We’ve seen the first signs of life in Henry Schuelke III’s criminal investigation of the prosecutors who bungled the government’s case against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.
Henry F. Schuelke III (photo by Susana Raab)
In a filing this afternoon, Schuelke asked U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan for the authority to take deposition testimony under oath and, if necessary, issue subpoenas to compel such testimony, as well as books, papers, documents, data or other materials that may be relevant to the investigation.
The filing asks permission to issue subpoenas to Public Integrity Section Chief William Welch II; his deputy, Brenda Morris; former PIN prosecutors Edward Sullivan and Nicholas Marsh (now lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs); Alaska-based Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph Bottini and James Goeke; FBI Special Agent Mary Beth Kepner; Bill Allen, the government’s star witness in the case; and his lawyer, Robert Bundy, of counsel at Dorsey& Whitney.
An FBI whistleblower accused Kepner, the lead agent on the case, of having an inappropriate relationship with Allen.
Sullivan promptly granted the order. Read it here.
The motion may suggest the next phase in Schuelke’s investigation, assuming the Justice Department has been cooperating fully with his requests for case materials. Sullivan dismissed the indictment in April and appointed Schuelke to handle the investigation after the government failed on numerous occasions to turn over materials that were potentially favorable to Stevens’ defense team.
The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility is also probing the Stevens case, and the Criminal Division is conducting a larger review of other Alaska-related public corruption prosecutions.
Click here for our recent profile of Schuelke.
