The Justice Dept. has dropped charges against former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. | REUTERS Justice Dept. cuts losses with DeLay

The Justice Department’s decision not to bring charges against Tom DeLay after a six-year probe is the latest sign that DOJ’s investigation into disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff is drawing to a close, without bagging the man prosecutors once thought might be the biggest prize of all — DeLay himself.

But in fact, DeLay is the fourth prominent politician whose federal investigation suddenly evaporated in recent months — seemingly as part of a push by Justice to overhaul its troubled Public Integrity Section, which is still smarting from the high-profile implosion of its case against the late Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.


Prosecutors are always reluctant to close active cases — in hopes of securing that last crucial piece of evidence needed to prosecute. Some outside experts speculated that Justice had effectively given up on being able to make a case against DeLay after all these years and decided to cut its losses.

“Most of the time, in my experience, when they get strung out that long it’s because the department is reluctant to admit that it doesn’t have any evidence that in sum total equals a prosecutable case. They keep thinking: if we just go a little further and a little further [everything will fall into place]. …That is just tremendously unfair to the subjects of those investigations,” said George Terwilliger, former deputy attorney general, who defended former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Lawyers have noted a trend in recent months in which prosecutors have pulled the plug on corruption investigations that have lasted years, as they did with DeLay, the former House Majority Leader. Since May, the Justice Department has told attorneys for Reps. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) and Don Young (R-Alaska), as well as former Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.), that they are no longer under criminal investigation.

A DOJ official said, "It's not unusual to notify counsel for individuals if they are no longer the target of investigation and/or if a decision has been made that no charges will be filed." The official was not speaking about the DeLay case or those involving the other lawmakers. DOJ routinely refuses to publicly comment on specific investigations.

The Abramoff investigation has hardly come to naught. In all, 18 people have been convicted or pled guilty, with two more awaiting trials. Prosecutors may have hoped that some of those defendants — who included two of DeLay’s closest aides — would provide evidence sufficient to launch a prosecution of DeLay but appear to have come up short.

“A lot of times these things do take longer than they should. Prosecutors are often holding out hope for a break. Often a break is a result of another prosecution in another case,” said Peter Zeidenberg, a former Public Integrity prosecutor who is now at the firm DLA Piper. “Sometimes those hopes are reasonable, sometimes they’re pie in the sky, but prosecutors typically aren’t going to let go of the case while there’s still a hope. From their perspective, while the statute of limitations hasn’t run out, why should they?”

Abramoff is now out of prison and working at a Baltimore pizza restaurant. Two of DeLay’s former aides who pleaded guilty in the case — Tony Rudy and Michael Scanlon — have yet to be sentenced, as have several other ex-Abramoff associates. Another Abramoff-linked lobbyist, Kevin Ring, faces a retrial after his first trial ended in a hung jury. Fraser Verrusio, a former aide to Young who was charged last year with taking improper gifts from Abramoff associates, including a trip to the 2003 World Series, has pleaded not guilty and will go to trial as well.

Former DOJ officials and criminal-defense attorneys also speculated that the spate of announcements this year is related to the appointment in March of Jack Smith to rebuild the once mighty Public Integrity Section. The unit was leading the investigations into three of the four lawmakers who have now been cleared.

“I am not sure why these cases are coming all together now; maybe it does have to do with Jack Smith coming in and clearing things out,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Sloan’s group issued a statement on Monday, expressing its disappointment that DeLay wasn’t charged as part of the Abramoff probe and calling it “a sad day for America when one of the most corrupt members to ever walk the halls of Congress gets a free pass.”

“When the [new] chief comes in, he wants to be briefed on all the significant cases that are outstanding, and he’ll say, ‘If these cases are not moving forward then let’s close them out,’” Zeidenberg said. “In that sense, it can be a positive thing for new blood coming in saying we’re going to look at all these cases afresh. There’s a tendency in any agency when you’ve invested a lot of work to want something to work out.”

DeLay and Doolittle — whose house was raided by FBI agents investigating the California Republican and his wife — came under Justice Department scrutiny as part of the Abramoff probe. The controversy surrounding their roles in the scandal convinced both Republicans to retire rather than seeking reelection.

Mollohan, who lost in a Democratic primary in May, was investigated over tens of millions of dollars in spending earmarks he directed to nonprofits run by friends and allies, who then donated money to his reelection campaign. Young, who faces a primary on Aug. 24, came under suspicion as part of a long-running DOJ criminal probe in Alaska, part of the same investigation that brought down Stevens.

DeLay complained over the slow pace of the DOJ investigation into his dealings with Abramoff, a once close political ally whose downfall in 2004 helped destroy DeLay’s political career. DeLay resigned in June 2006 following two years of negative stories over his ties to Abramoff, including the DOJ criminal probe into his activities. He had already given up his majority leader post following his indictment on unrelated Texas campaign finance charges. That case is still pending.

At that time, DeLay blamed the press and his political enemies for ginning up the controversy, but his resignation came after it was clear that Democrats were going to win the House and he would not be reelected.

DeLay said his attorney began to press DOJ officials for a declaration that he was no longer under investigation following Doolittle’s announcement in June that he had been cleared.

“We’ve had no contact from the Department of Justice for well over a year and a half. I don’t know what they were doing,” DeLay said Monday during a conference call with reporters. “When Doolittle was exonerated, we started inquiring as to what was my status.”

Former DOJ officials suggested turnover inside the department following the 2008 elections, as well as problems specific to the Public Integrity and Criminal units, led to the long wait for these former lawmakers.

“Anytime you have a change in leadership at the department, as there has been at the Criminal Division, there is a tendency to not to want to get bogged down in cases that are really part of somebody else’s agenda so as to free up resources [for] cases that are part of your and your administration’s agenda,” said Terwilliger.



“I’m not saying every investigation should be done in a month, but five years is just ridiculous. You’re talking about somebody’s life being put on hold for a very long time with their reputation left to dangle in the wind.”

The Public Integrity unit, once one of DOJ’s crown jewels, had fallen into disrepute following the implosion of the Stevens case. The congressman was indicted and convicted in 2008 of having failed to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars in improper gifts. Stevens was convicted just days before the election, and he subsequently lost his bid for a seventh full term.

But shortly after Stevens’s conviction, an FBI agent came forward with accusations that another FBI agent was romantically involved with the government’s lead witness against Stevens, Alaska businessman Bill Allen, and that prosecutors had failed to provide potentially exculpatory information to Stevens’s attorneys.

Attorney General Eric Holder eventually asked a federal judge to set aside Stevens’s conviction, a major blow to Public Integrity. The head of the unit was replaced, and several prosecutors involved in the Stevens trial eventually moved to different posts.

Smith's hiring - he's a career public prosecutor - was seen as an effort by top Justice officials to revamp the unit.

DOJ recently indicted Paul Magliocchetti, a former top Democratic lobbyist, on allegations that he illegally funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawmakers using straw donors.

And DOJ criminal probes involving Reps. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.) and Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) are continuing, as is the corruption case against former Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.). Renzi is seeking to have some of the corruption allegations against him thrown out on the grounds that FBI agents violated his constitutional privileges as a member of Congress by taping dozens of his phone calls, including those involving other lawmakers.

A top FBI official also insisted that the bureau is not backing off on its pursuit of corruption cases against elected officials.

“We have the largest number of [FBI] agents assigned to corruption today than we’ve ever had before,” FBI Associate Deputy Director Tom Harrington told reporters during a briefing on budget and management issues Monday.

DOJ officials privately note that they clear subjects of high-profile criminal investigations on a routine basis without public comment, pointing to the department’s recent decision not to prosecute Joseph Cassano, the former American International Group Inc. executive who ran the unit that insured mortgage securities. AIG’s collapse cost taxpayers more than $180 billion, and both the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigated Cassano without bringing charges.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misstated the total number of people who have been convicted or pled guilty as part of the Jack Abramoff investigation. It is 18.