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In this week’s Yated newspaper, Debbie Maimon reports the following:

Outrage over the 8th Circuit’s refusal to remedy the blatant injustices in the Rubashkin case has powered a determination among supporters to see the case brought before the United States Supreme Court.

Rubashkin attorneys have called the 8th Circuit’s decision “a sweeping whitewash” of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct in the case. That the appeals court rubberstamped a trial plagued by judicial bias and prosecutorial misconduct has left many shocked and troubled.

One hears a disturbing echo of the court’s decision in the prolonged silence from the Department of Justice in response to pleas from 47 congressmen to investigate the rampant abuse of power in the Rubashkin case.

What lies behind the DOJ’s tactic of ignoring such an outpouring of concern about the injustices in the case?

Silence Linked To Fear?

A recent message to Rubashkin supporters from unnamed sources in the Department of Justice suggests the DOJ’s silence about the Rubashkin case might be due to something other than apathy or indifference. It’s quite possibly linked to fear.

Two senators from a western state recently reported back to their petitioners that their contacts in the DOJ have warned them to stay away from the Rubashkin case, because “it is way too dirty.”

The mystifying comment was relayed to a Rubashkin supporter who had discussed the case with the senators in question. “I want you to know that I had extensive conversations about Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin with both Senator ………and Senator …………,” the Rubashkin supporter wrote to fellow activists, without disclosing the officials’ names.

“I begged them to intercede on my behalf and on behalf of the Jewish people for this terrible travesty of justice. They got back to me and told me that they were told by the DOJ that “this case is way too dirty” and they “should stay out of it and absolutely not get involved.”

The activist wrote of his impression that driving this message from the DOJ was a fear that “picking one loose thread from this case could unravel the entire patchwork, and that simply can’t be allowed to happen.”

‘Way Too Dirty’?

Who are these DOJ officials who consider the Rubashkin story “way too dirty?”

We don’t know, but it doesn’t really matter. What is of interest is their reason for advising a hands-off policy. By today’s standards, a dirty story is usually an explosive tale of betrayal or depravity that threatens to torpedo reputations, careers and innocent bystanders. It’s typically about corruption of such depth or magnitude, it makes one cringe.

Could “way too dirty” be a reference to the inflated counts of bank fraud of which Sholom Mordechai was convicted ? Or perhaps a reference to charges that he paid cattle suppliers late? Might it describe the alleged money-laundering about which a jury found that no personal profit accrued?
Unlikely.

Prosecutors, aided by the media and other Rubashkin-bashers, certainly did their best to sensationalize the case and inject as much dirt into it as possible. That’s what the lurid allegations about Agriprocessors housing a meth lab and illegal weapons caches were all about–allegations which were never heard again after the raid took place.

The attempt to doctor up the record was also reflected in the carefully orchestrated uproar about child labor, worker abuse, exploitation and dangerous working conditions at Agriprocessors.

But all these child labor allegations were tossed by a jury in a 2010 state labor trial. Despite two years of preparation for the state trial and millions of taxpayer money invested in flying witnesses in from Guatemala and Mexico for a trial that lasted over a month, prosecutors could not prove a single allegation. The jury handed Sholom Rubashkin a sweeping acquittal.

Try as they might, prosecutors failed to produce even the whiff of a really good scandal.

If Sholom Mordechai’s record of alleged misdeeds flunks the “way-too-dirty” test, the dirt–and the fear of what happens when it hits the fan–must lie elsewhere.

Rubashkin Appeal Threatens Every Key Player

One need not look far to find real dirt. The Rubashkin appeal forced the spotlight on the abuse of federal power that marked not only Sholom Mordechai’s case but the broader debacle of the 2000 ICE raid out of which the case grew.

The appeal threatened all the key players in the operation with its exposure of secret meetings between Judge Reade and law enforcement officials about the planning and execution of the raid. After becoming a virtual arm of the prosecution, Reade then presided over the criminal proceedings, convictions and sentencing of hundreds of arrestees–repeatedly violating the Code of Judicial Conduct.

The fear, presumably, is that the righting of injustice in the Rubashkin case could not happen without also triggering a probe into the trampling of due process and civil liberties that marked the Postville prosecution of hundreds of immigrants.

The brutal treatment of these undocumented workers and the fast-track justice that railroaded them into waiving their rights, sparked an uproar at the time. Civil rights groups, immigration advocates and defense lawyers cried out about justice run amok and demanded an investigation by the Department of Justice.

The expending of vast resources to no useful end by then Iowa U.S. Attorney Matt Dummermuth and many senior officials under him, including Stephanie Rose (current U.S. Attorney) and Richard Murphy, heightened the sense of outrage.

Brutal Treatment

These officials executed a massive raid that destroyed a vibrant, much needed plant along with the entire town of Postville, arrested hundreds of people, and prosecuted them in cattle-call trials in cattleground trailers with only the shabbiest charade of providing legal counsel.

They jailed hundreds afterward for five months each for felonies such as document fraud and social security fraud, after which the immigrants were deported.

Why did they bother incarcerating them? After other government raids across the country, most illegal immigrants without previous criminal records were quickly deported. The same end could have been achieved in Postville without all the shameful pageantry and glory-seeking.

That, of course, would not have given Dummermuth, Rose and Murphy the chance to grab headlines and promote their career ambitions.

5-Month Incarceration To Keep Witnesses On Ice

As Sholom Rubashkin’s trial unfolded, it became apparent why prosecutors needed to keep the undocumented workers in jail for five months. Deporting them immediately, in line with established protocol, would have deprived prosecutors of a pool of witnesses for the upcoming Rubashkin trial.

Critics say the prosecutors used forced plea deals to coerce the immigrants into testifying in court against other defendants, including Sholom Rubashkin. For the plea deal to be ratified, the immigrants had to pledge to cooperate with the government investigation in any way required of them.

Witnesses who pledged full cooperation in whatever aspect of the investigation, prosecution and trial they were needed, were promised early release and deportation to their native countries to rejoin their families.
This cynical exploitation of defenseless people and other excesses by judges working in collusion with prosecutors, prompted a scathing critique by the former president of a prominent immigration advocacy group, AILA [American Immigration Lawyers Association].

‘Iowa Federal District Court [Judge Reade] Was Driving The Train’

“The Iowa federal district court [Judge Linda Reade] was driving the train, fatally compromising its own integrity as an independent branch of government,” wrote then AILA President Charles Kuck in 2008.

[AILA wrote this long before the discovery of ICE documents that laid bare the collaboration between federal prosecutors and Judge Reade.]

“The tracks laid down to carry this new ‘enforcement train’ were designed to force rapid guilty pleas under the threat of serious jail time, avoid the inconvenience of trials, limit access to immigration counsel, eliminate the prospect of all future relief, and impose criminal sentences simultaneously,” the AILA attorney said.

The chorus of protests sparked a congressional subcommittee hearing to examine the government’s tactics in the raid, drawing media attention for several weeks.

But the official spin on the story won the day. Federal authorities in Washington testifying at the hearing portrayed the operation as compassionate and humane. They denied all allegations of verbal and physical abuse, as well as all charges of civil rights violations.

With hundreds of immigrants jailed or deported and unavailable for interviews, the protests and clamor gradually died down.

Rubashkin Appeal As Battering Ram

What would a Rubashkin win mean for hundreds of arrested immigrants over whose criminal proceedings Judge Linda Reade presided and whom she sentenced to jail?

One can only imagine the nightmarish spectacle of immigration attorney and activists using a Rubashkin victory as a battering ram to overturn hundreds of convictions, and expose to disgrace the judges and prosecutors who handled them.

No one was ever held accountable for the due process and civil liberties violations that occurred in Postville prosecutions. During the heat of the 2008 congressional hearings into the raid, each side tried to fob off responsibility on the other.

The DOJ had kept a low profile in the face of public outcry against the operation that shattered lives, tore apart families and crushed the entire economy of the region. DOJ spokesmen insisted that local officials in Iowa ran the operation and were responsible for strategic decisions.

While denying that they were responsible for initiating the ICE raid, federal prosecutors who executed the prosecutions prided themselves on their role. The Iowa United States Attorney Office was so pleased with the brutal efficiency of the prosecutions that a press release was issued boasting about arraigning, pleading, and sentencing a record number of defendants in one day.

Top members of the US Attorney’s office were richly rewarded for not only carrying off the raid but for shielding Washington from having to take responsibility for its excesses.

Stephanie Rose was appointed U.S. Attorney of Iowa’s Northern District shortly after the raid, after Matt Dummermuth stepped down. [He is now aspiring for a seat on 8th Circuit Court Of Appeals.]

And in 2009, at an award ceremony titled “Justice Dept Honors Its Heart and Soul,” Holder and top DOJ brass honored Richard Murphy, senior Iowa Assistant US Attorney, for pulling off the raid so superbly.

Murphy received lavish praise “for spearheading monumental coordination efforts ….in preparation for his office’s execution of a massive criminal worksite enforcement operation.”

A Glorious Narrative In Tatters?

The Rubashkin appeal, by exposing the secret collusion between Judge Reade and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, threatened to shred the glorious narrative many esteemed officials had written for themselves.

If the appeal were to succeed, these self-proclaimed champions of justice might topple from their pedestal. Their superiors in the Department of Justice who gave them the nod, if not their explicit marching orders, would all be implicated.

Instead of his hyped-up conviction and 27-year prison sentence being used by the USAO to justify the overblown ICE raid, Sholom Rubashkin would end up using these grossly excessive measures to expose the corruption of the very individuals who had lynched him.

A Rubashkin court victory would have spelled disaster for too many highly placed people.

With its reputation of being overwhelmingly pro-government and conservative, the 8th Circuit must have viewed the Rubashkin appeal as posing an unthinkable danger–as case that had the potential to torpedo the very heart of the justice system.

As for the question of who in fact masterminded the ill-conceived ICE raid, let’s revisit that event through the eyes of an Iowa judge, Mark Bennett, based in Sioux City. Bennett admitted in an interview with a documentary-maker in 2009 that he was forced to mete out unjust jail sentences to many of the immigrants, due to a Department of Justice policy that “tied his hands.”

“I was embarrassed to be a United States District Court Judge that day,” Judge Mark Bennett of Sioux City, Iowa, said of his actions in sending 57 of the arrested immigrant workers to jail.

A Judge’s Catch-22

The Des Moines Register article quoted Bennett as saying that he had no option but to agree to plea deals that called for him to imprison 57 immigrants for five months and afterwards deport them. That punishment deprived needy families of their breadwinners and drove them deeper into poverty and despair.

The judge noted that the 57 people he sentenced to jail, except for being undocumented, had clean records. “Court hearings in which 57 people in a row do not have even a single misdemeanor among them is unheard of in federal court,” Bennet said.

“If anybody deserved mercy and compassion and fairness and justice, these 57 did. And I don’t believe they received it, even though I was the one who imposed the sentence,” Bennett said regretfully.

He added that the prosecutors coerced immigrant workers into sign binding plea agreements that mandated prison time, by holding the threat of more severe charges [with longer jail terms] over their heads. “I thought their insisting on each of the defendants serving a five-month sentence was a tragedy,” he said.

“But it’s an executive branch decision, and I didn’t have the power to do anything about it other than not agree to the plea agreement. But if I did that, they would have been held in custody much longer.”

“My hands were tied by the Department of Justice,” he explained.

If the 8th Circuit’s mindset of don’t-bother-me-with-the-facts finds an echo in the stonewalling from the Department of Justice on the Rubashkin case, we now know why.

The story, as the DOJ contacts told the Rubashkin supporter, is indeed “way too dirty.” It’s about wholesale betrayal of a trust, about bowing to the dictates of prejudice, ambition, self-righteousness and protecting one’s own. It’s an explosive, untold story that reeks of corruption.

An Iowa attorney monitoring the case put it this way: ‘If Americans had any idea of the ruthlessness behind this story… of the scheming by people in power… the way they got away with railroading an American citizen without a shred of regard for his rights, there would be rioting in the streets.”

Photos: Levi Margolin