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Michael Fitzgerald
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A bad day for conspiracy theorists
The Obama administration has appointed Benjamin Wagner, the man who prosecuted Sheriff Baxter Dunn and his cronies, to the position of United States Attorney for the Eastern District of California.
That deflates the conspiracy theory that has long parallelled the accepted interpretations of the Dunn case. In the conspiracists’ view, the prosecution of Dunn & Co. was political. Influential Republicans such as developer Alex Spanos or others had it in for Dunn because he allied with slow-growth Supervisor Dario Marenco. The bigshots pulled strings to get a sympathetic Bush Administration to pressure the U.S. Attorneys Office. Prosecutors ginned up charges agains Dunn as a way of getting at Marenco.
Like most conspiracy theories, there was a kernel of truth. The Bush admininistration did shamelessly politicize the Justice Department. But I think we can safely say if Wagner was one of the hacks who succumbed to Republican political pressure the Democratic Obama Administration would not be appointing him to this post.
Of course, being a conspiracy theorist seems to include imperviousness to facts that do not support your theory. I almost look forward to hearing them explain this one.