A U.S. Department of Justice section chief on Friday chastised a lawyer for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office for giving the impression that federal agents would likely assume the sheriff's investigations into corruption in Maricopa County.

In a strongly worded letter, Raymond Hulser, acting chief of the Public Integrity Section at the Department of Justice, wrote that he was "dismayed to learn that your mere referral of information to the Public Integrity Section was cited and relied upon in a pleading in federal court, and then used as a platform for a press conference."

Read the letter

On Thursday, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas held a press conference to announce that a federal racketeering lawsuit against county officials, Superior Court judges and private attorneys was "moot" because it had been referred to the Department of Justice.

A motion for voluntary dismissal filed in the case Thursday said Thomas and Arpaio had "received their assurances that PIN (the Public Integrity Section) will review the matter." The section focuses primarily on high-profile cases of extortion, bribery and election crimes.

At their press conference, it was explained that Arpaio attorney Robert Driscoll, a former Justice Department employee, had used his connections to get a review of investigative files on the judges, attorneys, county supervisors and the Attorney General's Office. But Hulser's letter to Driscoll said otherwise.

"Based on our conversation on March 1, it was my expectation that you would provide a written summary of the alleged federal criminal violations so that we could, in consultation with the United States Attorney, determine how the information should best be handled, and by whom," he wrote. "You did not indicate, nor did I expect, that you would provide virtually the entire file from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, consisting of thousands of pages of documents and electronic media. That production was not called for, and we do not intend to review the entire file from the Sheriff's Office."

The federal racketeering lawsuit was filed in December. In it, Thomas and Arpaio alleged that judges and county officials had conspired to take resources from the Sheriff's and County Attorney's offices and hindered prosecutions.

But a Superior Court judge cited the suit as creating a conflict of interest for several other prosecutions by Thomas. As a result, the judge threw out a criminal case against Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, prompting Thomas to then dismiss cases against Supervisor Don Stapley and Superior Court Judge Gary Donahoe.

Files in some of those cases were passed to the Department of Justice, sparking Hulser's letter.

Hulser pointed out in his letter that some of the information handed over could, in fact, end up in the hands of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Phoenix, which is looking into some of Thomas and Arpaio's actions. Neither the Department of Justice nor the U.S. Attorney's Office would comment. The Sheriff's Office also declined comment.