It's Official: Americans Got Nothing in Return for Nathan Cooper's Sweetheart Plea Deal

United States Attorney Catherine Hanaway again has some serious explaining to do.  As reported first by Randy Turner and expounded upon by FiredUp! bloggers, federal charges against Omega Paulite have been dropped --despite the fact that Nathan Cooper was given a huge break in the charges he faced because of his cooperation in a sting which led to the case against Paulite.

In other words, Republican U.S. Attorney Hanaway gave a sweet deal to Republican Representative Cooper in return for his help with a prosecution which has never and will never take place.  The losers in the deal?  Law-abiding Americans and Missourians who believe that those who facilitate illegal immigration should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Let's take a moment to remember how this all went down.  In August, we learned about Cooper's participation in the operation to net Paulite:

The new details about Cooper's illegal acts were revealed in an
affidavit filed in a criminal case against Omega "Meg" Paulite, 36, a
Philippine-born U.S. citizen. Paulite faces a single felony count of
immigration fraud in federal court in St. Louis. ...

The affidavit also details how Cooper, again identified as Individual
No. 3, participated in a sting operation April 21, 2006, when he called
Paulite to set up an additional sale of visas for $10,500 while
investigators monitored the call.

For his help with that effort, Cooper was granted leniency by the prosecutors who were supposed to be upholding justice.  Now that the charges against Paulite have been dropped altogether, one has to ask if the U.S. Attorney simply concocted the whole "cooperation" ploy as a means of going easy on Cooper even though she knew it would never lead to a prosecution, or whether the U.S. Attorney was so incompetent that she gave a felon a lighter charge because of his help in a sting operation which apparently did not even induce or uncover chargeable criminal behavior?  

The entire Nathan Cooper deal stinks.  Has from the beginning.  We've got a GOP felon with close ties to the Governor's inner circle who was apparently treated very carefully by GOP prosecutors so as not to cause him too much discomfort which might lead to him squealing.  Then, the pretext by which prosecutors justified giving him lenient treatment falls apart completely, leaving us with a handful of nothing for all our trouble.  No wonder Hanaway demurred from a run at Attorney General --she's busy giving deals to admitted felons in exchange for their flipping on imaginary criminals.

Now that Cooper's cooperation has been identified as meaningless by virtue of the dropped charges against Paulite, United States Attorney Hanaway should amend the charges faced by Cooper so that Americans can get their full helping of justice.  Or perhaps her office is these days in the business of granting sweetheart deal to skels who help sting individuals who aren't even breaking the law.

Whatever the case, that Hanaway's office has refused comment on this topic as Rudi Keller reports is unconscionable.  She needs to answer comprehensively and immediately for why we've gotten only half-baked justice on her watch.