California U.S. Attorneys scandal (Napoleon's World)

The U.S. Attorneys for California scandal was a political scandal in the 1980's over the appointment of three US Attorneys by the Department of Justice to the Southern, Central and Eastern Federal Court Districts of California. The three attorneys - Linda Schaffer, John Brandt and Harold J. Plank - were all former aides to then-Vice President Robert Redford, with Schaffer and Brandt having served under him when he was the Assistant Attorney General of California (1967-1971), Lieutenant Governor of California (1971-72) and Governor of California (1972-1979), and Plank having served Redford as Governor and as the Chief Counsel to his Presidential campaign. Accusations of favoritism and graft emerged, and critics noted that many of the cases the three attorneys in question pursued aligned with the former governor's interests in California and the interests of the state National Party and its allies.

After the scandal broke, it was revealed that a fourth US Attorney, George Marinatto - appointed to serve the Federal District of Southern Florida - had lobbied in Washington for three companies that had donated campaign funds to both Redford's campaign and later President Elizabeth Shannon. Four Senate hearings were staged in 1983 and 1984 to address the issue, and eventually all four attorneys resigned and no charges were filed against Redford. The issue boiled up again during the 1986-87 North-South scandal, when Schaffer's replacement as US Attorney, Douglas Ramirez, was accused of targeting potentially uninvolved Democratic politicians in Los Angeles at the behest of Redford and California Nationalists to give them a leg-up in the 1986 gubernatorial race and the 1988 Presidential race, in which Redford was anticipated to have a hard fight to keep his home state. By 1988, however, Redford's image had been rehabilitated and he handily won California in the general election.