The withdrawal of charges against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens serves as more proof of what we already knew: the Bush DOJ couldn’t do anything right. Attorney General Eric Holder has decided that “it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial,” according to a statement he released this morning. Why drop the charges? Because the Bush Justice Department, which handled the prosecution, couldn’t, well, handle the prosecution. DOJ lawyers were accused (rightly, according to Holder) of withholding crucial information from the defense, and the trial subsequently degenerated into a series of embarrassments for an already-demoralized department. At one point, the DOJ lawyers were even held in contempt of court. Holder has asked the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility to look into the matter. Thankfully, the one thing the DOJ has been good at recently is releasing damning OPR reports (PDF, PDF, PDF) about how corrupt, incompetent, and politicized it became during the Bush years.
