Top Prosecutor in Landrieu Phone Incident Steps Down

This probably isn't close to being what it seems:

A Justice Department news release said Jim Letten, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, recused himself from the case a day after the Jan. 25 arrests in Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu's office in New Orleans. Letten's top lieutenant, assistant U.S. Attorney Jan Mann, has taken over.

The news release didn't say why Letten removed himself, and his spokeswoman Anna Christman said she couldn't comment.

One of the suspects is the son of Letten's Shreveport-based counterpart.

Earlier Monday, the man who first published James O'Keefe's explosive videos exposing wrongdoing at community organizer ACORN came to the filmmaker's defense, claiming he "sat in jail for 28 hours without access to an attorney" while the prosecutor made his case to the media.

O'Keefe was "framed" by the media and the U.S. attorney's office, Andrew Breitbart, publisher of BigGovernment.com, told Fox News.

Click here to read the affidavit.

"James O'Keefe sat in jail for 28 hours without access to an attorney, while the U.S. attorney leaked the information about his arrest, helping the media frame it as 'Watergate Junior,'" Breitbart said.

While the timing of the announcement of Letten's pulling himself of the case seemed suspicious because of Brietbart's claims of a set-up, the simple fact of the matter is that Letten recused himself more a week ago, on Jan. 26, with the most obvious reason being that one of men arrested with O'Keefe is the son of a colleague.

That being said, I would not be surprised at all if Eric Holder's Selective Justice Department is going to do all it can to discredit and smear O'Keefe considering the damage he did to ACORN, and if O'Keefe really did go 28 hours with an attorney and the Justice Department did leak information designed to smear these young men, then we could very well see a situation develop where the charges against O'Keefe and his fellow defendants simply go away.

While letting O'Keefe off would bring howls of protest from progressives still out for blood over ACORN's exposure as a bunch of thugs who willingly enable child sex slavery, avoiding an investigation into improprieties in Justice would be far more important to Holder, Obama, and the "Chicago Way" of politics if there is any truth in Breitbart's claims.