In today's New York Times, Adam Cohen comes to an uncomfortable conclusion:
If the United States attorney scandal has made one thing clear, it is that the riskiest job in the Bush administration is being a prosecutor investigating a Republican member of Congress. Carol Lam, the United States attorney in San Diego, was fired after she put Randy Cunningham, known as Duke, in prison. Paul Charlton, in Arizona, was dismissed while he was investigating Rick Renzi. Dan Bogden, in Nevada, was fired while he was reportedly investigating Jim Gibbons, a congressman who was elected governor last year.
And now there's another to possibly add to the list - Debra Wong Yang of L.A. Yang was the prosecutor in charge of the federal investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA). She resigned her post in mid-October of 2006; the "purge" of the other prosecutors came on December 7.
And here's where it gets murky. Yang said she was leaving for personal reasons, but she took a very well-paying job at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a Republican-affiliated firm that, oddly, was also defending Lewis in Yang's investigation. They gave her a $1.5 million signing bonus.
That doesn't sit right. Yang was on the White House's list of prosecutors being talked about. If she thought she might lose her job, it makes sense that she would look for a position elsewhere. However, it's also possible that Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher offered her a job with a compensation package she couldn't resist - conceivably (and conveniently) stalling the Lewis investigation.
Whatever the case, this is yet another instance of possible impropriety for investigators to look into.
