FBI Takes 2 Years to Indict FBI Agent Facilitating Mortgage Fraud
Does it help to explain DOJ’s failure to crack down on mortgage fraud that one of the agents assigned to investigate it was instead sleeping with–and helping defend–one of those being investigated for fraud?
The FBI just indicted Special Agent Adrian Busby for allegedly lying about how he helped an informant fight indictment. According to the release, the timeline looks like this:
Later 2007: Busby investigating a mortgage fraud case
Early 2008: Busby starts an “intimate relationship” with source
January 10, 2008: Busby gets his girlfriend named as a confidential source claiming falsely she was not under investigation
February 5, 2008: NYPD arrests source for identity theft and other fraud-related crimes
September 18, 2008: Source’s confidential source status canceled
December 2009: Busby provides source’s defense attorney with law enforcement documents to help in her defense
December 15, 2009: Source convicted
Now, what’s weird about this is that the release lists Busby as “a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” That is, he seems to be still employed by the FBI.
And don’t you think it strange that it took two years to prove that Busby was lying about helping his apparent girlfriend?
I mean, no wonder DOJ hasn’t gotten around to indicting Lloyd Blankfein for fraud that brought down the entire financial system! It apparently takes FBI two years to put together a simple case of false statements against one of their own agents who was facilitating–rather than investigating–mortgage fraud.
And here I thought that regulators/enforcers getting in bed with those they were supposed to regulate/police was just a figure of speech!
Thanks, EW, for all you do.
Bob in AZ
IOKIYAR, that’s what this is. Also, probably a burrowed-in Bushie, the bureaucracy has tons of them due to a deliberate effort by Rove to ensure permanence of the W policies.
I still think Obama’s been compromised in some way to continue to let this go to the degree it has gone. He hasn’t even cleaned house in the Siegelman case, Canary the railroader is still there as US Attorney.
I guess it’s not just the Minerals and Land Management boys that like to sleep with the people they regulate while they screw the public. Bush made a fetish of it, figuratively, by hiring longtime lobbyists as agency heads or general counsels, with the expectation that they would lobby first and regulate never. It worked. Instead of transmitting STD’s, they gave us corrupt government; at least STD’s harm the people having fun, not everyone on campus.
EW, this business is going to keep snowballing and before long the DOJ will not have any excuses or time left. Of course, as you yourself have documented hundreds of times, Holder is not interested in doing his job.
I also have to agree with the above comment via rugger9. There are way too many hold overs from the original Bush admin and they put the Kaboosh on anything nearing daylight.
I’d be hard-pressed to name an agency Obama has cleaned up. I suspect he sent out the message that that would distract from his agenda. He seems not to have touched the DoJ and is taking an unusually long time to nominate and appoint new USA’s. Gates is still running the DoD. Hillary, given who she just appointed as her chief spokesperson, hasn’t done much to rejuvenate an exhausted State Dept.
Given Shirley Sherrod’s treatment, whistleblower prosecutions, continuing failures to address Big Ag and Minerals/Land or to put IG’s on a stronger footing, his letting Labor linger and his virtual substitution of the Chamber of Commerce for the Commerce Dept, and I’d say Obama loves those Bushies, their priorities, their corruption of a working grapevine and substitution of their own, which went right to Mr. Cheney.
Was Busby doing an intensive investigation? That is, did he really got into it?
I’m amazed that even a minor case like this gets to the next step.
this is not a defense of O or his corporatist actions!
but he can’t do anything about it. literally. they own the place. and him. he’s their employee. as are the others.
they own every department. or at least have people in key positions, amounting to the same thing.
the FDA is a major joke. most of them use the corporate revolving door. they know where the bacon is. and they sell out like most to get their piece. it’s CYA country now. get yours, and F everyone else.
the EPA also. why else would you have massive quantities of hormones in the drinking supply. or rocket fuel chemicals. look who he appointed to head the EPA. from NJ. and her actions there? total corporate pawn.
this goes through every department! every one.
the SEC isn’t even trying to hide their actions. they know they will always be protected by their corporate masters.
this applies to the FBI as well. key positions. all the top ones want the nice corporate paycheck when they “retire”. go from 100,000 to 1/2 a million + bonuses and stock options? you betcha.
it’s all for sale.
america’s firesale. to any bidder. and it’s going cheap. very very cheap. billions stolen, for paying these sellouts a few million? talk about return on investment.
Medicare and SS have no hope for this reason. it’s all for sale.
But O has always been an active promoter and advancer of this kind of govt. He’s more than just owned.
Think I owe ya a drink. What are you having??
Am considering a scotch. *g*
One of my unanswered Qs about O is just when in his life he figured out he could be one of the promoters. My current hypothesis is when he was selected to be head of Harvard Law Review. But that’s just a guess. I have no actual evidence. I recently reread “Dreams” and there’s no clue there. But by the time Paul Street wrote his first book, published in late 2007, after O was elected but before the inauguration, the die was long cast. All kinds of evidence in that book that O knew exactly how to stand up to the vetting and take advantage of the payoffs.
In retrospect, I don’t see any evidence that he ever did anything to challenge the PTB. Everything was splitting the difference — one from column A and one from column B — so long as the PTB were willing to do so.
It’s just a sideline of mine. Not much has been written about his early life except by “him.” I don’t believe for a moment that he actually wrote Dreams and on rereading it, it, like his speeches, is cleverly designed to hide not reveal. Which is one of the reasons why I think his personal revelation occurred very early in his life. And that would be pretty amazing since he does not come from a silver spoon background, unlike W.
I get what you’re saying, but I disagree that O cannot do anything.
Yes, it may be difficult, but I haven’t seen O make the slightest effort, and I doubt that he’s as boxed in as you make it seem.
That said, I definitely agree with your take on the agencies that you mention and what’s happened with them.
O’s done squat; hasn’t made the slightest effort to turf out the burrowed in Bushies; has done next to nothing in terms of Judicial nominations, and with the few he’s made, he’s caved if pressed hard enough.
It is a joke, but blaming it on the Bushies speaks to me of exonerating O. I believe there’s much more he could be doing but choses not to. I believe that O LIKES the Bushies and is quite quite happy to just leave them in place running the nation into the ground.
I am always *amazed* when a case like this gets this far, but I guess they figure they have to go after a few cases once in a while to make it seem like they’re earning their pay. They’re not.
Maybe not anymore, but when he came to office he had a mandate on cleaning this mess up with the whole nation at his back.
Instead, he decided to whore out to the highest bidder.
Sadly, I don’t think the chance will ever come again.
Give me a break. No one forced him to give trillions to the assholes who brought the economy to its knees for nothing in return. No one forced him to … Oh, forget it.
all I can do is LOL because anything else and my family will disown me… sigh..
That woman must be really something for Busby to throw his career with the FBI away. Not good thinking.
not to pick nits but i believe the grand jury indicts, not the FBI.
Worthy of the National Enquirer . . oh wait, that was John Edwards, John Ensign Strauss-Kahn.
Occam’s Razor. Perhaps someone forgot to type out the word “former”?
Don’t you think it’s plausible that it was not in fact “apparent” that she was his girlfriend because, perhaps, they kept it secret? But when the scheme fell apart and he confessed, the timeline became clear on interogation?
Perhaps it is the case that the FBI are not supermen and sometimes when people you trust lie to you, they have you fooled? Embarassing for FBI, sure, but there’s nothing fishy about it afai can see…
And the other thing this reporting shows is that they are indeed investigating mortgage fraud. I have no problem with justice being slow, as long as justice in the end is done.
Don’t you have Occam’s Razor backwards? If you are adding multiplicity, where is the necessity?
Bob in AZ
Well you’re kind of putting me on the spot here, since emptywheel was not really proposing a hypothesis here for us to consider. He’s was just asking some questions. I guess I could propose some kind of (presumably nefarious) conspiracy that would include the FBI keeping an agent on the payroll while they’re indicting him myself, but what I did instead was propose a null hypothesis of sorts.
So perhaps referring to Occam’s Razor was a bit off the mark then (unless emptywheel indeed has his own theory and is waiting for the right moment to share it with us)…
Loyd Blankfein doesn’t just own the place. In this exclusive video, he’s unusually candid… even flaunting his equity stake…
He must really love her.