Agreed, tom , that Cragan’s study would carry more weight if we had similar studies of previous administrations to measure it against. It’s difficult, though, not to see it as one more brick in the wall, at least in my admittedly jaundiced view.
I recall from the radio interview that Cragan’s study was hampered by difficulties in getting information; the researchers were confined to tallying reports of investigations and prosecutions published in the various media since the Justice Department does not make available such statistics, particularly of unresolved investigations. Which makes sense in terms of such matters as grand jury secrecy, but could – I say could , not does – also shroud politically motivated malfeasance from public scrutiny.
Latest development: A former Justice Department lawyer now says the Justice Department actively interfered in her civil suit against tobacco companies in 2005. Story here:
She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty. He and two others instructed her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony. And they ordered Eubanks to read verbatim a closing argument they had rewritten for her, she said.
“The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said,” Eubanks said. “And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public.”
Eubanks, who served for 22 years as a lawyer at Justice, said three political appointees were responsible for the last-minute shifts in the government’s tobacco case in June 2005: then-Associate Attorney General Robert D. McCallum, then-Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and Keisler’s deputy at the time, Dan Meron.
The story was in the news at the time, but this is the first time a lawyer on the case has publicly made this charge.
Update: Yet another conscious motive for the firings has emerged: Suppressing the Dem vote in key states in 2008.
More on the “Rovian Theory” of the firings here.
Rovian theory suggests the following: The eight U.S. attorneys were fired not only to purge the Justice Department of some prosecutors who were insufficiently willing to use the power of their offices to attack Democrats and protect Republicans — but also to install favored people who wouldn’t have such scruples. And, thanks to a provision snuck into law by a Bush administration henchman (who has since been granted a job as – you guessed it – a U.S. attorney) there would be none of those pesky safeguards to prevent those jobs going to unqualified hacks.
Or, as White House Watch reader Charles Posner wrote to me in an e-mail yesterday: “Dan - I think everyone is looking at the Justice Dept. scandal form the wrong end - it’s not the firing, but the hiring that’s the crux of the issue. Rove has a plan and a list. The plan is to install partisans in the prosecutors’ office in order to target Democratic congressmen. Of course, Rove can hand pick each prosecutor without Congress’s involvement as allowed by the secret provisions of the Patriot Act. Now, where’s his list?”
Senators! Get this man on the hot seat and under oath!
Kevbo
March 25, 2007, 11:53am
206
Last April, while the Justice Department and the White House were planning the firings, Rove gave a speech in Washington to the Republican National Lawyers Association. He ticked off 11 states that he said could be pivotal in the 2008 elections. Bush has appointed new U.S. attorneys in nine of them since 2005: Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico. U.S. attorneys in the latter four were among those fired.
9 out of 11 seems an unlikely-to-be-random correlation.
The investigation needs to be looking at the activities of the two swing state US attorneys who kept their jobs.
What. the Quivering. Blue. Fuck.
Here ’s a great rant on how the media isn’t taking this case seriously (or is missing the point on the gravity of the DoJ’s actions). Excerpt:
Whatever one thinks of how convincing the available evidence is thus far, nobody who has an even basic understanding of how our government functions could dispute that the accusations in this scandal are extremely serious. Presumably, even those incapable of ingesting the danger of having U.S. attorneys fired due to their refusal to launch partisan-motivated prosecutions (or stifle prosecutions for partisan reasons) at least understand that it is highly disturbing and simply intolerable for the Attorney General of the U.S. – the head of our Justice Department – to lie repeatedly about what happened, including to Congress, and to have done so with the obvious assent and (at the very least) implicit cooperation of the White House. Even the most vapid media stars should be able to understand that…
Just as was true for their virtually unanimous insistence that there was no wrongdoing worth investigating in the Plame case – including the serial lying and obstruction of justice from the Vice President’s top aide, one of the most powerful people in the White House – they also see nothing wrong whatsoever with serial lying and corruption by the Attorney General in this case.
Think about this: there are only two instances in the last six years where real investigations occurred in any of the Bush scandals – this U.S. attorneys scandal (because Democrats now have subpoena power) and the Plame case (due to the fluke of two Republican DOJ officials with integrity, James Comey and Patrick Fitzgerald). And in both cases, it was revealed conclusively that top Bush officials – at the highest levels of the government – repeatedly and deliberately lied about what they did. Isn’t that pattern obviously extremely disturbing? And imagine what would be revealed had there been real investigations – journalistic or Congressional – of all the other scandals that ended up dying an inconsequential death due to neglect and suppression…
Really, is it any wonder at all that our government is so fundamentally corrupt and broken when we have a press like this? Why wouldn’t top government officials lie continuously when our national press corps finds such lying to be such a source of merriment and humor, and can summon the energy only to attack, mock and condemn those who find the lying objectionable, rather than the liars themselves?
And given that these are the people who are supposed to perform the function of checking government power and uncovering government corruption, is it really any wonder that the administration has felt comfortable engaging in six years worth of systematic lawbreaking? These media stars would never investigate any of it, because they don’t think it’s a problem, and if it ends up being exposed, they will belittle and mock any objections to the lawbreaking, defend the administration, and distract everyone from the issues raised. They obscure the consequences of corruption revelations with gossipy and giggly speculation about who is helped or hurt politically.
:sigh:
Literally, it would seem.
This just gets more and more disgusting. What’s that word? Outrage fatigue?
Could someone please explain to me why the reaction after losing the 2006 elections (or any election) would be to fire the US Attorney’s? I don’t get what the WH expected them to do. Is it just that the USA’s were expected to drum up some sort of charges to try and tar all the democratic candidates?
If that’s it, I think if that part of scandal (the initial thought of firing them all) as given more press it would cause more people to stop and think more about the implications of all this.
Well, remember they didn’t fire all of them, only a select minority. The reasons are speculative until more evidence is developed, but there are plenty of plausible motives – see the link in post #204 . (It’s not about 2006, it’s about 2008.)
Thanks BrainGlutton , I realize that only 11 were ultimately fired and I did read the link in post#204 for motivations for replacing the 2008 elections, but I was wondering why they would even consider firing everyone and what in the heck that would have accomplished.
I guess I just got the impression from the quote in ArchiveGuy’s post #167
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow told reporters earlier this week that the idea of firing all 93 sitting U.S. attorneys – the idea that ultimately led to the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year – was Harriet Miers’ and “her idea only.”
Like so much else the Bush administration has said about the prosecutor purge, it turns out that wasn’t true.
According to ABC News, not-yet-released internal e-mails show that Karl Rove raised the idea of firing all the prosecutors – and that Alberto Gonzales had one or more discussions about the idea – before the White House has said that Miers was involved.
that somehow the firing of all 93 attorneys would have been a punishment for not doing something. It just floors me it would be expected for them to have anything to do with the elections. Okay maybe my brain is starting work now. They are looking for people to turn a blind eye toward voter fraud and drag their feet on prosecuting those cases until the other side gives up?
Had they gone ahead and fired all the attorneys, they could have claimed it was a simple mid-administration adjustment. They could then have reviewed all the records, re-hiring anyone who was a sufficient party loyalist and handing out plums to people who had shown themselves “more loyal” between 2001 and 2006. However, it would also have meant that they would have had to do a lot more work to find the appropriately loyal partisans (and avoid sacking people who were sufficiently loyal, already). It would also have raised a lot more eyebrows, since we have never fired all the attorneys mid-term. So they chose to go for eight key positions and hope that no one would notice.
jayjay
March 27, 2007, 11:46pm
215
And why not? It’s not as if anyone with any oversight power had said “boo” at anything they’d done in the previous six years…
No, they are looking for USAs who will investigate and prosecute even frivolous allegations of “voter fraud” (as defined by the Pubs – see this thread ).
tomndebb:
Had they gone ahead and fired all the attorneys, they could have claimed it was a simple mid-administration adjustment. They could then have reviewed all the records, re-hiring anyone who was a sufficient party loyalist and handing out plums to people who had shown themselves “more loyal” between 2001 and 2006. However, it would also have meant that they would have had to do a lot more work to find the appropriately loyal partisans (and avoid sacking people who were sufficiently loyal, already). It would also have raised a lot more eyebrows, since we have never fired all the attorneys mid-term. So they chose to go for eight key positions and hope that no one would notice.
Also, to have fired all 93 of them would have put a serious kink in their plan to make temporary appointments under the USA Patriot Act.
Here ’s a very interesting interview of David Iglesias, one of the U.S. Attorneys fired. Some excerpts:
*When did you guys start to realize that something wasn’t right about the way this went down? *
Last summer, Bud Cummins [U.S. Attorney from Arkansas] and I had a joint narcotics prosecution between his district and my district. One day in August, he called me about the case, and then out of the blue, he goes, “Hey, Dave, I was asked to resign.” I said, “You gotta be kidding me. Why?” He goes, “I’m not sure, but I think they want to bring in one of Karl Rove’s people.”
Now, fast forward to December 7th—after I got the call from [Director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys] Mike Battle [firing me], I remember thinking, Hey, Bud Cummins got asked to resign, too.
And then John McKay [U.S. Attorney from Washington] sent out this cryptic e-mail in mid-to-late December saying he was moving on, and he didn’t say where he was going next. It’s customary for outgoing U.S. Attorneys to send out an e-mail to their colleagues saying it’s been great serving with you, here’s my next great job, here’s where you can reach me. Well, he didn’t do that. I’m thinking: I bet McKay got the same phone call I did. So I called him right away and asked him. He confirmed it and said that he’d heard there were up to ten more. He gave me the names, and I started calling these people. Sure enough, we all got the same call on the same day. By mid-to-late December I had a pretty good idea of who was on the list. We then started to e-mail each other, basically just feeling sorry for each other because we all knew we’d done a good job. And at that point, nobody had told us what the problem was. We were all scratching our head, like, Why did this happen to us but not the 85 or so other U.S. Attorneys?
*Politics. *
Yes, but the Justice Department is fundamentally an apolitical agency. We do criminal justice. It’s paradoxical because all of us came in through political means. I ran for state attorney general in 1998, and that was the political cred that I needed. But once we got into office it was made crystal-clear to all of us that politics were to stay outside.
Who made that crystal-clear? Ashcroft?
That was Ashcroft. He sat me down in his office, and he said that politics have no role in what you do as a U.S. Attorney.
Which brings up the whole argument about executive privilege. Do you think the administration is abusing it here in shielding Rove and Miers from testifying under oath?
I think every president at one point in his term will use executive privilege, but I’m not sure I’m persuaded that there is an absolute privilege. Remember this, though: When you file something in court, it drags the process out. And there’s only 20 months left in this administration. This could be a stalling tactic so that by the time it finally gets to the court, this administration will be out of office.
We don’t know for sure yet, but how deeply do you think Rove was involved in the plan to fire you guys?
I’m sure his fingerprints are all over this. His greatest strength is his greatest weakness: He views everything in political terms. But you can’t treat U.S. Attorneys in the criminal justice system like just another political problem, because we’re not. We have more responsibility and more authority than anyone in federal government with the exception of some generals and admirals that are running wartime operations. We take people’s lives away, we take their property away, we take their liberty away. Those are serious things. And you cannot let politics infect that process. Rove never understood that. We were just another political hire. I wonder if he didn’t like U.S. Attorneys because Pat Fitzgerald, one of my former colleagues, was investigating him last year. Who knows how that was factored in?
*But you’ve spent time in Gitmo as a JAG. You had a personal connection to the place. The administration’s tacit approval of torture had to have been of interest to you. *
Well, I don’t like it. This country doesn’t stand for that. By condoning torture or near torture, we’re as bad as the people we’re fighting. Sure, we’re not cutting their heads off and filming it, but this country stands for decency. It makes me think of what Bobby Kennedy argued during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the military wanted to do a preemptive strike on Cuba. He goes, “You mean, you want us to do a Pearl Harbor, except we’re the Japanese. We don’t do that. Americans don’t do that.”
Does America feel less like America to you now than it did even just a few years back?
For the time being. I don’t think that’s necessarily something that’s going to be permanently in place.
You think it’s something that’s going to change on Jan. 21, 2009?
Yes. And I don’t care who’s in power. I think you’re going to see a radically different face to American foreign policy.
And clearly you think that’s a healthy thing.
Yeah. And one other thing I’ll say is that this scandal has really grown beyond just us. This has turned out to be a struggle between the executive and legislative branches of our federal government. Our founding fathers when they put our government together assumed checks and balances, assumed compromise. When one party—and it doesn’t matter which party—has that kind of unitary power like my party did, bad things happen.
jayjay
March 29, 2007, 6:48pm
220
Talking Points Memo is saying that the Republicans have shut down the Sampson hearing…what does that entail? What are the Senate rules that allow that?
Never mind…the Republicans have backed down on this, claiming that they were objecting because it had gone over 2 hours.