The DOJ has its hands in nearly everything these days. Except, that is, for political corruption.
Attorney General Lynch has found the time to sue North Carolina for its transgender bathroom law and, to launch an immediate investigation into Alton Sterling’s fatal encounter with Louisiana police. But she has not batted an eyelash upon receiving investigative requests into Florida’s corrupt state capital.
In fact, when a bipartisan group led by former Democratic senator Bob Graham asked Holder in 2013 to aid the State Attorney’s Northern District Office (an underfunded office with only 22 attorneys) in investigating corruption, the DOJ responded with a simple “thank you.”
If anything, Graham’s letter to Holder wasn’t a request — it was a demand. “The Northern District Office lacks a freestanding public corruption unit and the institutional expertise and resources that are available in larger offices to investigate and prosecute these complicated and highly important cases,” Graham and his colleagues wrote. “It is too much to expect it adequately to investigate the vast operations of Florida’s $70 billion state government.”
