subcommittee approved the DOJ budget by voice vote yesterday before it was considered by the full committee today.

Read our previous post on the Senate’s version of the DOJ budget below:

The Senate Appropriations Commerce Justice science subcommittee passed its version of the DOJ budget by voice vote this afternoon.

The Senate bill includes $27.4 billion for the Justice Department — $300 million less than the House bill. Read our reports on the House bill here and here. The Senate Appropriations Committee is slated to markup the bill tomorrow.

Here’s a Senate CJS subcommittee summary of the DOJ budget:

The bill provides a total of $27.38 billion for the Department of Justice, which is $1.29 billion above the enacted level and $311 million above the President’s budget request.

• State and Local Law Enforcement – The Committee provides a total of $3.16 billion for state and local law enforcement, which is $63 million below the enacted level and $412 million above the President’s budget request:

o $510 million for Byrne Justice Assistance Grants (JAG), state formula grants to assist local law enforcement

o $658 million for Community Oriented Policing Service (COPS) grants, including      $100 million for a COPS hiring program

o $407 million for juvenile justice and delinquency prevention

o $435 million to prevent violence against women

o $265 million to prevent, investigate and prosecute crimes against children

• Bureau of Prisons (BOP) – BOP is provided $6.08 billion, which is $92 million below the enacted level and $2.4 million above the President’s budget request. The Committee provides the full budget request for salaries and expenses for the Bureau of Prisons.

• Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) – The FBI is provided $7.9 billion, which is $612 million above the enacted level $52 million above the President’s budget request. Of that total, $25.5 million is provided to hire at least 50 new special agents to investigate mortgage fraud, $52 million to address internet crimes against children and a $22 million increase for critical surveillance and mobility capabilities for national security and criminal investigations.

• U.S. Marshals Service – The U.S. Marshals Service is provided $1.15 million, which is $198 million above the enacted level and equal to the President’s budget request. This includes $35 million to support 100 new Deputy U.S. Marshals to implement the Adam Walsh Act.

• Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) – The DEA is provided $2 billion, $75 million above the
enacted level and equal to the President’s request.

• Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) – ATF is provided $1.12 billion, which is $66.5 billion above the enacted level and equal to the President’s request.

• Crime Victims Fund (CVF) – The bill permits the expenditure of $705 million from the CVF for grants to assist victims of crime. This is $70 million above the enacted level and $5 million above the President’s request.

Justice Department Office of Legal Policy nominee Christopher Schroeder was a man of few words at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. He didn’t have much choice.

His hearing Wednesday morning was postponed because senators had to gather for a ceremonial reading on the Senate floor of charges against impeached Texas U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent. At first, it seemed Schroeder’s hearing would be held another day. Then suddenly, it was back on. But the live Webcast on the Senate Judiciary Committee site wasn’t working. And reporters didn’t have time to make it to the hearing. So we can’t really tell you what happened, other than it appeared to be pretty informal

Schroeder declined to give an opening statement and opted instead to introduce his family, we’ve learned. He then gave brief answers to detailed queries from Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on expiring Patriot Act provisions, the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists and fixing the past abuses of the Bush Justice Department. He said he wasn’t familiar enough with the details to give full answers to many of the senators’ questions.

Schroeder, a former Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Clinton administration, will be in charge of judicial nominations and legal policy if confirmed to run the OLP.

Rep. Jane Harman released a letter today from the Justice Department stating she is not a target of any criminal inquiry, the New York Times reported. The California Democrat and former House Intelligence Committee member reportedly had been overheard on a 2005 government wiretap offering to help two pro-Israel lobbyists who’d been charged with espionage. CQ’s Jeff Stein broke that story.

Boy, that whole AIPAC spy thing really did fall apart. In May, the government dropped the charges against former American Israel Public Affairs Committee officials Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman. A court had ordered the government to prove the lobbyists had intended to harm U.S. interests when they disclosed Pentagon information about Iraq to the media and an Israeli diplomat. According to news reports, Harman had been caught on the wiretap telling an unidentified agent of Israel that she would help the two AIPAC lobbyists in exchange for political fundraising asssistance.

Harman denied wrongdoing, asked why the hell the government was intercepting a member of Congress’s phone calls, and demanded the government release a transcript of the wiretasps. I don’t think those transcripts were ever released.