Former U.S. Attorney Greg White denies politics played role in Cuyahoga County corruption probe

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

CLEVELAND — The federal prosecutor who began the Cuyahoga County corruption investigation said Tuesday that politics had nothing to do with its direction, and he cited his office’s record of going after Democrats and Republicans alike. Former U.S. Attorney Greg White said neither the Republican White House nor the top levels of the U.S. Justice Department tried to influence him about allegations of contract steering in county offices.

“Political considerations were never an issue,” said White, now a federal magistrate judge. “No one ever tried to steer an investigation to any individual. The history of the U.S. attorney’s office is well documented for its public-corruption cases.”

White’s words came a day after Commissioner Jimmy Dimora, a Democrat, called for a federal investigation into what he called a vast conspiracy to sabotage the Democratic turnout in Ohio, a key swing state at one time in the 2008 presidential election.

Dimora said at a news conference Monday that he believes the Bush White House pushed the Justice Department to investigate Cuyahoga County Democrats in an effort to discredit the party. He said federal prosecutors went after other Democrats in similar rust-belt cities.

Last July, FBI and IRS agents raided Dimora’s home and office as part of sweeping searches that sought evidence of public officials accepting favors in exchange for contracts.

Dimora’s attorney, Richard Lillie, cited a report last year by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee that criticized the Bush White House’s selective prosecution of public officials.

It pointed to a study that found that 80 percent of federal public-corruption cases nationwide involved Democrats, while 14 percent targeted Republicans.

“I am concerned that there might have been political influence — from Washington, not here,” Lillie said.

Dimora also said those investigating him — or those working in the offices investigating him — gave money to the Cuyahoga County Republican Party, which is trying to oust him from office. He declined to say specifically who from the investigation donated money to the local Republican Party, instead challenging reporters to go through the campaign finance reports.

The only person with ties to the U.S. attorney’s office or federal law enforcement identified in finance reports as contributing to the local GOP was Mark Bennett, a federal prosecutor who is not involved in the county investigation. He gave $900. Bennett works in the economic-crimes unit and handles mortgage fraud. He is not related to Ohio Republican Party Chairman Robert Bennett.

The federal prosecutor leading the investigation, Ann Rowland, is a Democrat. Current U.S. Attorney Bill Edwards also is a Democrat.

White, the former U.S. attorney, is a Republican who in 1994 ran unsuccessfully for Congress against then-Rep. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat. White helped run Bush’s 2000 campaign in Lorain County, where he served as prosecutor for 22 years. A few years after Bush was sworn in, White was tapped to lead the federal prosecutor’s office in northern Ohio, which is headquartered in Cleveland.

He resigned from the office in 2008 to accept the federal judgeship.

White said that during his five years at the helm, his office searched for evidence of crimes by public officials, not whether the officeholder was a Democrat or a Republican.

White’s office played a significant role, albeit indirectly, in returning the governor’s mansion and other top offices in Columbus to Democrats in 2006. His office’s prosecution of GOP fund-raiser Tom Noe and the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation scandal created such an uproar that Democrats won the elections for governor, treasurer and attorney general.

Noe pleaded guilty in 2006 to funneling $45,400 in illegal campaign contributions to the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. White said the Bush White House never interfered with or questioned the prosecution.

The investigation into Noe also led authorities to White’s longtime political ally, former Gov. Bob Taft, who was convicted of misdemeanor ethics charges.

Some Democrats also question the conspiracy that Dimora sees.

“I’m a conspiracy theorist, and when I saw when the raids were first done, I wondered about the timing,” said Democrat strategist Gerald Austin. “But now, it’s a year later, and nothing has happened.

“If it was a conspiracy, why wouldn’t the indictments come before the election if there was an attempt to influence it?”

Dimora, at Monday’s news conference, said Ohio’s importance as a swing state diminished in the months before the 2008 election, as the national economy tanked and polling put Ohio solidly behind Barack Obama.

Herbert Asher, a political- science professor at Ohio State University and a registered Democrat, said that if a conspiracy existed, it would have ended once Bush left the White House and new U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder took office.

Subodh Chandra, a former assistant U.S. attorney and a Democrat who ran for Ohio attorney general in 2006, said he also doubts the conspiracy plot.

“I’m not opining about whether Mr. Dimora is guilty or innocent, but a strategy of impugning the prosecutors’ motives as being political is misguided, based on the players involved,” Chandra said.

Plain Dealer staffers Rich Exner and James F. McCarty contributed to this story.

John Caniglia, Cleveland Plain Dealer, June 30, 2009.

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