Porn, Prosecutors, and Priorities

I wrote six weeks ago that the troubling part of the U.S. attorney firings isn't the White House's politicization of the office—the office has been overtly political since the early 1980s. It shouldn't be surprising that the White House would expect its prosecutors to share its priorities. The real scandal here is what those priorities are. This Justice Department seems particularly interested in investing lots of federal resources on nonviolent, victimless crime. Think drugs, medical marijuana, "Operation Pipe Dreams," and Internet gambling.

Oh yes, and porn.

Now comes word from two fired U.S. attorneys that they were dismissed primarily for refusing to take on the obscenity cases sent to them by the Justice Department.

But it gets better. One of those attorneys was Paul Charlton of Arizona. Adult Video News (link NSFW) did some sleuthing, and found some interesting stuff. Charlton did in fact bring one federal obscenity case in Arizona. But while he was bringing that particular series of indictments, it turns out that another chain of adult video stores based in Arizona continued to sell and rent the same titles the other store was indicted for selling.

The kicker is that the unindicted store had recently declared bankruptcy, and was being run by trustees from the federal government. So while the federal government was indicting one business for breaking federal obscenity laws, the government itself was breaking those same laws just a few miles away, in order to recoup federal taxes owed by a rival store.

Even more interesting, it looks like Charlton may have balked on the case after learning about the discrepancy via a brief from attorneys for the indicted store. And that balk may have cost him his job.

Charlton wasn't on the original list of U.S. attorneys slated for termination in early 2005. He and Dan Bogden from Las Vegas were added in September 2006 after a memo from the Justice Department's recently named "Porn Czar," former Utah U.S. Attorney Brent Ward. From the text of a memo Ward sent to DOJ Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson titled "Obscenity Cases:"

We have two U.S. Attorneys who are unwilling to take good cases we have presented to them. They are Paul Charlton in Phoenix (this is urgent) and Dan Bogden in Las Vegas. In light of the AG's [Attorney General's] comments at the NAC to 'kick butt and take names', what do you suggest I do? Do you think at this point that these names should go through channels to reach the AG, or is it enough for me to give the names to you? If you want to act on what I give you, I will be glad to provide a little more context for each of the two situations.

Officially, the only document the Justice Department has released related to Charlton's firing involves a complaint from former House Speaker Denny Hastert that Charlton's office refused to pursue marijuana cases unless the amount of the drug seized was over 500 pounds (which, frankly, seems like a sound policy at the federal level).

Even Arizona Sen. John Kyl wrote a terse letter to the editor of the Arizona Republic yesterday in Charlton's defense (though Kyl's critics will say he was just covering his ass).