Subject:  Re: Article from the Detroit News |
Author:
Chris
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Date Posted: 12/22/05 7:27pm
In reply to:
Chris
's message, "Fieger to get illegally seized tax/financial records returned" on 12/22/05 7:25pm
The following editorial was borrowed from the Detroit Free Press
EDITORIAL: State Vs. Fieger: For Probe, a Proper Choice to Downplay Politics
Dec. 22--There will be no getting politics -- or the perception thereof -- out of the state's investigation of lawyer Geoffrey Fieger. So Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox has done the next best thing -- taking himself out of it in favor of a special prosecutor. Republican Cox, who has his own political stake in the outcome of the investigation, even went a few steps further by accepting the recommendation of five career county prosecutors, all Democrats, and naming another Democrat, Patrick Shannon, to take charge of the probe into Democrat Fieger.
Shannon, by all accounts above reproach, is a school administrator, a former tribal judge and was for 18 years the prosecuting attorney of Chippewa County in the eastern Upper Peninsula. He is taking the assignment from Cox for payment of $1 plus expenses not to exceed $25,000, making him quite the bargain for taxpayers. Shannon also will run up against the high-powered and high-priced legal team Fieger has assembled to defend himself against state and federal accusations of illegal spending on political campaigns in 2004.
Cox is planning to run for re-election in 2006. Fieger, the Democratic candidate for governor in 1998, intends to seek his party's nomination to run against him, although he's not likely to get it. Cox already has accused Fieger of attempting to blackmail him politically by exposing an extramarital affair unless Cox backed off the campaign finance investigation. Cox has acknowledged the affair, and Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca has declined to pursue any charges against Fieger.
If there's any problem with the Shannon appointment, it's that Cox, a former assistant prosecutor in Wayne County, consulted mainly with prosecutors and named another former prosecutor. Whatever their politics, prosecutors would seem to be of a common mind-set -- they prosecute. And Fieger has gained fame by beating them on behalf of his clients in several well-publicized court cases. Still, Shannon appears to be a solid choice to get at the truth, as opposed to, say, just getting Fieger.
But whatever he concludes, the public can rest assured that politics will follow.
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Copyright (c) 2005, Detroit Free Press
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