Jim Letten's true nature to be revealed?

WARNING- LONG, MEANDERING POST AHEAD:

After a lot of wondering about what Letten is really up to, it appears that something big is finally in motion.

Jim Letten is the Federal Prosecutor for the Eastern District of Louisiana. He was Eddie Jordan's chief assistant and did most of the heavy lifting in the Edwin Edwards case.

After Jordan left to become Orleans DA, Letten was appointed by Bush. After taking down most of the Morial administration and nailing Oliver Thomas, Jim Letten has been extraordinarily quiet. Very little visible action was taken after the NOAH story broke. The only brief interruption was when the crime camera report from the OIG office came out.

Supposedly, Cerasoli had been sitting on the report for months, at the behest of Jim Letten, who didn't want to endanger ongoing investigations. Cerasoli had to leave for health reasons and had the report released shortly after he left for Boston, straining the relationship between the OIG and Jim Letten's office.

Now, there's a lot of speculation out there about why Letten's office has been so quiet for so long. The dark side of the speculation says he's a Rovian attack dog (along the lines of the Donald Siegelman case)), bent on taking down only Democrats. As evidence, they cite the Canal Street Madam case early in his career. Letten took down a major brothel that served many of New Orleans' movers and shakers. Allegedly, Letten shut the investigation down early because too many Republicans including a few national Republicans, were in the Madam's little black book. There's also a flagrant violation of the Travel Act that has yet to see the inside of a courtroom.

Furthermore, remember that Nagin's most loyal backers are Republicans (the "Couhig Conservatives") and Greg Meffert, Nagin's Pampy Barre, is a behind the scenes player with the local Republicans (Intelliport, a Meffert company, put together Joe Cao's new website).

Recently, Nagin's been acting like he know's he's untouchable, either because he has friends in high (Federal) places or because he knows that any indictment of him could tear this city to pieces. Take a look at Jeffery's character portrait of Nagin. Lots of interesting points. Nagin plays the fool, but the joke's on us. Some of Nagin's theatrics below:



He makes the reporters act like total fools (and the reporters are dumb enough not to even realize it).

So, could the much beloved "Dragon-Slayer" really be in on a bigger corruption racket?

There could be a lot of innocent explanations for the delays. First off, corruption cases are VERY hard to put together for one big reason (amongst many others): politicians tend to hire very good defense attorneys. Cases have to be airtight. If you're outside looking in, it can be very hard to put all the pieces into place in a way that will stand up in court, especially if you don't have a snitch (or does Letten have a snitch in Nagin's administration?). Also, the Federal Prosecutor is required to have a certain percentage of his prosecutors on violent crime cases (generally putting local thugs who work through the revolving door local justice system into the federal system on gun charges).

There's no definite evidence to say that Letten is either assisting the corrupt (knowingly or unknowingly) or is just trying to put together a case in tough circumstances.* Whether or not Meffert goes down, or if it's just smaller players, could finally settle the matter, though.

It's getting exciting. I don't know what I'm looking forward to more: the ending of Battlestar Galctica, or what Letten's next moves are.

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*For the record, I think it's the latter. Full disclosure, my dad used to work for a friend of Letten's and used to go to lunch with his boss and Letten. He's always spoken highly of Letten.

UPDATE- Detailed analysis of the legal implications for some of the lawyers involved. A whole lot of lawyers (Tracie Washington, Penya Moses-Fields) probably deserve to be disbarred.

If you really want to get down to business, look at the offsite backups. That will tell you instantly what's going on. Any monkey business with those tapes and you have a serious federal offense.

For real tinfoil-hat territory, Ciber, a Meffert company, was a security contractor for Premier Election Solutions [Diebold]. Nagin, whose reelection depended on higher than expected turnout at satellite voting stations in Lake Charles, Baton Rouge, etc. might have gotten an extra boost from Ciber/Diebold audited machines at those polling stations...

Can't Sleep. Clowns will eat me.

Up real early this morning (partly because of this), so I'll post a few links.

Wonkette reports on Draft Stormy movement. "VITTER MUST BE DESTROYED!" Related: David Vitter is a jackass (Iced Coffee and a Bagel).

The Politics of Health Reform. Fascinating to get an outside perspective. A sample from the BBC:


Map of New Orleans political donations. Fascinating to click through for a while. I find it especially interesting that a lot of the old St. Charles Ave./Pickwickian-types mainly donated to Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani. Now there's money well spent!

Stimulus Battle in Perspective: Of course, the last time we saw a vote like this one was probably the 1993 vote on Clinton's first budget -- every single Republican in the chamber voted against it, hoping to prove, once and for all, that they were right about economics and Democrats were wrong. If memory serves, that budget was the first step towards the longest economic expansion on record, the creation of 22 million jobs, and the total elimination of the federal budget deficit. Related: For Republicans, there wasn't much downside to voting no.

More extensions to housing aid in Louisiana? Those overly generous subsidies to landlords is part of what's keeping market rates up. You remove those payments, the market will fall (it already has fallen from it's post-Katrina highs). Probably won't return to pre-Katrina rents, but that's unreasonable to expect.

Gulfport Mayor indicted for Katrina fraud.

Taibbi + Blago. Need I say more?

Roger Clemens has always been batshit insane. Deadspin clarifies the level of insanity: "Then Donahue would rub the hottest possible liniment on his testicles. “He’d start snorting like a bull,” the trainer said. “That’s when he was ready to pitch.” "

State Farm completely pulling out of property insurance in Florida.

Here's a few companies that have never had mass layoffs. I can thing of a few to add to the list, too (Honda, for one).

When it comes to Israel, to revive or dump the two-state solution?

Bill Gates talks about education, especially high school, and what constitutes a successful school. Two most interesting points: a kid is better off with a good teacher in a "bad" school than he is with a bad teacher in a "good" school. Also, in extremely poor areas, the schools with the longest schooldays tend to do the best.

Sad to see Cerasoli go. Oyster rounds up the reacts. One little tidbit: “People were telling me he [Nagin] was saying they would regret getting the office up and running 10 years from now.

Old media, don't piss off new media. Remember that the "Symbiotic relationship between new and old media" isn't a one way street... Also, McCain-endorser's Pedo son gets out of jail early with barely a peep from local media.

So, after closing Our Lady of Good Cousel, et. al.*, the Nazi Pope decides to embrace a Holocaust-denier and a cleric who said Katrina was God's punishment for being too kind to the gays.

Want to see Scott Cowen foam at the mouth? Mention the letters AAUP and stand back.

And for your amusement:

The Thing, remade with G.I. Joe's.

*BTW- Great comic 2 weeks ago Greg. Can't link to your comic, though, because the archives are down.

Blogspotting NOLA - 18 Jan 09

First Draft: Compare and Contrast Joe the Plumber with a Shri Lankan journalist who gave his life covering the story. More here.

WCBF: Jindal screwing New Orleans on stimulus projects? Also, Who wants Charity demolished (the Characters behind LSU/VA)? The usual suspects include Ed Blakely and the list gets less illustrious from there.

BONOB: "What Some Say" WDSU gets caught pulling a Fox News. It's also clear that WDSU is Nagin's preferred local news source. Also, don't forget to read the Cerasoli outtakes.

YRHT: Oyster is atwitter awaiting the Crime Camera report. Also, some major power plays between the White House and the Corps of Engineers.