Dive summary:

• Records seized from a 2010 raid at the River Birch Landfill office in New Orleans will finally be returned after a four years, multi-million dollar investigation.
• The case quickly went from solid conviction to a trial filled with prosecutorial misconduct as two of the prosecutors left their positions after they were discovered making inappropriate comments online using aliases, leading to the unraveling of the career of the nation's longest-tenured U.S. attorney, Jim Letten.
• The case began in 2009, when investigators probed River Birch's near-monopoly in waste in southeastern Louisiana amid allegations that many politicians were in the owners' pockets; while investigators found evidence to back the allegations, the case tanked due to prosecutorial impropriety.

From the article:

The abrupt end to the case shocked legal observers. The Washington team that took over the probe after last year's commenting scandal had been aggressively litigating the case, and the sudden capitulation led to speculation that there could be still more unflattering revelations about the U.S. attorney's office on the way.

Bennett Gershman, a Pace University professor and an expert on prosecutorial misconduct, called the government's surrender "startling," saying he couldn't remember a case in which a probe's target had been given assurances he wouldn't be charged. ...