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There is so much dirt coming out about the Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales and the White House scheme to replace the U.S. attorney's with Bush's own lackeys that keeping up with this mess is tough for one individual to do.
So, here is the reports from various papers and such from around the country. Knock yourself out!
By Dan Froomkin
Friday, March 23, 2007
Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein write in The Washington Post: "Two months before Bud Cummins was fired as U.S. attorney in Little Rock, a protege of presidential adviser Karl Rove was maneuvering with the Justice Department to take his place. . . .
"Rove and Harriet Miers, then the White House counsel, were keenly interested in putting [Tim Griffin, a Rove aide and longtime GOP operative,] in the position, e-mails reveal. . . .
"Some of the thousands of pages of e-mails released this week underscore the extraordinary planning and effort, at the highest levels of the Justice Department and White House, to secure Griffin a job running one of the smaller U.S. attorney's offices in the country.
"The e-mails show how D. Kyle Sampson, then the attorney general's chief of staff, and other Justice officials prepared to use a change in federal law to bypass input from Arkansas' two Democratic senators, who had expressed doubts about placing a former Republican National Committee operative in charge of a U.S. attorney's office. The evidence runs contrary to assurances from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that no such move had been planned. . . .
"Griffin declined to comment yesterday but said in a previous interview that he was being unfairly maligned by Democrats. He has announced that he will not seek Senate confirmation to become Little Rock's chief federal prosecutor but will remain until a replacement is found."
The Cummins case also suggests that Bush himself, contrary to Tony Snow's insistence yesterday, may indeed have been a party at least to this one firing.
"By July 25, a White House aide wrote to Sampson to ask whether she could begin trying to win over [Arkansas Democratic Senator Mark] Pryor. 'Is that a problem since he has not yet been nominated for U.S. attorney?' the aide wrote, referring to Griffin.
"'If the president has already approved Griffin, then part of our "consultation" (to meet the "advice and consent" requirements of Constitution) would be to tell them we were going to start a BI on Griffin,' Sampson replied six minutes later, using shorthand for a background investigation. 'I assume this has already happened.'"
Eggen and Goldstein also note: "Cummins's dismissal differs from the firings of the seven other ousted federal prosecutors in several respects. Cummins was told he was being removed last June, and the rest were told on Dec. 7. Justice Department officials also have not publicly said Cummins's departure was related to his performance in office, as they have with the others. They acknowledged last month that he was fired simply to make room for Griffin.
"But documents show that Cummins was clearly a target of Sampson's two-year effort to fire a group of U.S. attorneys who did not qualify as what he called 'loyal Bushies.' He was recommended for removal as early as March 2005."
And as Richard A. Serrano wrote in the Los Angeles Times last week: "Still uncertain exactly why he was fired, former U.S. Atty. H.E. 'Bud' Cummins III wonders whether it had something to do with the probe he opened into alleged corruption by Republican officials in Missouri amid a Senate race there that was promising to be a nail-biter."
Eric Lipton writes in the New York Times: "The ousted United States attorney in western Michigan said Thursday that she was told last November that she was being forced out to make way for another lawyer the Bush administration wanted to groom, not because of management problems.
"The federal prosecutor, Margaret M. Chiara, 63, speaking publicly for the first time since leaving office last Friday, said in an interview that a senior Justice Department official had told her that her resignation was necessary to create a slot for 'an individual they wanted to advance.' The identity of the likely replacement was not disclosed, she said.
"'Only after Justice Department officials attributed her firing to poor performance as a manager -- even though her 2005 evaluation praised her management skills -- did she decide to speak out, Ms. Chiara said.'"
Jennifer Talhelm writes for the Associated Press: "Two of the major players in the ouster of federal prosecutors last year were themselves considered for U.S. attorney jobs, according to documents and interviews.
"Kyle Sampson, who helped orchestrate the firing of eight prosecutors as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, was the Bush administration's pick to fill Utah's vacant U.S. attorney post last spring.
"Pat Rogers, an Albuquerque, N.M., attorney who has represented the state Republican Party and party officials for several years, raised his concerns about his state's U.S. attorney, David Iglesias, with high-level Justice Department officials, among others.
"After Iglesias was fired late last year, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., recommended Rogers for the job, along with three others, in January. . . .
"Rogers said he didn't ask to be nominated for U.S. attorney, and he took himself out of the running after the Justice Department contacted him to set up an interview earlier this winter. . . .
"Sampson was the Bush administration's choice for Warner's replacement. But Utah Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett backed former Senate Judiciary Committee staffer Brett Tolman.
"The contest resulted in a standoff of sorts. Bush ultimately picked Tolman last summer."
And who is Brett Tolman? None other than the staffer for Senator Arlen Specter who snuck that provision into the Patriot Act that allows Bush to appoint interim U.S. attorneys indefinitely --
Alexis Simendinger writes in a National Journal story (subscription required): "White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove may have forfeited potential claims of executive privilege over the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys-- if he communicated about the latter outside the White House e-mail system, using his Republican National Committee e-mail account or RNC equipment. Or at least that's a legal possibility posed by rapidly advancing electronic technology and the evolving work habits of busy White House officials. . . .
"According to one former White House official familiar with Rove's work habits, the president's top political adviser does 'about 95 percent' of his e-mailing using his RNC-based account. Many White House officials, including aides in the Political Affairs Office, use the RNC account as an alternative to their official government e-mail addresses to help keep their official and political duties separate. Although some White House officials use dual sets of electronic devices for that purpose,
Rove prefers to use his RNC-provided BlackBerry for convenience, the former official said. . . .
"Some White House officials, including Rove, use the RNC's gwb43.com e-mail domain (an abbreviation for George W. Bush 43). Communications originating from that RNC domain written by White House political affairs aide Scott Jennings to officials in the Justice Department appeared in the first batch of e-mails given to the House and Senate Judiciary committees last week. The Jennings e-mails stamped with the RNC domain, as well as e-mails from then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers and her deputy sent through the official White House system, were captured on Justice Department servers. . . .
"White House and RNC spokespeople did not respond to National Journal questions about Rove's use of the RNC e-mail system and the preservation of communications he created on its equipment."
Joe Conason writes in Salon: "The proposal to interview the president's chief political counselor without an oath or even a transcript is absurd for a simple and obvious reason. Yet the White House press corps, despite a long and sometimes testy series of exchanges with Snow, is too polite to mention that reason, so let me spell it out as rudely as necessary right here:
"Rove is a proven liar who cannot be trusted to tell the truth even when he is under oath, unless and until he is directly threatened with the prospect of prison time. Or has everyone suddenly forgotten his exceedingly narrow escape from criminal indictment for perjury and false statements in the Valerie Plame Wilson investigation? Only after four visits to the grand jury convened by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, and a stark warning from Fitzgerald to defense counsel of a possible indictment, did Rove suddenly remember his role in the exposure of Plame as a CIA agent.
"Not only did Rove lie, but he happily let others lie on his behalf, beginning in September 2003, when Scott McClellan, then the White House press secretary, publicly exonerated him of any blame in the outing of Plame. From that autumn until his fifth and final appearance before the grand jury in April 2006, the president's 'boy genius' concealed the facts about his leak of Plame's CIA identity to Time magazine correspondent Matt Cooper.
"There is no reason to believe that Rove would ever have told the truth if Fitzgerald had not forced Cooper to testify before the grand jury and surrender his incriminating notes, with a contempt citation and the threat of a long sojourn in jail. Indeed, there is no reason to think that even knowing Cooper had testified would have made Rove testify accurately. He failed to do so from July 2005 until April 2006, after all. But in December 2005, Fitzgerald impaneled a new grand jury and started to present evidence against him. . . .
"By now the porous brainpans of the Washington press corps not only seem to have excused Rove's leaking and lying about Plame's CIA position, but also to have erased that disgraceful episode from their memories. The president and all his flacks can stand before the public and act as if Rove should be treated like a truthful person whose words can be believed -- and not as someone who lies routinely even in the direst of circumstances. " Read more HERE
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