The plaintiffs in the billion-dollar Indian trust fund lawsuit urged a federal judge on Tuesday to move forward with contempt proceedings against dozens of current and former government officials accused of destroying trust records.

The request came as the U.S. Supreme Court refused to remove U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth from the contempt proceedings. Without comment, the justices rejected a petition filed by a group that included former Interior secretary Bruce Babbitt and his former chief of staff.

Babbitt and the others tried to disqualify Lamberth from the matter, saying he was biased due to ex parte contacts with Alan Balaran, the former special master in the case. Balaran resigned in April 2004 after facing years of pressure from both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals took up the matter and concluded last September that Balaran should have been precluded from investigating the contempt allegations. The court blocked the release of reports Balaran generated outside the normal channels of the litigation.

But the court said Lamberth did not act improperly in the Cobell case nor has he shown an "appearance of partiality" in the contempt matter.

That meant Lamberth himself could take up the plaintiffs' motion to sanction Babbitt and the others for destroying trust records in violation of court orders. "Contemnors have evaded justice and have undermined these proceedings for too long," the plaintiffs wrote in a notice yesterday.

The matter stems back to the Clinton administration, when Interior admitted it erased numerous e-mail communications pertaining to the trust. The department also erased, overwritten or otherwise destroyed computer backup tapes.

The matter became the subject of a lengthy internal probe by Inspector General Earl E. Devaney. In a scathing report, he concluded that Interior was slow to acknowledge the orders of the court and its responsibility to preserve electronic records.

A key Interior employee, in fact, told Devaney he "had never heard of Cobell," more than two years after the department was ordered to maintain all documents.

But Devaney was never able to get to the bottom of the matter because Babbitt, his former chief of staff Anne Shield and numerous attorneys within Interior's Office of the Solicitor and at the Justice Department refused to talk. Some of the attorneys are still working for the government.

"So long as these persons remain silent, important questions concerning their actions and decisions remain unanswered," the August 2002 report stated.

Concerns over records retention continued well into the Bush administration. Lamberth at one point halted the transfer of hundreds of boxes of records over concerns they weren't being protected.

In October 2002, former assistant secretary Neal McCaleb admitted he erased encrypted e-mails containing daily records of trust fund activity, insisting he told an executive assistant to preserve the documents. The assistant gave testimony to the contrary and McCaleb resigned shortly after, citing the "contentious" nature of the litigation.

Lower Court Decision:
In Re: Brooks (Septebmer 14, 2004)

Relevant Documents:
Docket Sheet: Bruce Babbitt v. United States District Court for the District of Columbia | Plaintiffs' Notice on Contempt

Relevant Links:
Indian Trust: Cobell v. Norton - http://www.indiantrust.com
Cobell v. Norton, Department of Justice - http://www.usdoj.gov/civil/cases/cobell/index.htm
Indian Trust, Department of Interior - http://www.doi.gov/indiantrust