Early on the morning of July 29 last year, over 120 federal agents descended upon Cuyahoga County to raid county offices, private homes and numerous businesses in search of evidence of financial and political malfeasance,

The primary targets of this onslaught were Cuyahoga County Commissioner and Democratic County Chairman Jimmy Dimora and his long-time sidekick, County Auditor Frank Russo — arguably the two most powerful Democratic politicians in Cuyahoga County. The FBI and IRS agents who conducted the raid spent the entire day and into the evening carting out thousands of files, computers and assorted items which were hauled away in dozens of vans. Local media were on full red alert for this unprecedented spectacle, which one commentator flippantly compared to the D-Day invasion.

 For the next few days, The Cleveland Plain Dealer carried 9/11-sized headlines and remarkably in-depth stories revealing, in breathtaking detail, the inner workings of the raid and the intricacies of the investigation behind it. The breadth of its initial coverage seemed to have Pulitzer written all over it. And, it’s fair to say that the public was in a fury over the apparent criminality of its Democrat-controlled county government. The PD tagged it a “crisis,” and few disagreed.

About a week after the raid — and around 100 miles removed from  the white-hot public outcry for the heads of Dimora and Russo  — the Toledo Blade, in an editorial, questioned the timing (as well as the purpose) of the Feds’ high-profile invasion. With America in the middle of one of the most heated presidential races in history, the Blade editorial questioned if, in fact, the real skullduggery was emanating from Washington, DC, not the southeast corner of Ontario and Lakeside Avenues, where the County Administration building sits.

Whatever attention the Blade editorial received was almost unanimously reserved for mocking commentary about it being a typical example of left-wing paranoia. Certainly, that’s one way of looking at it. However, for an outgoing presidential administration to punish members of the opposite political party is certainly nothing new in the annals of American politics, and with Ohio once again being touted as a state that the next occupant of the White House must win, Cuyahoga County becomes critical to the outcome.

The Democratic primary proved that Barack Obama is going to have a tough time anywhere south of Akron (except in pockets of Franklin and Hamilton counties), so he has to win Cuyahoga County in a big way if he is to carry the state. So what better way, it could be argued, to keep county Democratic voters away from the polls in droves than to have a big, fat juicy “scandal” erupt within the Democratic Party just prior to the election?

Following the July raid, the invasion in September of two Cuyahoga County Democratic judges’ offices and the October raid of the Cuyahoga County Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) could also be viewed as part of the same politically inspired strategy. And with disgraced former Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann already being investigated for questionable construction deals in the Youngstown area, the Republicans may see a golden opportunity to position the entire Democratic Party of Northeast Ohio as glutted with corruption.

Now, for those who automatically dismiss this scenario as liberal conspiracy gone wild, one merely has to look no further than the record of the current, supposedly non-partisan, Department of Justice (DOJ) that is set to bring forth the indictments of Jimmy Dimora, Frank Russo, and anyone else that can be ensnared in this federal dragnet.

For the past few months, the Bush DOJ has been investigating voter registration lists gathered by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) to see if “voter fraud” has taken place. While  being conducted in numerous places all over the country, this investigation has recently been focused on ACORN’s work in the Cleveland area, with the apparent goal of purging the voting roles of primarily Democratic voters. It’s important to remember that this is the same kind of “search for voter fraud” that led to the 2006 firings of nine United States attorneys by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez for their refusal to carry out orders to investigate unfounded voter-fraud allegations in Democratic strongholds in various states. It certainly appears that one of the main pastimes of this Justice Department is to challenge the registration roles of groups like ACORN — which operates in primarily minority areas — thereby revving up the fear of rampant voter fraud and ultimately suppressing election turnout.

As Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer and a political appointee under Ronald Reagan, said of the current DOJ, “There’s no professional insistence on treating law and politics separately. It’s all one.”    

A cursory look at the Bush administration’s record — in terms of government eavesdropping and the suspension of habeas corpus —reveals a number of instances that border on rape of the Constitution. But how common is DOJ’s use of a massive force of federal agents to swoop into local government offices and a dozen or so homes and businesses to confiscate boatloads of materials? The Cleveland Current set out to discover how often a political-corruption-targeted operation of anywhere near this magnitude involving local, county or state officials has occurred in the past 15 years. Our research revealed that, prior to July 29, there had been few, if any, quite like this.     

However, just six weeks after Cuyahoga County officials were targeted, a similar raid took place at the county offices of Prince George’s County, Maryland — an overwhelmingly Democratic stronghold located near Baltimore. In what the Washington Post referred to as a “coordinated FBI action,” the county offices and homes of two senior aides of County Executive Jack B Johnson were raided. In addition, the office of the real estate developer for a massive project — one on which the county has been working with the developers to get off the ground for the past 12 years — was searched and at least one of his partners was also interrogated. The developer in question, Patrick Ricker, stated that the FBI was seeking “ a great big laundry list of information … I’m just trying to figure out what the hell they want.”

“This whole thing seems like a fishing expedition,” said Terry Speigner, chairman of the Prince George’s County Democratic Central Committee. “With this critical election coming up, it appears the Republicans are targeting heavily Democratic areas with all kinds of tactics geared at voter suppression. We’ve been working overtime dealing with a variety of Republican efforts at voter disenfranchisement. This raid seems to be an attempt to paint a picture that Democrats can’t be trusted”

Referring to the roughly 120 federal agents brought in from other cities to stage the raids, one local defense attorney quipped, “They didn’t use that many troops to invade Grenada!” He went on to say that using so many agents was the Feds way of convincing the public that, since there was this much smoke, indeed there must be fire somewhere. But the smoke was created by the Feds, and fanned by the local media, especially the Plain Dealer, which appears to have become the PR arm of the FBI.

In fact, a number of criminal defense attorneys around town are scratching their heads in wonderment as an avalanche of information that could only be obtained from the FBI (and should be kept private since much of it will have a direct bearing on the outcome of criminal proceedings) keeps finding its way into the Plain Dealer on a regular basis.  Within two days after the raid, the Plain Dealer practically laid out, chapter and verse, the entire original case against Dimora, et. al. — with names, dates, charges, dollar amounts, bit players , etc. While having access to the search warrants certainly facilitated the information-gathering process for the PD, the warp-speed and thoroughness of the reporting raises suspicions that the paper was being fed information — which if leaked by anyone in DOJ is against the law — and had been prior to July 19.

“The behavior of the PD in cahoots with the FBI is outrageous in this case,” said one lawyer who was fearful of using his name, but felt that he was representative of many in the criminal defense bar who have knowledge of how federal investigations work.

While reporters from the Plain Dealer have stated that the FBI’s raid came as a total surprise to the paper, common sense dictates that this was not the case. Along with having lengthy, detailed stories in print within 48 hours of the federal incursion, it should be noted that the PD had been on a crusade against Dimora and other county officials for the previous several months. On two occasions earlier this summer, huge front-page stories appeared exposing patronage in the offices of, first, County Recorder Pat O’Malley and then Russo. Photos of dozens and dozens of workers filled the Sunday PD, followed by righteous editorials condemning the evils of the county’s Democratic leadership and calling for government reform.

Could it be that, tipped off about something big coming from the Feds, the PD tried to jump in front of the parade and become the crusading, political-corruption-exposing newspaper it never really was? Here’s a paper that has shamelessly hyped every major development project and fawned over every politician that has played ball with big-money developers for at least the past 20 years. The PD has uncritically hyped Gateway, Browns Stadium, the disastrous County Administration-Ameritrust project, various failed convention centers, the still-not-built Juvenile Detention Center, and the now-teetering Wolstein Flats project, to name just a few. In terms of being a benefit to the taxpayers, these projects — and more like them — have been barely adequate at best and totally disastrous at worst. And now the PD has become the champion of protecting the people from corrupt politicians who are in bed with the big money men?

With dwindling readership, disappearing advertising revenue and a decades-long record of backing politicos, powerbrokers and projects that have helped hurl this town into the hole its in, how implausible is it that the PD made the decision to become the FBI’s lapdog in order to reinvent itself as a fighter of the Democratic-controlled county government? Has it become, as the embattled Dimora charged, a “Republican paper”? Certainly, its suddenly rabid support of “county reform” — which would benefit the local GOP — and, for example, its non-stop attacks on Dennis Kucinich might indicate that. As would its insertion of black conservative Phillip Morris as a featured columnist and its overuse of right-winger Kevin O’Brien on its shrinking editorial page.

Of course, the immediate big loser on the Democratic side could be County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones, who was in no way implicated in the scandal. Currently locked into a race for his commissioner’s seat with Republican Debbie Sutherland, the likable mayor of Bay Village, Jones was practically a sure bet to win before the scandal broke.  However, with the Republicans playing up the travails of Dimora and Russo for all of the mileage they can wring out of the situation, Jones’ task has suddenly become much more difficult.

Indeed, the Plain Dealer, in its editorial endorsing Sutherland, came close to blaming Jones for not single-handedly corralling county corruption. (And where has its criticism been of commissioner Tim Hagan, a man who was recruited by corporate Cleveland — and anointed by the PD — to supplant the independent-minded Tim McCormack,so that he could rubber-stamp just about any and all downtown developments, as he has done so often during his over30-year political career? When the FBI raid occurred, Hagan was conveniently out of town and has been barely mentioned in the PD since then).

One of the best known maxims of American jurisprudence is ,“He who comes into equity [court] must have clean hands.” A more popular translation is: “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” Unless, of course, the stone thrower has as much experience as the FBI, which celebrates its 100th Anniversary this year — and 100 years is a long time to perfect the art of throwing stones while hiding hands.

In most cases, the target of an FBI probe is someone who has never before dealt with the combined might of multiple federal investigative and prosecutorial agencies — it’s their first rodeo. But the Feds have had a century to hone their skills, and, as in most endeavors, the one with the most experience — not to mention finances, which the Feds have an unlimited amount of — usually wins. A common tactic of theirs is to load up so many charges that fighting the indictments would leave the accused millions of dollars in debt

With a combined total of over 50 years in elective office, only a fool would believe that Jimmy Dimora and Frank Russo haven’t done something that might possibly result in a federal indictment. One truism of American life is that the Feds can make a case against anyone they select and then set their minds to the task. So if the corruption goes as deep, if the evidence is as overwhelming, and if the criminal enterprise is as systemic and widespread as the Plain Dealer would have readers to believe, then why didn’t the feds simply wait until after the presidential election to bring forth the case, so that it wouldn’t be tainted by the stench of partisan politicking that is now hanging about it?  

It’s not as if anyone has to get a federal grand jury all lathered up so that it will issue indictments. The grand jury system in America is tilted so far in favor of the government that rarely do they act in a manner contrary to the wishes of the prosecutor, no matter the strength or weakness of the facts presented. Judge  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Wachtler" \o "Sol Wachtler" Sol Wachtler, the former Chief Judge of  HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State" \o "New York State" New York State, was famously quoted as saying that a prosecutor could persuade a grand jury to "indict a ham sandwich.”  

Another truism of American politics is that whenever either party has a “lock” on virtually all of the elective offices,  as the Republicans had for years in Columbus, some degree of corruption is bound to occur. And no one can deny that Cuyahoga County has one of the highest percentages of registered Democrats versus Republicans (four-to-one) in the country. And no one can doubt, based on many of the decisions concerning how taxpayers’ dollars are involved and which developer is awarded a bid, that more careful scrutiny is needed.

It’s almost a given that indictments will fall on the heads of a number of county Democrats like so much softball-sized hail. So perhaps it’s the outcome of the criminal proceedings that the Plain Dealer is attempting to sway by running stories that hint, for example, at tenuous Mafia ties of Dimora and Russo. But the question members of the jury (if the case gets that far) will have to ask themselves is,  How much is this case worth?

In other words, how many years in prison should the accused spend if in fact (as the case stands now) all they are charged with is having work done on their homes and swimming pools by friendly contractors who may have then had a few county jobs funneled their way.  If true, this is certainly criminal and warrants punishment. But does fairness dictate that someone should be sent away for 15 years for such an infraction, or is a year or two (and a promise to never again run for elective office) a more appropriate punishment?

Rumor has it that someone from the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington is personally keeping a close eye on this case so that nothing embarrassing to the Feds happens. The FBI is known to be the most sensitive agency in government in terms of zealously protecting its reputation. And it has done so by winning cases. It absolutely abhors losing, and will go to virtually any lengths to avoid defeat.

Maybe, in its coverage of this “crisis,” the PD should write something about that.