Mafia prosecutor now has Bush in his sights

By Tim Shipman in Washington,
Sunday Telegraph

Last Updated: 12:39am BST 03/06/2007

George W Bush has seen off Al Gore, John Kerry and Saddam Hussein. But with the varnish fast disappearing from his administration, the president may finally be about to meet the man who could prove his undoing.

Preet Bharara is a 38-year-old Indian-American lawyer, who made his name prosecuting the bosses of the Gambino and Colombo crime families in New York.

Now the former district attorney has President Bush in his sights, as well as the man they call "Bush's Brain": Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser.

Mr Bharara is spearheading the Democrat campaign to uncover corruption, mismanagement, incompetence and financial impropriety at the heart of the Bush administration.

In a flurry of subpoenas and press releases, the Democrats have launched 36 investigations, holding about 220 committee hearings since seizing control of Congress last November - and forcing the resignations of six Bush administration officials. It is as if several dozen Hutton inquiries had started at once.

Mr Bharara is already well on his way to claiming his first prominent political scalp through his role as senior counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, one of three bodies conducting inquiries into the sacking by the Bush administration of eight US lawyers.

The hearings generated damaging headlines for the Bush administration as they investigated accusations against Alberto Gonzales, the attorney general, that government lawyers were dismissed if they investigated Republicans or failed to investigate Democrats.

Mr Gonzales had an apparent "amnesia" attack, being unable to recollect any relevant evidence during testimony - only for his aide Monica Goodling, who was granted immunity from prosecution, to admit that the Justice Department routinely took the political views of lawyers into account.

The growing body of evidence that Mr Gonzales, who was once Mr Bush's personal lawyer, abused his position is seen as a triumph for Mr Bharara. Indeed, it was Mr Bharara who originally suggested to the New York senator Chuck Schumer, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee who hired him in 2005, that he launch the investigation when news of the lawyers' sackings began to leak out.

A congressional official told The Sunday Telegraph: "He knew it didn't smell right and he put in calls to his old contacts to find out what was going on. He has managed to get people to testify who would normally have seen this as a politically motivated attack."...[Open in new window]