U S Attorney General Michael Mukasey (here: tinyurl.com/2s39c9 ) said Thursday he was going to make sure that the US DOJ does not yield to political pressure in its corruption prosecutions of government officials. In a speech (here: tinyurl.com/34wnje ) before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Mukasey said:
“Public corruption can inflict damage that is not only costly but also profound. When a public servant at any level of government exploits his or her office for improper purposes, the damage is measured not just in dollars and cents but also in erosion of the public trust upon which depends the survival of our system of government.

We fight, investigate and prosecute public corruption to ensure that those who hold public office live up to the public's trust, and to build the public's confidence in the very idea of government, without which the government cannot function.

The investigation and prosecution of public corruption is therefore among the highest obligations of law enforcement, and it should come as no surprise that I consider it to be one of the top priorities of the Department of Justice. In recent years, the Department's career prosecutors and criminal investigators have been engaged in a renewed effort to pursue corruption at all levels and in all branches of government.”

Mukasey emphasized that the joint efforts of the DOJ and US Attorney's offices had resulted in the convictions of 1,093 individuals (here: tinyurl.com/3d98jb ) for corruption in 2006. This included former congressmen Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Tom Delay, Bill Frist and Bob Ney. ( more here: tinyurl.com/2ebt43