9/19/11 With Apologies to My Prosecutor
Someone e-mailed me the other day and took me to task for making an allegation that I never substantiated. As it happens, they are correct. I made an allegation awhile back against my prosecutor, Deborah E. Landis, that she defrauded the federal government out of tens of thousands of dollars. I never provided back-up for that charge. Let me now correct that error.
First, let me just explain why I didn't explain sooner. I have been extremely remiss in posting regular chapters to J'Accuse, the story of my case. I had planned on posting them faster and with greater frequency. The back-up to the charge will be in there when it reaches that point chronologically. But I try very hard on this site not to make an empty charge and never a false one. So since I didn't follow-up quickly in J'Accuse, I should have written the facts behind that accusation when I made it or shortly thereafter. I am now correcting that error and thank the reader who prompted it.
Although we know the government has two standards of justice - one for us and one for anyone at Justice, it is still wrong for the U.S. Justice Department to indict people for illegal acts it condones routinely for its employees. The Declaration of Independence reminds us that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." That consent is given so long as the Government doesn't abuse those powers. I think as far as the federal government broadly - and Justice specifically - we're long past the point of no return (i.e Fast & Furious).
Part of my indictment involved an incident that took place at HDC involving a subordinate and his ailing father. The father was having triple bypass surgery at the Cleveland Clinic and the employee - for whatever reason - was having financial troubles. He and his mother were going to stay at a YMCA type facility for little or no charge. I said that HDC would pick up the charge for a decent motel for the three nights they were there. I was indicted for that.
In 2005 I was awaiting trial at Butner FMC when I called one of my lawyers, Henry Mazurek for an update. He informed me that neither he nor Jerry (Shargel) had heard from the prosecutor, Debbie Landis, in weeks. Her deputy could provide no info because apparently he wasn't hearing from her either. Henry told me further that it now takes 3-4 weeks to get any e-mail response from Debbie on our pending issues with her.
I was rather stunned by this since as a Senior Assistant U.S. Attorney, Debbie worked on only one case at a time. Mine was her only case; she had no other work but prosecuting me. If she wasn't responding to our requests for weeks at a time, what was she doing? I remember vividly asking Henry if she was on vacation. No, he replied, she had had herself transferred to another District and was working from there. Huh? I am her only case - here in New York City - and she is now working somewhere else on this case? I told Henry that I did not understand what he was telling me. He informed me that Debbie had told Jerry that her father was very ill, probably dying. He lived in the Midwest (I think it was Milwaukee). So she had herself transferred for the time being to the U.S. Attorney's Office near her father.
Now ordinarily this bureaucratic/human resources slight of hand would only engender sympathy, not scorn. But here you have Debbie transferring herself to another District in order to continue being paid her salary - which was mid six figures - and benefits, rather than doing what I can hear her telling the Judge I should have done in a similar circumstance: She could have taken sick leave, vacation leave, unpaid leave or appropriately, leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. But she wanted to keep getting paid and accruing benefits. But that would be one thing. She wanted to keep getting paid and not perform any work. That is something entirely different. During the ensuing months she collected tens of thousands of dollars of salary from the federal government and performed virtually no work on the only case she had, mine. According to Henry, she spent most days at her father's bedside.
Now if I had decided to run HDC from Seattle in order to care for a sick relative, you can be sure I would have had that included in my indictment since the very idea that I could do my job from 3,000 miles away for any extended period of time is absurd. And yet she - conspiring with her superiors who approved this phony transfer - knowingly took salary for work that was never performed. As I said, Henry told me it took weeks to get any response from her to a single e-mail. I would hear this over and over again during the following months. Her deputy said he couldn't get answers to our questions either because she wasn't communicating with him.
The Federal Criminal Code, as you well know, has an Honest Services Statute. This is a clear violation of that, not to mention a conspiracy charge since her bosses, Karen Patton Seymour and the then U.S. Attorney, Michael Garcia, surely had to know that she could not perform her duties on her one and only case back in New York from the Midwest. It was a scam as surely as someone scamming Medicare with false claims or a 9/11 victim claiming false injuries. Whether you employ a strict or lenient standard, it's pure fraud.
So she stayed there for a few months, performed virtually no work, collected her full salary and accrued all her benefits. Her father died, she buried him and she came back to NY to resume my case. Under normal circumstances, a very touching story.
But under these, it's obscene hypocrisy. My case went on for months longer than necessary because she wouldn't come back to New York to do her job, although she was paid her full salary during this period to pretend that she was. This is one of a thousand examples that happen at Justice where the rules for the governed differ from those of the governing. We are certainly a nation with a two-tiered justice system. But the black/white divide is only one part of that.
Debbie Landis should have been investigated by the Inspector General, fired or at a minimum sanctioned and fined. Her superiors likewise should have been reprimanded for knowingly allowing this fraud to occur. But of course no such thing happened. No one investigates Justice employees for criminal behavior except other Justice employees. And as we know: A. That happens very rarely; and B. when it does, they are either exonerated, transferred or allowed to quietly resign. No one is ever punished for criminal behavior while an employee at Justice - it just isn't done.
Debbie Landis went on to indict many other people, several for defrauding the federal government; her crime having gone unnoticed, uninvestigated, unprosecuted and unpunished. I conclude this sorry tale by apologizing to her for alluding to this episode earlier and never explaining it.
