Tobacco Witnesses Were Told To Ease Up
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On Tuesday, after eight months of courtroom argument, Justice Department lawyers announced that they would ask the industry to pay $10 billion -- rather than the $130 billion previously recommended by a government expert witness -- for smoking cessation programs. The reduction stunned anti-smoking activists who have followed the six-year-old case, and prompted tobacco lawyers to say in court Wednesday that the government's case had fallen apart.
According to sources involved in the case, high-level officials at Justiceordered the cut despite objections from career lawyers who have worked on the trial, in some cases years.
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Seven Democratic Senate and House members called on the Justice Department's inspector general to investigate possible political interference by Bush appointees in the government's tobacco case, citing news reports that Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum Jr., a former lawyer for tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds, ordered the downsizing of the penalties. Lawmakers also questioned why McCallum was allowed to participate in the government's case.
I know lawyers who have been suspended from the practice of law for taking on a client when they worked as lowly grunts at a big law firm that represented the defendant for a few weeks. This guy was an R.J. Reynolds lawyer & he's working on a tobacco case? Maybe he missed that part of Professional Responsibility in law school.
Ah, all becomes clear. McCallum was a classmate of George Bush at Yale! Award Limit in Tobacco Case Sets Off a Strenuous Protest
Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, made public a letter he had written to the inspector general of the Justice Department asking for an investigation into whether improper political interference had led to the change in request and what role might have been played by Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum Jr., a former classmate of President Bush at Yale and partner in an Atlanta law firm that represented one of the defendants in the case, R. J. Reynolds.
I guess Bush must be getting ready to nominate him to the federal bench, like Thomas Griffith, currently up for a lifetime appointment to the DC Circuit despite the fact that he practiced law in Utah for THREE YEARS without a Utah law license. Judicial Nominee Practiced Law Without License in Utah
No Chinese Wall is high enough to allow this guy within three states of the government case.
The ethical swamp of this administration continues to impress with its reach and stench.
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