While prosecutors are free to retry the defendants who were not fully acquitted, the acquittals will greatly complicate that process, and the poor result with the first jury suggests that the effort might yield even more embarrassing results.
How nasty is the swamp? Horton gets to the big picture, noting that the Alabama bingo controversy is driven largely by actions connected to GOP felon Jack Abramoff. In a sense, the Obama DOJ is siding with the Abramoff crowd. That truly is a mind-boggling prospect. But Horton spells out the pro-bingo perspective in Alabama, and shows that the DOJ's pro-Abramoff slant is real:
The defendants did not deny that the Alabama bingo industry had mounted an intense lobbying effort, but they argued that the real conflict was between Alabama's homegrown gambling industry and Mississippi's Indian-casino gambling industry, which has thrived in part by luring Alabamans across the state line. The Choctaw, the primary tribe involved in Mississippi Indian casino gambling, were aggressively represented by Republican campaign consultant Jack Abramoff, who enlisted a number of prominent Republican officeholders in his efforts. Abramoff, you might recall, was released from prison last summer after serving three and a half years of a six-year sentence for mail fraud and conspiracy; one of his principal business partners, Michael Scanlon, Bob Riley's former press secretary, was sentenced to 20 months for his role in the Abramoff operations this February.
Abramoff exercised a suspicious amount of influence on the Justice Department in all of his dealings, including in his work on behalf of the Choctaw. In one prime example, the tribe was assisted in procuring funds for a new jail by a senior Justice official whom Abramoff had given valuable perks. While the Choctaw were being represented by Abramoff, they also funneled at least $13 million into Riley's 2002 election campaign. The suppression of the Alabama bingo gambling industry, and the Justice Department's prosecution of those associated with it, greatly benefited Mississippi's Indian casino gambling operations by putting their principal competition out of business. In a sense, therefore, the bingo prosecution forms a coda to the tale of "Casino Jack" Abramoff, with the Justice Department playing a murky and controversial ongoing role.
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