AP via Yahoo:

Ex-prosecutor says US administration interfered in tobacco trial
Thu Mar 22, 7:17 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A former US prosecutor who led a major trial of tobacco companies accused President George W. Bush's administration on Thursday of interfering and undermining her case against the cigarette-makers.

"The level of political interference has been unique to this (justice) department under the leadership of (former and current attorney generals) John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales," the ex-prosecutor, Sharon Eubanks, told AFP, confirming an earlier newspaper report.

Eubanks spent five years investigating cigarette-makers who were accused of misleading consumers about the risks of smoking, particularly relating to so-called "light" cigarettes. The probe led to an eight-month trial.

But in June 2005, on the eve of opening arguments at the trial, several Justice Department officials ordered her to reduce her penalty demands to 10 billion dollars from 130 billion dollars and to read out a closing statement they had prepared, Eubanks was quoted as saying by The Washington Post.

"I couldn't even look at the judge," she recalled.

Eubanks linked her decision to speak out to "a number of parallels" between her experience and an ongoing controversy caused by the Justice Department's firing of eight federal attorneys last year. A Senate committee is probing whether they were dismissed for political reasons.

Bush has vowed to fight efforts to force members of his administration to testify under oath about the sackings, setting up a potential constitutional crisis.

"When decisions are made now in the Bush attorney general's office, politics is the primary consideration... The rule of law goes out of the window," Eubanks was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

She left the Justice Department several months after the trial, having served in it since 1983.

The tobacco companies have appealed the case and no fines have yet been paid.

A Democratic congressman, Henry Waxman, followed up on Eubanks's reported comments by demanding to see copies of communications between the Justice Department and the White House relating to the tobacco companies' trial.