Carrot and stick: There's more than one way to purge

Over on Democratic Underground, one "hootinhollar" has a juicy piece on the Lam firing (see also here):

Right before she left she delivered indictments of Foggo and Wilkes, and possibly turned over to the LA office A case regarding Rep. Jerry Lewis (an unfortunate but perhaps apt name) who has already lawyered up at Gibson Dunn, a big LA firm.

That case would have landed on the desk of Debra Wong Yang, the United States Attorney for the Central District of California in Los Angeles. Now, Ol Debbie there, I don't think was on the enemies list, but, she did leave the office for private practice at (you might have guessed it) Gibson Dunn. She allegedly got a tidy signing bonus to the tune of $1.5 Mil.

This is indeed intriguing. Corruption target Jerry Lewis hires the same firm which hired the U.S. Attorney who would have gone after Lewis?

I notice a funky smell in the air, and I don't think it's coming from my vegetable bin.

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

The same firm, Gibson Dunn, also hired an assistant U.S. Attorney under Yang, a man named Douglas Fuchs. They also hired Maurice Suh, "the former Deputy Mayor of Homeland Security and Public Safety for the City of Los Angeles."

The San Bernardino Sun thus quotes a law professor about Yang: "It's no secret: She left for money."

She added that while it may look questionable that Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher hired Yang, she doubted that Yang would provide lawyers there with information about the investigation into Lewis.

Really? Others might not be so certain about that. Josh Marshall offers these words of caution:

Most lawyers would, I think, caution that this isn't necessarily as questionable as it might seem on first blush. Gibson Dunn is a major national law firm based in LA. It's a logical place for someone like Yang to go.

However:

Yang is now one of three co-chairs of the firm's Crisis Management Group, along with New York Partner Randy Mastro and GOP power player Theodore Olson.

And one other issue that might come into play here. If you look at the corruption investigations over the last two years, there's an odd pattern of pivotal investigators and prosecutors getting fortuitous promotions or offers of employment in the private sector at key moments.

(Emphasis added.) Take the carrot or get the stick? We thus come to...

A digression:

Fired U.S. Attorney Carol Lam is doing pretty well at the moment. She walked right into a well-paying gig for Qualcomm.

The reference to Qualcomm reminded me of the Jack Shaw mini-scandal, which should not disappear entirely down the memory hole. (See here and my previous post on the subject, here.)

Defense undersecretary Shaw, who had the job of restoring Iraqi telecommunications, was accused of improperly giving contracts to friends at Qualcomm. (He had deep-sixed an effort to feed the contract to some pals of Chalabi.)

Shaw later claimed that foreign intelligence officials fed him an outrageous story that Russian commandos had heisted weapons at Iraq's Al Qaaqaa facility. The rightists milked that tale for all it was worth, even after it was proven to be bogus.

Shaw never revealed just which foreign intel service misled him, but it should be noted that Qualcomm has strong ties to Israel.