Prosecutor Purge: Who Knew What and When?
Posted by Matt Ortega · March 13, 2007 · Comments (0)
View documents released by the White House on the prosecutor firings here.
The prosecutor purge as it stands now:
Gonzales: I’m going to get to the bottom of what Harriet and I did.
The White House released several documents relating to the prosecutor firings that occurred last December. Among these documents were e-mail correspondence between Department of Justice and White House officials that provide incontrovertible evidence of the level of involvement and their partisan political aims.
Tim Griffin, the former research director for the Republican National Committee in 2004, suggested using the provision in the USA PATRIOT Act to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. Griffin, a former Rove aide, was installed as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas with the cooperation of Bud Cummins, then-prosecutor. Former Karl Rove aide Scott Jennings was “in close contact” with Griffin on devising his installation in Arkansas.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spoke to the press and accepted responsibility with a caveat: He is not “aware” of “all decisions” made at the Department of Justice.
For his full comments, read the transcript here.
Fired prosecutor David Iglesias had contacted Gonzales chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, asking if he could list the attorney general as a reference during his job search. Sampson approved it — an obvious contradiction to the claims of poor performance. Sampson replied to Iglesias:
You can list the AG as a reference — not a problem. Good luck!
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) blasted the Bush administration officials for giving a series of “falsehoods” and “misleading statement after misleading statement” in a press conference today. Schumer lays it out:
Check out Schumer’s full comments here.
Sampson, the main conduit for the Justice Department on the firings, resigned yesterday, but TPMmuckraker picked up on an Al Kamen column in the Washington Post from October 2005 that stated if Rove were fired for his involvement in the Plame affair, Sampson was his “ready replacement.”
Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) expressed his displeasure with the firing of Daniel Bogden, U.S. Attorney for Nevada. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) also voiced his anger over the plan to oust the U.S. attorneys for political reasons. DNC Chairman Howard Dean sent out a press release calling for Gonzales and Rove to be axed.
Government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) issued a call for a special prosecutor to investigate the firings.
And what about those ‘voter fraud’ allegations? “Bogus,” says Josh Marshall.
Marshall also provides a key component to the discussion:
I’m not sure if it’s more a matter of entertainment or just grim confirmation, but it is worth cataloging all the Republicans who are now willing to come forward and spin out arguments about how federal prosecutors always pursue political investigations and are little more than cat’s paws for the party apparatus of the president who appointed them. Rule of law. Rule of law. Rule of law. I’ve said it a number of times in recent months: the rule of law and creeping authoritarianism has to be at the center of any sensible politics today. The degradation is so great and the bar has fallen so low. [emphasis added]
Implications for 2008: former Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-New York City) and former Governor Mitt Romney (R-Massachusetts)? No comment. John Edwards (D-North Carolina), 2004 vice presidential candidate and former trial lawyer, says Gonzales must go. (Read more from the Democratic candidates here.)
NYT: Gonzales Must Go
Posted by Matt Ortega · March 11, 2007 · Comments (0)
The New York Times published an editorial entitled, “The Failed Attorney General,” on Sunday morning that criticized the nation’s top law enforcer, Alberto Gonzales, as serving the interests of President George W. Bush and not the American people.
During the hearing on his nomination as attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said he understood the difference between the job he held — President Bush’s in-house lawyer — and the job he wanted, which was to represent all Americans as their chief law enforcement officer and a key defender of the Constitution. Two years later, it is obvious Mr. Gonzales does not have a clue about the difference.
He has never stopped being consigliere to Mr. Bush’s imperial presidency. If anyone, outside Mr. Bush’s rapidly shrinking circle of enablers, still had doubts about that, the events of last week should have erased them. [emphasis added]
Citing the prosecutor purge and Gonzales’ “lame op-ed” that defended it as an “overblown personnel matter,” the FBI’s abuse of the USA PATRIOT Act in obtaining information using security letters and his roles in President Bush’s warrantless domestic surveillance program, the administration’s usurpation of the Geneva Conventions, and approval of the Georgia voter ID law.
On Thursday, Senator Arlen Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, hinted very obliquely that perhaps Mr. Gonzales’s time was up. We’re not going to be oblique. Mr. Bush should dismiss Mr. Gonzales and finally appoint an attorney general who will use the job to enforce the law and defend the Constitution. [emphasis added]
It took a midterm election that destroyed the Republican Congress for the resignation, or firing, of Donald Rumsfeld as the Secretary of Defense. If history serves as a model, Bush will dismiss Gonzales from his post sometime in the first 1,000 days of his Democratic successor.
(Hat tip: David Kurtz, Talking Points Memo)
Gonzales Under Fire for Prosecutor Purge
Posted by Matt Ortega · March 9, 2007 · Comments (0)
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the Justice Department are under fire for the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. The decision to can the federal prosecutors appears to be politically motivated.
The front page of Friday’s Washington Post, Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) had strong comments about Gonzales, later softening his tone. Specter is the ranking minority member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The capitulation came just hours after several leading Senate Republicans sharply criticized Gonzales for his handling of the issue. Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, seemed to suggest that Gonzales’s tenure may not last through the remainder of President Bush’s term.
“One day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later,” Specter said sharply. In an interview with Reuters after the meeting with Gonzales, Specter said his comments did not imply he thought the attorney general should be replaced.
Post reporters Paul Kane and Dan Eggen gave a quick synopsis of the prosecutor purge that has created a major furor in Washington.
The firings, most of which happened Dec. 7, became a flashpoint for Democrats in part because they were accompanied by a little-noticed change in federal law in 2006 that allowed Gonzales to appoint interim federal prosecutors to indefinite terms. Under the previous system, the local federal district court would appoint a temporary replacement after 120 days until a permanent candidate was named and confirmed by the Senate.
Democrats have tried removing the provision but Senator Jon Kyl (R-Arizona), who recently won re-election last November, continues to block their efforts. President Bush would sign the bill, Gonzales assured Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) privately. However, GOP efforts to torpedo the bill in Congress could prevent it from ever reaching the president’s desk to make good on that assurance.
Gonzales Flat Wrong on NSA Surveillance
Posted by Matt Ortega · January 25, 2006 · Comments (0)
What night law school did Attorney General Alberto Gonzales get his law degree?
Daniel J. Solove writes at Concurring Opinions:
Attorney General Gonzales brought out some new arguments in defense of the warrantless NSA surveillance program. He should have kept these arguments in the bag, as they are flatly wrong. For example, according to the AP:
Gonzales told his audience: “You may have heard about the provision of FISA that allows the president to conduct warrantless surveillance for 15 days following a declaration of war. That provision shows that Congress knew that warrantless surveillance would be essential in wartime.”
Indeed, FISA authorizes electronic surveillance more generally “for a period not to exceed fifteen calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress.” 50 U.S.C. § 1811. But how does this justify warrantless surveillance that continued far beyond 15 days and that continues to this day? Notwithstanding whether the Authorization to Use Military Force is the equivalent to a declaration of war, this FISA provision indicates that FISA explicitly contemplated the situation the President faced and established a rule — he could engage in warrantless surveillance for 15 days. I have yet to understand how a provision that allows the President to engage in warrantless surveillance for 15 days can be used to justify indefinite warrantless surveillance. Give ‘em a nickel, and they take a
dimedollarunlimited amount.
Bring on the independent investigation.