Word: smaltz
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...questioning of his star witness was already going poorly when independent counsel Donald Smaltz dumped a glass of water on the computer equipment. As Smaltz tried to make light of the situation, the liquid seeped into the circuitry, shorting out the only high-tech courtroom in Washington's federal courthouse and forcing a recess in the trial of former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy...
Last week the jury did a more deliberate version of the same thing, and it was Smaltz who got zapped. After an exhausting seven-week, 70-witness trial, the jury took just nine hours to short-circuit his case against Espy, rejecting all 30 remaining counts of a kitchen-sink indictment. The verdict was not just a repudiation of Smaltz's four-year investigation into gifts Espy received from people his department regulates. It could also be read as a repudiation of the very statute that made Smaltz's wild prosecutorial ride possible. And when that independent-counsel statute comes...
...even now, Smaltz's performance--on top of Kenneth Starr's--has changed the dynamic at Janet Reno's Justice Department. Officials there tell TIME that her reluctance to call for counsels to look into Vice President Al Gore, former deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes and the President in connection with the campaign-finance mess comes in part from seeing what other prosecutors have done...
Still, while Starr and his investigation are better known, it is Smaltz who is cited as the best example of the statute's weaknesses by those who closely follow the law. In September 1994 he was assigned to investigate whether Espy, the first black to hold the job of Agriculture Secretary, illegally accepted gifts--luggage, sports tickets, entertainment--from people and agribusinesses he regulated. Smaltz was almost immediately criticized for his freewheeling tactics. His team asked former friends and employees of chicken king Don Tyson whether they knew of any hookers or homosexual activity at events that took place long...
...Smaltz threw the book at Espy," says TIME Washington Correspondent Vivica Novak. "He should have focused his case instead." The trial went on for two months and involved a parade of 70 witnesses. Espy's acquittal is likely to have further political ramifications: Smaltz's four-year inquiry ran up a $17 million bill. Tack that on to the $40 million spent by Kenneth Starr to pursue Bill Clinton and the "Smaltz investigation is likely to become one more factor that will lead to the demise of the Independent Counsel statute when it expires next year," says Novak...