Rove: We Left Prosecutors Working on “Important Investigations”Karl Rove broached the topic of U.S. Attorneys again today. And, as before, it was a battery of flat-out lies, half truths and distortions. Long after Alberto Gonzales backed off his line that the firings are an “overblown personnel matter,” Rove’s still flogging the same line that people are just “playing politics” with this.
But I want to focus in on one statement in particular. Depending on how you read it, it’s either flagrantly tone deaf or a middle finger to those chasing this story:
When we came in in 2001, we reviewed all 93 U.S. Attorneys and over the course of time, replaced virtually all of them with appointees by the president… not all: several appointees were involved in high profile cases, important investigations, and as a result, even though they were appointees of the previous administration, we left them in office for, in some instances, years.
San Diego’s Carol Lam was, of course, in the middle of one of the highest profile, important investigations that a United States attorney has undertaken in recent memory when she was fired last December. The suspicion around her firing is what has driven the scandal from the beginning.
But just to show that Lam isn’t far from Rove’s mind, he goes on to repeat his lie that Lam was ordered to make immigration cases a priority in her office and refused.