The Justice Department has finished its long-running criminal investigation into judicial bribery allegations against trial lawyers in Mississippi, The Clarion-Ledger reported Tuesday.

Dickie Scruggs (Biloxi Sun Herald Via Newscom)

Federal prosecutors dropped a case against political operative P.L. Blake, who was accused of having ties to a bribery scandal involving prominent lawyer Dickie Scruggs and others. Scruggs, one of the country’s most famous trial lawyers,  reportedly earned $1 billion in fees from litigation against tobacco companies in the 1990s. He was a major Democratic donor.

Today, Scruggs is serving a seven-year sentence after pleading guilty in 2008 to conspiring to bribe a state judge. He is serving a separate and concurrent sentence for attempting to corruptly influence another state judge.

Former Northern Mississippi Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Dawson, a Tea Party member who was one of the Scruggs prosecutors, teamed up with a conservative blogger last year to write a book about the case and that of another convicted Mississippi trial lawyer, Paul Minor.

“We obviously are very pleased,” Blake’s attorney, Doug Jones, told the newspaper. In what appeared to be a swipe at Dawson, Jones praised the other prosecutor on the case, adding: “We appreciate Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Norman’s professionalism. We’re pleased the matter is behind everybody, and life will go on.”

This story has been updated.

The retired Assistant U.S. Attorney who successfully prosecuted trial lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs has helped launch a Tea Party chapter in Oxford, Miss.

Tom Dawson, who retired from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Mississippi last June, is on the planning committee for the chapter’s first event, which is scheduled for April 17, the political blog NMissCommentor reported. The group was founded by retired Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Kay Cobb.

Dawson co-authored a book about the Scruggs case — “Kings of Tort: The True Story of Dickie Scruggs, Paul Minor and Two Decades of Political and Legal Manipulation in Mississippi” — and was honored by the Justice Department for prosecuting the billionaire tobacco litigator and his associates in a major judicial bribery scandal.

A prosecutor for more than 35 years, Dawson’s activism is more grist for critics who say the Bush Justice Department targeted prominent Democrats and trial lawyers in plaintiff-friendly Mississippi, which for years was a major battleground in the conservative-led movement to change the tort system.

The book, which he co-authored with conservative Alan Lange, who runs the popular Mississippi blog, Y’all Politics, stirred controversy before its release last year. Dawson began work on the project after he retired but while he was still under contract with the U.S. Attorney’s office to provide counsel on Scruggs-related cases. The Justice Department said Dawson violated no ethics rules.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misidentified Alan Lange as a lawyer.

Mississippi reporter Patsy Brumfield has added a chapter to the story of indicted FBI agent Hal Neilson, whose clashes with the U.S. Attorney in the state’s Northern District stirred him to request whistleblower status.

Neilson is accused of failing to disclose a personal financial interest in the FBI office building in Oxford. He has said he received an “oral” OK from the bureau to make the investment.

As we noted here, also via Brumfield, the 49-year-old career FBI agent sought protection against retaliation after reporting concerns that the U.S. Attorney’s office had improperly targeted residents of Middle Eastern origins for investigation.

The so-called Convenience Store initiative, in the years after 9/11 attacks, found no terrorist links, but prosecutors charged about 60 people with selling excessive amounts of pseudoephedrine, used to make methamphetamine, an illegal drug.

(Neilson also raised ethics concerns about a book that former Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Dawson wrote about his prosecution of billionaire Mississippi trial lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs in a judicial bribery scandal. Read our previous report on Dawson’s book here.)

Brumfield’s story, based on documents and Neilson’s e-mail to the Mississippi congressional delegation, provides more details on Neilson’s falling out with former U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee, a Bush appointee who stepped down last month.

Before we go further, a brief update on the lurching nomination process in the Northern District. Brumfield, in a separate piece, confirms what we were told recently about Oxford-based lawyer Christi McCoy, who has been under consideration since last summer for the U.S. Attorney post to replace Greenlee.

Issues surrounding McCoy’s affiliation with a local private investigator who was under investigation for his billing practices have been resolved. (McCoy and many other Mississippi lawyers used the P.I. in their practices.) The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Alabama, which was handling the case, has dropped its probe, Brumfield reports, potentially giving McCoy’s candidacy a big boost.

Back to Neilson.

In 2005, Neilson, at the time the resident agent in Oxford, learned from his colleagues that Greenlee’s office was using a grand jury to investigate residents targeted in the convenience story initiative. According to Brumsfield, he sounded an alarm. He sent records to his superiors in Jackson, Miss., and told members of Congress that his agents thought the investigations were baseless — and potentially illegal.

He apparently never heard back from the Jackson office, but his concerns made their way to Greenlee.

Brumfield reports:

That is when, Neilson wrote, he began to come under “constant attacks,” and endured attempts to undermine him and his conduct of investigations.

He wrote that he was intentionally excluded from standard investigative matters, even though he managed the FBI’s northern district; that the U.S. attorney’s office went around him in the judicial bribery investigation of then-Oxford attorney Richard “Dickie” Scruggs and others; and that in early 2008 Greenlee asked the FBI director to remove Neilson from his district.

There was another matter that put the men at odds. In 2005, Neilson was leading an investigation into the mismanagement of a beef processing plant, as well as accusations that three Georgia businessmen improperly sought to influence then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove (D) to gain access to the project.

Neilson, the supervisor of a joint federal-state task force, was removed from the investigation after about a year. His supervisors told him Greenlee had complained about the pace of the investigation, which resulted in the convictions of five people. (Musgrove was never indicted, but the scandal contributed to his defeat in a U.S. Senate race.)

Neilson countered that any delay was attributable to the U.S. Attorney’s office’s attempts to steer the investigation.

U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee on Wednesday announced he will retire as the top federal prosecutor in the Northern District of Mississippi on Jan. 31, The Associated Press reports. The Bush holdover has been the district’s U.S. Attorney since 2001.

Over the weekend, we reported that Greenlee would be leaving his post soon, as Gina Phillips Kilgore, chief deputy for operations at the U.S. District Court in Oxford, Miss., sent out an e-mail titled “Jim Greenlee Retirement Reception.” A copy of the email was forwarded to The Daily Journal of Mississippi.

President Obama has yet to nominate a replacement for Greenlee. Oxford-based defense lawyer Christi McCoy has been under consideration for the job, but we reported last month that her candidacy stalled over questions about her affiliation with a private investigator under investigation for allegedly padding his bills.

Mississippi lawyers have told us Greenlee wrote a letter to the Justice Department about McCoy’s ties to the private investigator, but Greenlee’s office has declined to say whether such a letter exists. Main Justice submitted a Freedom of Information Act request in November asking for a copy of any letter, if it exists.

McCoy was recommended for the U.S. Attorney post by Mississippi Reps. Bennie Thompson and Travis Childers, both Democrats.

McCoy once worked at the law firm of Joey Langston — who pleaded guilty to conspiring with Scruggs to bribe a judge. She also represented former state auditor Steve Patterson, who pleaded guilty in another Scruggs-related judicial bribery case.

Another possible candidate is Assistant U.S. Attorney Curtis Ivy.

U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee soon will be leaving his post as the top federal prosecutor in the Northern District of Mississippi, The Daily Journal of Mississippi reports. The Bush holdover has been the district’s U.S. Attorney since 2001.

Greenlee’s departure has been rumored for months, amid various reports that made his Oxford-based office seem something of a soap opera.

The latest: Mississippi journalist Patsy Brumfield reports that an FBI agent who was indicted last week for failing to disclose a personal financial interest in the FBI building in Oxford had sought whistle blower status a couple of years ago after reporting concerns that Greenlee’s office had improperly targeted area Muslims for investigation after the 9/11 attacks.

The so-called Convenience Store Initiative didn’t find any terrorist links, but prosecutors did end up charging some 60 people with selling excessive amounts of pseudoephedrine, used to make methamphetamine, an illegal drug.

The agent, Hal Neilson, also reportedly raised ethics concerns about a book that a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the district, Tom Dawson, wrote about his prosecution of billionaire Mississippi trial lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs in a judicial bribery scandal, Brumfield wrote. Read our previous report on Dawson’s book here.

Greenlee and the office’s spokesman have declined to comment about his rumored departure.

On Friday, Gina Phillips Kilgore, chief deputy for operations at the U.S. District Court in Oxford, Miss., on Friday sent out an email titled “Jim Greenlee Retirement Reception.” A copy of the email was forwarded to The Daily Journal.

The email indicated the retirement party will take place on Jan. 29 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Oxford-University United Methodist All-Purpose Center, The Daily Journal reported.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Martin reportedly will serve as the office’s interim U.S. Attorney, according to The Daily Journal.

President Obama has yet to nominate a replacement for Greenlee. Oxford-based defense lawyer Christi McCoy has been under consideration for the job. We reported last month that her candidacy stalled over questions about her affiliation with a private investigator under investigation for allegedly padding his bills.

Mississippi lawyers have told us Greenlee wrote a letter to the DOJ about McCoy’s ties to the private investigator, but Greenlee’s office has declined to say whether such a letter exists. Main Justice submitted a Freedom of Information Act request in November asking for a copy of any letter, if it exists.

McCoy was recommended for the U.S. Attorney post by Mississippi Reps. Bennie Thompson and Travis Childers, both Democrats.

McCoy once worked at the law firm of Joey Langston — who pleaded guilty to conspiring with Scruggs to bribe a judge. She also represented former state auditor Steve Patterson, who pleaded guilty in another Scruggs-related judicial bribery case.

For more on McCoy’s candidacy, click here.

Joe Palazzolo contributed to this report.

We’ve written  about ”Kings of Tort: The True Story of Dickie Scruggs, Paul Minor and Two Decades of Political and Legal Manipulation in Mississippi,” a book co-authored by former Northern Mississippi Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Dawson and conservative blogger Alan Lange about the judicial bribery scandal that sent several prominent trial lawyers to prison.

The book has created a stir in Mississippi; Dawson was still working for the government when he agreed to write it. Dawson retired in January and returned to the office on an usual contract basis until June.

Last week, a federal appeals last week court threw out bribery convictions against plaintiff’s lawyer Paul Minor and two former Mississippi judges, and the remaining counts against them could fall after the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of the honest-services fraud law.

While Dawson didn’t prosecute Minor — that case was headed by the Southern District of Mississippi – the reversal of his federal programs bribery conviction has ignited old debate about federal prosecutors in the state were targeting trial lawyers, who’ve been big donors to Democrats.

Minor, a successful Mississippi trial lawyer and friend of Dickie Scruggs, provided personal guarantees for loans to  judges John Whitfield and Wes Teel, then used cash and third parties to pay them off. Scruggs, the imprisoned trial lawyer who earned fame and fortune taking on tobacco companies, served as an intermediary in paying off one Teel loan in full. Both judges were accused of ruling in Minor’s favor in civil cases, in return for the loan guarantees.

In erasing the federal programs bribery convictions, the Fifth Circuit held on Friday that judges who accepted the alleged bribes didn’t do so in connection with business or transactions of the Mississippi Administrative Office of the Courts, which pays for judges’ staff salaries. The AOC is state entity that had received federal funding and thus was the nexus for the prosecution’s federal programs bribery theory.

The Fifth Circuit ruling doesn’t exonerate Minor. Rather, it says the bribery scheme wasn’t a federal crime.

Whitfield used the loans to defray his campaign costs and to put a down payment on a house, the evidence at trial showed. Around that time, in 1998, Minor filed a personal injury suit in Whitfield’s court. He requested a bench trial — more than strange, considering the nature of the suit — and the two men sidestepped the court’s random assignment mechanism so Whitfield would hear the case. Minor won, reaping more than $3 million in “soft” damages for himself and his client.

The charges didn’t amount to a federal crime because the judges were allegedly bribed in connection with their judicial duties, not their administrative duties, the court held.  Minor, Whitfield and Teel will be re-sentenced on all the remaining counts.

The Fifth Circuit preserved convictions related to honest-services fraud, but the Supreme Court was hostile to the law in arguments here last week. The honest-services statute makes it a crime to “deprive another of honest services.” Justice Antonin Scalia compared it to a law that says, “Nobody shall do bad things.”

Minor’s supporters have long maintained  his prosecution was motivated by politics, and the opinion handed down on Friday was interpreted variously.

Lange, the co-author of Kings of Tort,  said the ruling shot holes in the theory among liberals “who believe that his conviction resulted from some sort of conspiracy in a prior administration.”

“Obviously, the 5th Circuit didn’t agree,” Lange wrote.

Columbia law professor Scott Horton, who has written extensively about the Minor case, said even if Minor, Whitfield and Teel go free, the prosecutions have had major impact on the state. Campaign contributions to Democratic judicial candidates ceased after the cases were brought, allowing Republicans to take control of Mississippi’s judiciary. Horton described the political backdrop in this piece on Monday:

The Bush-era Justice Department’s case was an attempt to criminalize campaign funding practices in which an attorney supported the election campaign efforts of Democratic judges. No comparable cases were ever brought against Republican judges or those who financed them. The charges took the novel view that campaign contributions and campaign finance assistance can be viewed as bribes paid to judges. But this rationale was applied to only one side of the political ledger.

Minor was prosecuted Assistant U.S Attorneys Ruth Morgan and David Fulcher in Mississippi’s Southern District. Dawson and his partner, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Norman, were recently honored by the Justice Department for their work on the Scruggs and related cases.

The former Northern District of Mississippi Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted trial lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs — and recently published a book about it — was honored last week for his work on the high-profile case.

Tom Dawson, who retired in January and returned to the office on an usual contract basis until June, was honored alongside AUSA Bob Norman for their work prosecuting the billionaire tobacco litigator and his associates in a major judicial bribery scandal in Mississippi.

The award from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys cited Dawson and Norman for:

their outstanding work on the investigation and prosecution of United States v. Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, et al. Their unparalleled dedication, skill, and judgment in this highly sensitive case with national attention resulted in convictions of all defendants. The team performed flawlessly, exhibiting extraordinary performance under pressure while executing tactical and strategic decisions in the successful prosecution that exposed a pattern of attempts to influence the judiciary. Their work has made a lasting positive impact on the Mississippi courts, attorneys, and our system of justice

Dawson’s co-author of the book, “Kings of Tort: The True Story of Dickie Scruggs, Paul Minor and Two Decades of Political and Legal Manipulation in Mississippi,” is Alan Lange, who’s been a vocal conservative critic of trial lawyers on his popular Mississippi blog, Y’all Politics. Lange has called the Scruggs case the “culmination of decades of dirty, backwater politics.” Read Lange’s blog post about the award here.

Read our previous report on Dawson’s book here.

The recently retired lead prosecutor in the case against Mississippi trial lawyer Richard “Dickie” Scruggs has written an insider’s account of the sensational judicial bribery scandal that sent the billionaire tobacco litigator, his son and several associates to prison.

Veteran former prosecutor Tom Dawson teamed up with conservative Mississippi legal blogger Alan Lange to examine the Scruggs case and the conviction of another Mississippi trial lawyer named Paul Minor.

Trial lawyer Dickie Scruggs, who pleaded guilty in a judicial bribery investigation, is the subject of a new book by the former lead prosecutor on his case. (Biloxi Sun Herald)

“Kings of Tort: The True Story of Dickie Scruggs, Paul Minor and Two Decades of Political and Legal Manipulation in Mississippi” will be published in December.

The book will attempt to “connect the dots,” exploring how Scruggs and other principals in the investigation ascended to fame before plunging into notoriety, Dawson said in an interview.

“The interesting thing about that is it brings an insider perspective,” Dawson said. “I’m sure that interest has not waned any, and hopefully the book will get some attention.”

Dawson’s publisher is Oregon-based Pediment Publishing. The ambitious legal narrative appears to be a departure for the imprint, whose Web site says it specializes in commemorative and coffee-table books.

It’s infrequent, but not unheard of, for former prosecutors to write books about their biggest cases.

Vincent Bugliosi published “Helter Skelter” in 1974, an account of his prosecution of cult leader Charles Manson and his followers for murder. In 1990 Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh filed a lawsuit that unsuccessfully sought to prevent a former member of his prosecution team, Jeffrey Toobin, from publishing an insider’s account of the Reagan-era scandal.

Dawson’s project is notable for several reasons.

Not only are offshoots of the closely watched Scruggs case still alive in Mississippi. But the prosecutions sparked allegations from liberal commentators that the Bush Justice Department had targeted prominent Democrats and trial lawyers in plaintiff-friendly Mississippi, which for years was a major battleground in the conservative-led movement to change the tort system.

Dawson’s co-author, Lange, has been a vocal conservative critic of trial lawyers on his popular blog, Y’all Politics. He has called the Scruggs case the “culmination of decades of dirty, backwater politics.”

Unusual employment arrangement

The circumstances of Dawson’s employment with the Northern District of Mississippi office were unusual, raising questions about whether he may have skirted Justice Department ethics rules when he began discussing the book project with Lange last summer.

Dawson officially retired on Jan. 2, after nearly 36 years as a prosecutor. But he returned to the office on Jan. 15 under contract, working part time behind the scenes on ongoing Scruggs-related investigations until early June.

“It wouldn’t be any conflict necessarily because it was only about two days a week,” he said. “But just to remove any criticism of that, I decided to cease the contract.”

According to the Justice Department, Dawson was a part-time consultant from Jan. 15 to June 7. His contract originally was to run through the end of June.

Justice Department ethics rules advise employees wishing to undertake writing projects to be “cautious to avoid any conflict of interest with their position and to ensure that no interference with the performance of their official duties occurs.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman said the former prosecutor abided by the rules, which do not apply to former employees.

“Dawson’s participation in any writing did not take place until after his direct and contract employment” ended, Melissa Schwartz said.

But Mississippi College law professor Matt Steffey said Dawson’s book project could raise questions about his motives while a prosecutor.

“Around here, writing a book with Alan Lange would put you squarely on the conservative side of the aisle,” Steffey said in an interview. “It reinforces in the public mind that politics at least perhaps coincided with the prosecution.”

The rise and fall of Scruggs

In the 1990s, Scruggs teamed up with Missisippi’s Democratic state Attorney General, Michael Moore, to sue major tobacco companies. One of Scrugg’s adversaries in the tobacco wars was his former fraternity brother at Ole Miss, Haley Barbour, then chairman of the Republican National Committee and an ally of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a vigorous advocate of tort reform.

Barbour was elected governor of Mississippi in 2003, a position he still holds today. The state legislature passed a Barbour-sponsored law limiting the ability to file tort claims in the state.

Scruggs reportedly earned $1 billion in fees from the tobacco litigation, and his role was memorialized in a movie, The Insider. He lived in a mansion on Mississippi’s Gulf coast and piloted his own jet. Scruggs also made millions in asbestos-related litigation and suing on behalf of Hurricane Katrina victims.

Scruggs was a generous political donor, giving to Democrats and Republicans, and is the brother-in-law of former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

So there was intense media coverage in November 2007, when a federal grand jury issued an indictment charging Scruggs, his son, Zach, and three others with conspiring to bribe state judge Henry Lackey, who was presiding over a $26.5 million fee dispute involving Scruggs.

Dawson spent his career in Oxford, but for an 18-month detail on Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater team in Arkansas in the 1990s. His name appears on the docket in nearly every Scruggs-related case, and it was Dawson who asked an associate of Scruggs to wear a wire that captured the lawyer agreeing to a plan to bribe Lackey — the crucial evidence that led to Scruggs’s imprisonment and disgrace.

Today, Scruggs is serving a seven-year sentence after pleading guilty in 2008 to conspiring to bribe Lackey. He is serving a separate and concurrent sentence for attempting to corruptly influence another state judge.

Prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oxford continue to investigate Scrugg’s former associate, P.L. Blake, a Mississippi Delta farmer who reportedly was paid $50 million for helping Scruggs in the tobacco litigation in the 1990s.

Former Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter, who was accused of giving Scruggs an unfair advantage in a fee dispute in the hope the lawyer would support him for a federal judgeship, is scheduled to be sentenced in November on an obstruction of justice charge.

The Paul Minor case was less prominent in the national media but sparked its own controversies. Minor was convicted of offering a state Supreme Court justice loan guarantees for his re-election campaign. The charge against Minor was honest services mail fraud, a controversial statute used with increasing frequency in corruption cases that is now before the Supreme Court for review.

Scott Horton, who has written critically of the Minor prosecution in Harper’s magazine, wrote that “honest service mail fraud is an effort to conjure a crime which does not exist. The ‘crime’ here is purely political.”

The Justice Department has used honest services charges against people with Republican affiliations, too, most notably in the investigation of now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Contract employment is rare

Dawson said he bowed out of his contract with the U.S. Attorney’s office early “to work on the book in earnest,” and because he felt he had accomplished what he set out to do.

Dawson’s early termination of the contract came after Main Justice made inquiries to the Northern District of Mississippi U.S. Attorney’s office about it. On June 10, the Justice Department received a Freedom of Information Act request from Main Justice for a copy of Dawson’s employment contract.

The FOIA request, despite repeated inquiries, was not fulfilled until Oct. 30, after Main Justice contacted DOJ Public Affairs for comment on Dawson’s book deal.

Although salaries of government employees are a matter of public record, the contract released under FOIA blacked out the amount paid to Dawson, citing a privacy exemption.

The contract also puts limits on what Dawson can reveal. It says Dawson “realizes the sensitive nature of the prosecution/litigation and agrees and understands that any information concerning these matters or others in the office may only be discussed with or disclosed to members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Mississippi, the Department of Justice and/or the investigative agencies.”

The contract also says: “This applies to information whether obtained as a prior AUSA or during the course of this contract.”

U.S. Attorneys Offices can enter into contracts of less than $25,000 without approval from the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys offices. The department does not track how often attorney contracts are used.

Michael Battle, director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys during the Bush administration, said the contracts were typically reserved for cases like Dawson’s, in which a senior prosecutor retired amid a major investigation.

“The reason you did it for litigation is you didn’t want to lose the knowledge the attorney brought to the case,” said Battle, now a partner at Fulbright & Jaworski. Battle said he signed off on “a handful” or contract requests from U.S. Attorneys offices.

“We didn’t get a lot of them,” he said. “They usually came from districts that had a high-profile or long-standing case going on.”

Foley & Lardner’s Donna Bucella, a former U.S. Attorney in Florida and director of EOUSA during the Clinton administration, didn’t recall approving any contracts during her time at the department.

“We had termed positions but we didn’t use contract employees,” she said.

Dawson said he was unaware such contracts were possible until he was approached by U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee shortly after his retirement.

During his two-day-a-week stint as a litigation assistant, Dawson never appeared in court. His work was almost exclusively devoted to Scruggs-related investigations and litigation, but he said he gave advice to assistant U.S. attorneys working on unrelated cases if they solicited it.

“I was asked to help out because we were losing a lot of institutional knowledge so I stayed on in a part-time, hourly fashion,” he said in telephone interview over the summer. “I was, to borrow from the Godfather, a consigliere, using the experience and institutional knowledge that I gained to consult on different tactics and techniques, and doing investigations and motion practice.”

Justice Department rules require current employees to “consult” with the U.S. Attorney in charge of their offices before embarking on outside projects. The rules make no mention of the rare instances when a prosecutor has retired and come back to work on contract. But Schwartz, of the Justice Department’s public affairs office, said they apply to contract employees as well.

“I basically advised [U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee] of what I was thinking about doing, and I ended the contract early to devote myself full-time to that [book] project,” Dawson said in an interview.

Bucella, the Clinton-era EOUSA head, said in her experience, a supervisor’s approval was required for current Justice Department lawyers contemplating outside projects.

“For any Justice Department lawyer who’s going to write a book on something they’ve been involved in, there needs to be some sort of approval process,” Bucella said. “Somebody has to sign off and read the galleys at least.”

Oxford author and journalist Curtis Wilkie has also written a book about Scruggs’s rise and fall, but it has no title or publication date. Wilkie recently told The Oxford Eagle he expected it to be released sometime next year.

Mary Jacoby contributed to this report.

This post was updated on 11/02/09 @ 6:39 p.m.

We start this post with a caveat: We really don’t know what’s going on with the Northern District of Mississippi U.S. Attorney selection. But we do have some new information to share about criminal defense lawyer Christi McCoy, who was recommended for the post by Mississippi House Democrats.

We reported earlier this month that the nomination of McCoy, of Oxford, Miss., was on the rocks — after previously reporting it was on track. We heard unconfirmed talk of a tax problem, and chatter that her professional connections to two figures in the famous Dickie Scruggs case were giving the Obama administration pause.

Scruggs is the prominent trial lawyer and Democratic donor who made a fortune suing the tobacco industry. McCoy used to work for Joey Langston, who pleaded guilty to conspiring with Scruggs to bribe a judge.  McCoy also represented former State Auditor Steve Patterson, who pleaded guilty in another Scruggs-related judge bribery case. Is all that really a problem for McCoy?

As Mississippi legal reporter Patsy Brumfield noted recently, “Frankly, what aspiring young attorney in Prentiss County didn’t want to work for Langston back in the mid 1990s?”

And what criminal defense lawyer hasn’t represented an unsavory client? No good one, certainly.

But even Brumfield, who originally refuted reports that McCoy’s candidacy had run off the rails, has concluded that “something” is amiss. But what?

Well, let’s start with the rumored “tax” problem. A person familiar with the Mississippi nomination process told us McCoy hasn’t even submitted her tax information to the White House or the Justice Department yet. And an administration official said the vetting process for McCoy hasn’t begun. So that casts doubts on that.

And while we’re on the topic of background checks, another thing worth considering: McCoy’s husband, Dwanye Smith, is the acting agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Oxford office. The DEA regularly conducts background checks on its agents to maintain their security clearances. If the couple had tax issues, or any other skeletons for that matter, they probably would have revealed themselves by now.

Rep. Travis Childers (D-Miss.)

Meanwhile, Assistant U.S. Attorney Curtis Ivy is lobbying for the position, though McCoy has the support of Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Travis Childers (D-Miss.). Ivy was in Washington recently for the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force and Asset Forfeiture Program (OCDETF) national leadership conference. Ivy, who had been an early favorite for the post, paid a visit to the Congress members’ offices.

Thompson told us that the meeting had “nothing to do with the U.S. attorney” position. He declined to comment on what the two discussed. We’re also told Ivy met with Childers’ staff, though we could not confirm whether he pitched himself as an alternative to McCoy.

Pasty Brumfield in Mississippi also reported this interesting fact: Ivy had recently been added to the prosecution team for Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter, who was accused of giving Scruggs an unfair advantage in court. DeLaughter pleaded guilty on July 31 to one federal obstruction of justice count. Prosecutors recommended an 18-month sentence. Ivy worked alongside prosecutors Robert Norman and Chad Lamar, veterans of the Scruggs case.

So what’s with the delay on McCoy? Maybe nothing. The person familiar with the Mississippi nominations said the Obama administration was in contact with Childers about McCoy as recently as last week. That’s a heckuva lot better than in some other districts, which shall remain unnamed, where candidates have been in the dark since January because their elected officials aren’t bird-dogging the White House.

Mary Jacoby contributed to this report.

Joe Palazzolo can be contacted at jpalazzolo@mainjustice.com and Mary Jacoby at mjacoby@mainjustice.com

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said the Mississippi Northern District U.S. Attorney job was not part of the discussion he had today with Assistant U.S. Attorney Curtis Ivy, who has been mentioned as a candidate for the position. Ivy met with Thompson on Thursday, while the prosecutor was in Washington for the DOJ’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force and Asset Forfeiture Program (OCDETF) national leadership conference.

Bennie Thompson (Gov)

The congressman said in a interview with Main Justice that the meeting was “private” and had “nothing to do with the U.S. Attorney” position. He declined to comment on what the two discussed.

We reported last week that Oxford criminal defense lawyer Christi McCoy, the Thompson-backed candidate for Mississippi Northern District U.S. Attorney, appeared to have run into trouble during the vetting process.

McCoy’s professional relationships with two figures in the Dickie Scruggs case is thought by Mississippi legal figures to be behind the White House’s apparent skittishness. Scruggs, the brother-in-law of former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), is a trial lawyer who became enormously wealthy suing the tobacco companies in the 1990s. He pleaded guilty in connection with two sets of charges alleging he attempted to bribe judges in Mississippi.  McCoy once worked at the law firm of Joey Langston, who pleaded guilty to conspiring with Scruggs to bribe a judge. McCoy also represented former State Auditor Steve Patterson, who pleaded guilty in another Scruggs-related judge bribery case.

Thompson said in the interview today that he continued to support McCoy. Thompson is playing a leading role in Mississippi U.S. Attorney recommendations because the state’s two senators, Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker, are Republicans.