Dallas DA candidate denies knowledge of bribe; possibility of wider federal probe looms
A guilty plea by a former chief investigator with the Dallas County district attorney's office in a federal bribery case could be just the beginning of a broadening investigation of that office while former DA Craig Watkins was in charge, two former Texas U.S. attorneys told The Dallas Morning News.
The former investigator, Anthony "Tony" Robinson, admitted taking a bribe from Wayne Joseph Sweeney in 2013 to get Sweeney's failure to register as a sex offender case dismissed. That case was ultimately dismissed by Heath Harris -- then Watkins' top assistant at the district attorney's office -- a move that former prosecutors say is rare and violates decades of protocol dictating how cases are thrown out.
And perhaps touched off alarms elsewhere.
"What exactly was going on at the district attorney's office? Was this poor oversight, poor checks and balances, was this DA just duped or is there something more the feds may want to pay attention to?" said Matt Orwig, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas. "It could be this is the end of it. But based on my 20 years as a prosecutor and 10 years as a defense attorney, I would lean toward this is not the end of it.
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