David Barrett

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David Barrett was a special prosecutor assigned to investigate Henry Cisneros, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the administration of Bill Clinton, on charges that he had concealed from the FBI during his confirmation process the full amount of payments he made to his mistress Linda Medlar. Barrett's investigation of this relatively minor matter lasted for many years and resulted in the end in Cisneros' guilty plea to a misdemeanor with a promise from Barrett that he would not serve any jail time.

Nonetheless, Barrett continued his investigation for several years more, believing that there was a conspiracy among the IRS and the Department of Justice to obstruct his investigation. Eventually he had to be ordered by the Special Division of the Court of Appeals, which supervises independent counsels (and which is headed by conservative Republican Judge David Sentelle), to wrap up his investigation.

Despite fervent speculation that the report contained damning evidence about corruption in the Clinton Administration, the report when released demonstrated only the dangers of independent counsels operating without ordinary prosecutorial supervision; indeed Barrett's abuses were routinely cited as one of the reasons the Independent Counsel Act was not renewed. He brought no charges and the report contained no evidence of any conspiracy. Since the release of Barrett's report. no one has paid any attention to it, and the Republican journalists and politicians who made accusatory statements prior to its release were strangely silent afterwards.