Turmoil In Public Integrity

Carrie Johnson of the Washington Post has written another remarkable piece on the current travails of DOJ’s Public Integrity Unit in the wake of the Ted Stevens debacle. Her article details personnel shifts, the current roles of Chief William Welch and Deputy Chief Brenda Morris, continuing discovery drops and re-examined verdicts in the Alaskan corruption probe, and understandable morale problems. Apparently, the newly produced documents in two of the Alaskan cases are extensive in nature. Most intriguing, however, is this item from Johnson’s story:

“Sources said that among the questions investigators are pursuing is how closely the work of the Stevens trial team was supervised by officials in the Criminal Division. Senior political and career lawyers there may have offered input and monitored decisions about the kinds of material to turn over to Stevens’s defense team at Williams & Connolly, the sources added.”

Senior political and career lawyers in the Criminal Division were monitoring and offering input on the trial team’s discovery obligations? If true, this is extraordinarily unusual, even for a high-profile corruption case, absent a specific complaint or request by the defense team. And if these senior officials really were micro-managing the trial team’s Brady productions, they seem to have screwed up in spectacular fashion.