Are Lanny Breuer and Eric Holder taking the hit for … Tim Geithner? UPDATED

After reading Ken Houghton’s post immediately below, and then clicking on the Twitter exchange that Ken, Dan and Yves referenced, in which the Frontline reporter, Martin Smith, said he’d received a call from the Justice Department saying that the reporter had come with an agenda and that the Obama Justice Department would not again cooperate with Frontline, I’m wondering whether Lanny Breuer and Eric Holder are taking the hit for … Tim Geithner.

The more I think about it, the more I think that that’s the most likely scenario.  It almost seems like Geithner had Obama hypnotized–that he always managed to scare Obama just about to death with “But the banks will COLLAPSE!”

If this is what happened, then whoever at the Justice Dept. who called Smith might actually be hinting that Smith should probe further–say, into the Treasury Dept.–to find the full background.  

I mean, how in heaven’s name were those lawyers for the banks and the bankers getting that kind of access to the Justice Dept.’s Criminal Division?  How likely is it, really, that this was simply that that asked Breuer or Holder?  Or that they even contacted either of them directly?  Just a hunch here, obviously, but my guess is: not much.  

So maybe Breuer’s the good guy, after all.  Maybe he was fighting behind the scenes against acceptance of what was being sold at those presentations.  Which would explain the anger of the Justice Dept. person who called Smith.   

—-

UPDATE:  In response to reader rjs’s comments in the Comments threat, I responded:

The reason that I thought, in reading some of this stuff, that Geithner might have played a role in it is that Geithner is the one who always seemed to have the executives’ backs. Covington & Burling can argue all it wants that huge damage to the economy, and to innocent employees, would result from indictment of the banks themselves, but the banks would not go under if specific individuals were indicted. Covington & Burling represents the banks, not the executives as individuals. So why weren’t any individuals–any executives–indicted?

Breuer says there was no evidence of intent to defraud, but that seems unlikely, unless the DoJ didn’t look for any.

The bottom line is that Breuer and Holder certainly look culpable, and that you’re right, rjs, that Breuer probably was not arguing quietly for indictments against executives. But is that all there is to it?

At least this finally exposes the sickening, sickening symbiotic relationship between the top officials in the DoJ and big-name Washington white collar criminal defense law. And it’s not a good thing for Obama to have renominated Holder as AG.

So the answer to the question in the title of this post–”Are Lanny Breuer and Eric Holder taking the hit for Tim Geithner?”–seems to be, no.