Justice Department Official: DiBagio 'Had To Leave'
Forgive me for opining here, but something to me really stinks to high heaven when a local former government official does not go to a Baltimore paper or even a Washington paper to discuss their departure. That is why I question the motives of former U.S. Attorney for Maryland Thomas DiBagio. He resigned in 2005 after pressure and controversy.
In 2004, The Baltimore Sun just happen to get their hands on a memo in which DiBagio was embarrassed that his office did not have any front page corruption cases and directed his staff to come up with three of them by November. One of them was the conviction of former Baltimore Police Commissioner and Maryland State Police Superintendent Ed Norris. By the way, Norris is currently a talk show host on WHFS (105.7FM) and had a field day yesterday. Once the memo was published, his superiors made it a rule that all public corruption cases must be approved by Washington, first. Calls for his head came from all angles, including current Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett, who was chairman for the state Democratic Party at the time.
The article that I alluded to in the first paragraph was in The New York Times. DiBagio says that he was forced out because of political pressure stemming from public corruption investigations involving associates of Governor Robert Ehrlich (R). He claims that Ehrlich's camp tried to scare him off saying one of the calls received, prompted him to contact the FBI. But Justice Department officials said that they lost confidence in him and the 'he had to go.'
Ehrlich and the feds denied DiBaggio's allegations in The New York Times article, and they denied them again in Maryland on WBAL (1090AM.) Ehrlich was directly asked by WBAL's Ron Smith, did he or someone in his office pressure DiBagio. Ehrlich told him, "You don't pressure your U.S. attorney and you don't pressure the Justice Department." Ehrlich also questioned the investigation of a little known fund that the Baltimore City Police had since the 1930s. Specifically, why was Norris the only commissioner investigated. That fund has since been transferred to the city's general fund.Labels: Robert Ehrlich, Thomas DiBagio, U.S. Attorney
