Get Kuehne, by gimleteye

All weekend long it bothered me: the front page headline from The Miami Herald last week about federal charges against Miami attorney Ben Kuehne for his role as advisor to another high profile attorney, Roy Black, in a complex international drug-trafficking case.

Kuehne is a well known attorney, and not just for his work representing Gore in the 2000 presidential election re-count fiasco. He is one of the very few lawyers willing to give of his time and energy to human rights, social justice, and other causes.

“Politics played no role. The indictment speaks for itself,” Justice Department Paul Bresson told The Herald. (Feb. 8th, 2008).

I certainly hope so, but there is reason to doubt. In Miami the number of lawyers devoted to protecting the public interest can be measured in a thimble.

What Kuehne did, according to DOJ charges, is to help launder drug money to pay for legal fees. It is easy to understand why Roy Black would want his funding to be certified, as being free from the taint of drugs. What possible motive could there have been for Kuehne to deliberately falsify the results of his work, knowing as he undoubtedly did that a microscope would be applied by federal prosecutors to every single Ochoa transaction?

Is Kuehne a bad guy, wrapped up in the trappings of good guy Constitutional rights, or is he a good guy who followed the letter of the law advising his client, Roy Black, as to the legal source of funds used to defend a drug dealer?

Is the US Department of Justice helping to protect the Constitution by going after attorneys who defend bad guys, or is it engaged in clearing political mine fields in the final months of the Bush administration, with ulterior motives? (ie. the recent firing of US Attorneys deemed by Washington to be not aggressive enough going after Democrats.)

If a Democrat becomes the next president of the United States, Kuehne would be on the list for a federal judgeship.

Maybe that's the point: whether the charges stick or not, you have to wonder if a Democratic administration appointing federal judges would follow the path to Kuehne’s door, already beaten down by Republicans.