Last week, a federal grand jury indicted Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) on 35 charges of corruption, including extortion, wire fraud, and money laundering. The Renzi case gained attention as part of the U.S. attorney scandal, and whether Paul Charlton’s aggressive investigation of this Bush supporter led to his dismissal as Arizona’s U.S. attorney.
Yesterday, ThinkProgress spoke with Charlton — who is currently practicing law in Arizona — about the Renzi indictment:
I was satisfied in the sense that it represented a lot of very hard work by prosecutors and agents here in Arizona, but you’re always disappointed when an individual, like Congressman Renzi, is indicted. It represents a real failing in the system.
A few weeks before the 2006 midterm elections, Renzi’s top aide, Brian Murray, made a potentially illegal call to Charlton’s office, pressuring him on the “pending indictment.” Charlton confirmed to ThinkProgress that he is currently cooperating with the Justice Department Inspector General’s investigation on this issue, and unable to comment on the politicization of the case.
Renzi has repeatedly charged that the Justice Department’s investigation into him is full of “lies.” In a statement to the Wall Street Journal, Renzi’s attorney “said prosecutors may have rushed the indictment for political reasons.” Charlton noted that such statements by Renzi “will go down someday as a terrific definition of irony.”
He also added that since the attention to the U.S. attorney scandal last year, “things have improved at Justice,” but the damage still remains:
I think there are some lingering doubts. For example, the Department of Justice used to be an institution whose motives were never questioned, and now when people make allegations about political prosecutions, they gain traction, and that’s unfortunate.
The main reason for these improvements? According to Charlton, it’s the fact that “many of the people who worked under Attorney General Gonzales and Attorney General Gonzales himself are no longer there.”
UPDATE: Emptywheel has a timeline of Charlton’s firing and the Renzi investigation.
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