That would ignore the "mendacity" and "lack of integrity" Judge Lamberth said last week were shown by Interior Department officials and their lawyers.
He found Interior Secretary Gale Norton in contempt of court for failing to comply with his earlier orders and for misrepresenting her department's progress. She's the third Interior secretary he's sanctioned.
Norton's problem is that her agency kept reporting progress while neglecting to mention setbacks. The government had accomplished no reform at all as of February, Lamberth said.
What's more, Interior has tried to block oversight by outsiders, and has done so dishonestly, Lamberth ruled.
A sworn statement by Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles "comes perilously close to perjury," Lamberth said last week.
Two sets of Justice Department lawyers have been tossed off the case for misleading Lamberth, and now the third is in trouble.
The facts simply don't support those findings, says DuBray.
The Justice Department says it's considering appealing. What's more, "There's not been a shred of evidence that money's been lost or misappropriated," DuBray says.
There's plenty of evidence that records were lost, and therefore reason to believe people aren't getting what they should. What the plaintiffs want is a true accounting of what they own.
If only the government had spent the money and effort on true reform over the past decade that it spent on avoiding it. Maybe by now Cobell and hundreds of thousands of other Indians would know what they own and what the government owes them.
For some, the difference would amount to nothing. For others, perhaps, tens of thousands of dollars a year, says Harper.
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