WASHINGTON — A federal judge Tuesday ordered a highly unusual criminal inquiry of prosecutors in the case against former Sen. Ted Stevens, delivering a blistering rebuke of the Justice Department's actions and asserting that its failures extended beyond the inability to give the Alaska Republican a fair trial.
In dismissing the public corruption case against Stevens, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan railed against a government agency that he said had committed unprecedented missteps in a feverish quest to secure the senator's conviction.
"In nearly 25 years on the bench, I have never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct I have seen in this case," Sullivan told a packed Washington courtroom.
Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. last week asked Sullivan to void the case after he learned that federal prosecutors had failed to turn over evidence to the lawmaker's defense team. But the judge went a step further -- assigning a private lawyer to investigate six attorneys from the Justice Department's public integrity section.
Although the department has initiated its own inquiry, Sullivan said the instances of misconduct were "too serious and too numerous" to be left to an internal investigation that has "no outside accountability." Lawyer Henry Schuelke will submit a report to the court recommending whether members of the trial team should be held in criminal contempt. If not exonerated, they could be fired, disbarred or even jailed.
"It is a blow to have Sullivan say he doesn't trust the Justice Department to do that work," said Michael Bromwich, who served as the department's inspector general during the Clinton administration. "That is a very significant black eye."
In a CBS television interview Tuesday, Holder said the Justice Department was "fully capable" of investigating itself, but added that the agency would cooperate with Schuelke's inquiry. He said the prosecutors involved would remain at the department for now.
The revelation that prosecutors had withheld notes from an interview with a key prosecution witness that could have helped Stevens' case came on the heels of a series of scandals that have plagued the Justice Department in recent years -- including allegations two years ago that the firing of several U.S. attorneys nationwide was politically motivated.
