The lawyer for one of the men arrested for tampering with a senator’s phones is meeting with prosecutors in an effort to reach a resolution in the 24-year-old man’s case, The Associated Press reported today.

J. Garrison Jordan, the attorney for Robert Flanagan — the son of Western District of Louisiana acting U.S. Attorney William Flanagan – wouldn’t elaborate on the talks he had Wednesday with prosecutors about the charges against his client.

“We’re in discussions with the government, trying to resolve this matter as expeditiously as possible in a fair and just manner,” Jordan told AP.

Robert Flanagan allegedly joined James O’Keefe and two other men in a purported scheme to interfere with phones at Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office, according to the AP. O’Keefe was already noteworthy, having gained notoriety for secret videos he shot last year involving the community organizing group ACORN.

A spokeswoman for the Eastern District of Louisiana U.S. Attorney’s Office, which is handling the case, declined to comment.

The four men were charged last month with using false pretenses to enter a federal building with the intent to commit a felony after they allegedly pretended to be telephone company repairmen who were at the Landrieu’s office to fix problems with the phone system.

The four defendants are free on $10,000 bonds. Their lawyers decided to waive a preliminary hearing that was set for this week, according to the AP. A judge hasn’t set a date for their next court appearance, the AP said.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) will no longer hold up federal nominations in his state after receiving assurance that the job of the George W. Bush-holdover U.S. Attorney in New Orleans is safe, The Times-Picayune reported today.

David Vitter (Gov)

The Republican senator now will return his “blue slip” on Western District of Louisiana U.S. Attorney nominee Stephanie Finley and other federal nominees, which he had been withholding until he received official word on the status of U.S. Attorney Jim Letten.

The Senate Judiciary Committee traditionally does not consider a nomination until it receives a “blue slip” from the nominee’s home state senator.

Vitter had asked the administration to keep Letten, who has led the Eastern District of Louisiana U.S. Attorney’s Office since 2001. Today, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that Letten would serve on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, which serves as the voice of U.S. Attorneys throughout the nation, sending a strong signal that his job was safe.

“This prestigious appointment makes it crystal clear that Jim isn’t going anywhere except on regular trips to Washington to personally advise the attorney general,” Vitter told the newspaper. “The attorney general and I superficially discussed this in our meeting last Thursday and I’m really excited to get it done.”

Letten’s office is handling the case against four men who allegedly tried to interfere with phones at Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office. One of the men, Robert Flanagan, is the son of Western District of Louisiana acting U.S. Attorney William Flanagan. James O’Keefe, who gained notoriety for secret videos of the community organizing group ACORN, was one of Flanagan’s accomplices.

Andrew Breitbart, the founder of BigGovernment.com, which employs O’Keefe, said today on Fox News that Letten leaked information on the incident in a “concerted effortâ€� to put O’Keefe in a bad light. Letten’s office denied the allegation.

Robert Flanagan (U.S. government photo via AP)

An associate of conservative video-maker James O’Keefe, who is charged with trying to interfere with the phones at Sen. Mary Landrieu’s (D-La.) office in New Orleans, has accused the prosecutor overseeing the case of leaking information about the arrests to the news media.

Andrew Breitbart, a former Drudge Report editor and founder of BigGovernment.com, which employs O’Keefe, directed his ire at Jim Letten, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Breitbart made the claims in an appearance on Fox News. Letten’s office has denied his allegations.

Breitbart also alleged that  O’Keefe “sat in jail for 28 hours without access to an attorney.”

O’Keefe, 25, gained fame last year for making secret videos in several offices of the community organizing group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) that led to congressional efforts to cut off federal funding for the group.

O’Keefe was arrested last week in New Orleans along with three other conservative activists, including Robert Flanagan, the son of William J. Flanagan, the acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana in Lafayette.

Breitbart said that Letten’s purported leaks were a “concerted effort” to frame the episode in a way that would put O’Keefe in a bad position, reports Talking Points Memo. But the first report of the arrests came last Tuesday after the U.S. Attorney’s Office put out a press release around the same time as an article on the case, in the Times-Picayune was posted online.

Asked what motivation the U.S. Attorney would have to make such an effort, Breitbart responded: “Well, it’s tied to the Justice Department. And we’ve been very aggressive in asking Eric Holder to investigate what’s seen on the ACORN tapes, and he’s ignored it.”

Letten is a Republican who was appointed by President George W. Bush. He has bipartisan support from the state’s two senators to continue serving during the Obama administration, and was today named to an advisory panel for the Attorney General, a strong indication that Holder will retain him in his post.

Letten’s office denied Breitbart’s allegations in an interview with TPMmuckraker this afternoon. Jan Mann, first assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, told the site: “The suggestion that he makes about the motivations of our office are untrue. We’re not going to try this case in the press. But we deny the accusations about our office.”

According to an Associated Press narrative about the events leading up to the arrests, Flanagan  met O’Keefe, Joseph Basel, 24, and Stan Dai, 24, after O’Keefe spoke at The Pelican Institute, a think tank where Flanagan works. Their first meeting came five days before their arrest, said J. Garrison Jordan, Flanagan’s lawyer.

Flanagan, writes the AP, was an All-American pitcher for the Division III baseball team at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., He enrolled last year at Missouri State University’s Department of Defense and Strategic Studies, in Fairfax, Va. And he interned for Republican Rep. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma and Sen. Lamar Alexander, (R-Tenn.).

This story has been edited from its original version for clarity and to make clear that Jim Letten’s office denies the allegations.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) will delay Senate action on the nominee who would replace the acting U.S. Attorney whose son allegedly tried to interfere with phones at Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu’s New Orleans office, The Associated Press reported today.

David Vitter (Getty Images)

Vitter’s office said Wednesday that he will block Senate action on Stephanie Finley and President Obama’s other nominees for federal justice system posts in Louisiana until he hears from the White House whether Obama will let Eastern District of Louisiana U.S. Attorney Jim Letten keep his job.

Finley was nominated last week to be U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana. She would replace acting U.S. Attorney William Flanagan. Vitter is also holding up other federal nominees in Louisiana over Letten. Letten was appointed by President George W. Bush, and has held the Eastern District post since April 2001. Both Vitter and Landrieu have urged Obama to retain Letten.

Flanagan, a career prosecutor, became the top federal prosecutor in the Shreveport, La., office after Donald Washington resigned earlier this month. Robert Flanagan, the prosecutor’s son, along with conservative activists James O’Keefe, Joseph Basel and Stan Dai were charged this week with entering federal property under false pretenses for the purposes of committing a felony. O’Keefe made national headlines last year when he posed as a pimp and allegedly received instructions on how to obtain housing aid for a purported brothel from staffers for activist group ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now).

The son of the acting U.S. Attorney and Basel told a staffer at Landrieu’s office that they were with the telephone company to repair the phone system, according to an FBI affidavit. O’Keefe was already inside the office’s reception area and was holding a phone to record Flanagan and Basel talking to Landrieu staffers, the FBI said. Dai helped plan the operation, according to the FBI.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, popularly known as ACORN, has not violated the terms under which it has received federal funding in the last five years, according to a government report released on Tuesday by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.).

The report, which was requested by Conyers and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), was prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The 82-page report details the research organization’s survey of 46 federal, state, and local investigations concerning ACORN  — 11 of which are still pending — and of several congressional probes.

Conyers pointed out that CRS found “no instances of individuals who were allegedly registered to vote improperly by ACORN or its employees and who were reported “attempting to vote at the polls. And, the report says that  ACORN has received federal funds, mostly from the departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development, 48 times in the last five years. In none of those cases did  Acorn violate the terms of the funding.

The CRS report does not include findings from a just-announced Government Accountability Office investigation of ACORN’s use of federal funds. House GOP Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said they were informed of the investigation in a Dec. 7 letter from GAO. Smith and Issa were not immediately available for comment on the CRS report.

ACORN, a controversial community organizing group that focuses largely on voter registration and housing,  received unfavorable publicity when documentary filmmakers earlier this year released undercover videos that they described as showing ACORN workers giving them advice on how to buy property to use as a brothel.  ACORN was already under attack from conservatives and many Republicans on Capitol Hill.

The videos spurred Congress to action. The House passed legislation in September known as the Defund ACORN Act of 2009, and several appropriations bills contained a prohibition on any funds in the bill going to ACORN.

Those actions, in turn, prompted some members of Congress to question whether the legislation respresented unconstitutional bills of attainder. The CRS report raises those questions as well, noting that “courts ‘may have a sufficient basis’ to conclude that the legislation ‘violates the prohibition against bills of attainder.’” However, according to the report, the limited term of the defunding mandated in the appropriations bills “could arguably be justified as an expedience necessary to address an issue of immediate congressional concern, while allowing Congress sufficient time to consider a longer term solution.”

Rep. Lamar Smith (file photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

The Government Accountability Office will investigate the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now’s use of federal funds, two Republican House members announced in a news release today.

Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said they were informed of the investigation in a Dec. 7 letter from GAO.

In the letter, the GAO’s Ralph Dawn said the watchdog office has accepted the request to investigate the use of federal funds.

In late November, the Justice Department released a memo concluding the government should pay ACORN for contracts that were in place before President Barack Obama signed legislation banning the community organizing group from receiving federal funds.

Republicans have criticized ACORN and held a forum to discuss allegations of voter fraud and embezzlement against the organization.

Here is the text of the news release from Smith and Issa, with the GAO letter embedded below it:

“House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and House Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) today received notice that the GAO will investigate ACORN’s use of federal funds.

In a letter dated December 7, 2009, the GAO agreed to work with executive branch Inspectors General to provide Congress with a report regarding ACORN’s receipt and use of taxpayer dollars.  Ranking Members Smith and Issa issued the following statements applauding the GAO’s decision:

Ranking Member Smith: “I am pleased that the GAO has agreed to review ACORN’s receipt and use of federal funds.  Congress has a responsibility to ensure that no taxpayer dollars are allocated to an organization supporting or engaged in criminal conduct.  The GAO review is a good start, but given ACORN’s extensive record of criminal conduct, the FBI must also step in. Only an independent criminal investigation conducted by the FBI can get to the bottom of the nationwide allegations against ACORN.�

Ranking Member Issa: “ACORN’s criminal acts over many years have robbed taxpayers and charitable donors of the honest public services ACORN was paid to provide.  This GAO study should be another step toward understanding the scope of funds from across the Federal government that were sent to ACORN yet cannot be verified that they were used as intended.�

ACORN is currently under investigation in more than a dozen states.  Many members of the organization and its affiliates have been convicted of criminal conduct, including voter registration fraud.

Following the release of undercover videos showing ACORN employees encouraging criminal conduct, Congress voted overwhelmingly to prohibit the provision of federal funds to ACORN.  Last week, a federal court struck down the provision as a bill of attainder.  Ranking Members Smith and Issa have called on DOJ to appeal the decision.

The GAO, often called the “congressional watchdog,� is a nonpartisan agency that investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars.

GAO_ACORN

Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez (File photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice)

Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez testified on Capitol Hill Thursday about his “agenda of restoration and revitalization” for the Civil Rights Division.

That agenda includes new rules for hiring career civil service lawyers intended to protect the process from politics. Those rules are being finalized, according to Alejandro Miyar, a Justice Department spokesman.

In a statement before the House Judiciary subcommittee on civil rights, Perez said the rules will “ensure that the very best candidates for the job are selected through a process that is conducted fairly, transparently and without any consideration of the candidate’s political view.”

While the cautious Perez didn’t make explicit reference to the George W. Bush administration, committee Democrats filled in the blanks for him.

“The division has been deeply troubled over the past eight years. Career civil rights attorneys were routinely overruled by political appointees,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) chairman of the subcommittee. “Enforcement was in some key areas grossly neglected.”

During the Bush administration, the Civil Rights Division was in turmoil as Bush political appointee Bradley Schlozman drove out career lawyers deemed to be liberal and hired conservatives to replace them.

Schlozman, who served in a variety of posts in the division from 2003 to 2006, broke federal law in taking political and ideological affiliations into account for the career civil service jobs, according to this Justice Department Inspector General report.

Perez testified on the same day the Government Accountability Office released a 180-page report showing a marked declined in enforcement of anti-discrimination and voting rights laws under the administration of George W. Bush. Perez said the Obama administration would not be “picking and choosing” which laws to enforce. (We’ll have a separate story on the GAO report later).

As Democratic members of the committee focused on the GAO report’s findings, Republicans honed in on two of their favorite political targets: the Association for Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) and the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case that was dismissed by the Obama DOJ in May.

After a half hour of opening statements from committee members, Nadler prepared to introduce Perez, saying “now we can get back to the subject of the hearing, which is the Civil Rights Division and not ACORN.”

Rep. Lamar Smith countered that Democrats were “playing the Bush blame game” instead of overseeing the Obama administration.

Republicans also attacked the notion of hate crimes laws, which Perez has made a top priority for the division. Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) asked Perez if the murders at Fort Hood by alleged shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan would be considered a hate crime because it appeared to be religiously motivated. Perez said he wasn’t involved with the investigation so didn’t comment directly.

Rep. King with a bucket of acorns from trees around the Capitol (Photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice)

Rep. Lamar Smith (Photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

Republican lawmaker Lamar Smith called for U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN).

The Texan, who is the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, said he believes the Department of Justice is unable to fairly investigate the organization because of ACORN’s  connections to the Democratic Party.

Smith chaired a Republican forum — not an official congressional hearing — on ACORN Tuesday afternoon at which several witnesses made allegations of voter fraud and embezzlement against the organization. Republican members of the House Judiciary panel’s Oversight Subcommittee were joined by members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at Tuesday’s gathering.

Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department official who now works for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said that the Justice Department and FBI “have been almost entirely silent and seemingly negligent,” by not investigating ACORN.

Congress this fall enacted legislation banning federal funds from going to ACORN, but constitutional objections were raised. The Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel last week issued an opinion stating that contracts calling for payments to ACORN already awarded could not be voided.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) claimed that prior to the Justice Department’s decision, ACORN was in bankruptcy and was shutting down offices across the nation. A memo made public last week concluded the government should pay ACORN for contracts that were in place before Congress banned the community organizing group from receiving federal funds.

The Justice Department released a memo this week concluding the government should pay ACORN for contracts that were in place before Congress banned the community organizing group from receiving federal funds.

Legislation signed by President Barack Obama in October prohibits the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now from receiving federal funds.

Acting Assistant Attorney General David Barron, who oversees the Office of Legal Counsel, stated in an opinion dated Oct. 23 that the language of the law is ambiguous and that the government should honor contracts with Acorn that predated the law. The ban on funding for ACORN came after two conservative activists videotaped employees of the group giving advice on how to launder money and evade taxes.

The deputy general counsel for the Department of Housing and Urban Development had asked the Justice Department for its legal opinion about the pre-existing contracts it had with ACORN. The group has gotten around $53 million from the federal government since 1994, much in the form of grants from HUD, according to the New York Times.

The OLC memo states that the law “should not be read as directing or authorizing HUD to breach a pre-existing binding contractual obligation to make payments to ACORN or its affiliates, subsidiaries or allied organizations where doing so would give rise to contractual liability.”

ACORN got around $200,000 from the Department of Justice through affiliates and subcontracts between 2002 and 2009, according to a report issued last week by the department’s inspector general. Acorn also registers minority and low-income voters – who tend to vote Democratic. It has been a long-time target of conservatives.

Republicans are not reacting well to the legal opinion, writes Jake Tapper on ABC’s Political Punch blog:

The ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., blasted the DOJ opinion as “political cronyism.”

“The bipartisan intent of Congress was clear – no more federal dollars should flow to ACORN,” Issa said. “It is telling that this administration continues to look for every excuse possible to circumvent the intent of Congress.  Taxpayers should not have to continue subsidizing a criminal enterprise that helped Barack Obama get elected president.  The politicization of the Justice Department to pay back one of the president’s political allies is shameful and amounts to nothing more than old-fashioned cronyism.â€�

The Senate passed legislation tonight that would allocate $27.4 billion to the Justice Department.

The body approved the fiscal year 2010 Commerce, Justice, science appropriations bill by a 71-28 vote.

The bill includes language adopted by voice vote tonight that prohibits the distribution of funds to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and requires the comptroller general to investigate whether federal funds were misused by the activist group.

ACORN came under fire after its staffers were caught on hidden camera allegedly instructing a couple who posed as a pimp and a prostitute on how to obtain housing aid for a purported brothel. The DOJ Office of Inspector General is already probing whether ACORN applied for or obtained any DOJ grant money

But the Senate tabled an amendment from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that would have kept the suspected planners of the Sept. 11 attacks out of U.S. civilian courts. The vote on the motion was 54-45.

This afternoon, the Senate voted 60-39 along party lines to invoke cloture on the legislation. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was the only senator who did not vote on the procedural motion.

The Senate had tried to cut off debate on the bill last month, but was four votes short.

The House has already passed a version of the legislation.

Here’s the roll call vote on final passage of the Senate bill:

Grouped By Vote Position

This post was updated from an earlier version.