When it became apparent in March that the Justice Department would be forced to turn over all the documents relevant to the U.S. attorney firings, Michael Elston, chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, made a round of phone calls.

He wanted to apologize to the five U.S. attorneys whom he had listed on a November 1st email as "other possibilities" for firings (yesterday Elston's lawyer claimed that Elston had never intended for any of those U.S.A.s to be fired). But it sounds like a lot of the calls went like this:

Colm F. Connolly, the chief federal prosecutor in Delaware, said Elston called "to inform me that there was an e-mail that was going to be turned over to Congress and, although it was not to be disclosed publicly, often times Congress would leak things and this could be public at some point."

Connolly said he "expressed disappointment" and asked how the e-mail was prepared. He said Elston told him "that there was this firing process in the works at the time, and he had been asked to find out whether there were any other U.S. attorneys about whom there had been concerns."

Connolly said Elston told him that he collected names by "speaking to people" but that he "could not remember who he spoke with, and he said he could not remember what the concerns were as they related to me."

In other words, 'Sorry for almost getting you fired and sorry I can't remember why I almost got you fired.'

Remember that Elston, as the chief of staff to the DAG, plays a key role in overseeing the U.S. attorneys. I'm guessing this won't help that working relationship.

Having read my share of press gaggle transcripts, my mouth doesn't fall open for just anything. But Tony Fratto's determined efforts this morning deserve appreciation.

"It's important for any public official to have as much confidence as he can garner. And that's going to ebb and flow," Fratto counseled, "but it will not ebb and flow with this President and this Attorney General." So there.

Excerpt below.

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30 and climbing.

In a story this morning, McClatchy ups The Washington Post's toll of 26 U.S. attorneys to 30. So now we're up to one-third of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys who were once tagged for firing over the course of Kyle Sampson's two-year "process."*

To make all that brainstorming easier to wrap your head around, the Post ran a great graphic that shows which U.S. attorneys appeared on what list and when. We've incorporated the Post's information into a document collection series of the firing lists so you can see how the lists were presented in the various emails.

So now we know who, how, and when. But why? It's clear from local press reports that the vast majority of the U.S. attorneys once targeted for firing never heard any complaints from their superiors about their performance. So the search continues.

*Update: Today's Post also added the four names:

Sources yesterday identified four other current or former U.S. attorneys included on a Jan. 1 list that grouped a dozen prosecutors into three tiers. They include current U.S. Attorneys Matthew Mead of Wyoming and Eric Melgren of Kansas and former prosecutors James K. Vines of Nashville and Michael G. Heavican of Nebraska.

Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons (R) has had a few brushes with the law recently over vacationing with defense contractors and grabbing a woman in a parking garage. Now that federal investigators are bearing down on him over an alleged cash-for-contracts scheme, Gibbons is likely to remain in the limelight.

Federal investigators are probing former Republican House member Gibbons’ involvement with the tiny Nevada software company eTreppid Technologies. Gibbons admits he opened doors for the company, which has secured millions of dollars in defense contracts. Gibbons has, in some instances, called gifts from eTreppid appropriate because of his longtime friendship with the company's owner Warren Trepp. Other times Gibbons has denied accepting lavish gifts. Gibbons and Trepp lived the high life together at least once on a Caribbean cruise, of which there are photos, but it's unclear who picked up the tab. At a minimum, Gibbons has accepted $100,000 in campaign contributions from Trepp, according to disclosure records.

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It's a brand new muck format. Tell us what you think.

Following yesterday’s stunning revelation by the Washington Post that 26 US attorneys had been considered for dismissals, professionals all around the country are trying to figure out what the Justice Department felt they were doing wrong. Local papers in Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Kentucky and Georgia ask their own attorneys. The consensus? Says stunned USA Dunn Lampton (MS): “I don’t have a clue.”

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It would be wrong to call the House ethics committee incompetent. Because, really, it ably strives to make itself as irrelevant and impotent as possible.

Please take a moment out of your day to appreciate its efforts.

From Roll Call (sub. req.):

The House ethics committee has declared that an earmark requested by Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) to build a commuter transit center near a handful of properties he owns would not be an impermissible financial conflict because any benefit to Calvert would be shared by other similarly situated landowners.

Just let that sit a little bit. Calvert used his power as a lawmaker to appropriate $5.6 million in taxpayer dollars to build a transit center that's within walking distance of seven of his properties (ranging from office and/or retail buildings to a storage facility). But there's no conflict there, mostly because any financial benefit Calvert achieved “would be experienced as a member of a class of landholders in the vicinity of the transit Center.” You can read the ethics committee's opinion letter here. Here's a map of Calvert's properties (click to enlarge):

In other words, because Calvert's aren't the only buildings that might financially benefit from the transit center, there's no conflict. Or as the committee puts it in its own artfully contorted language: "We conclude that it is within your discretion for you to conclude that your properties do not constitute a financial interest in the earmark supporting the Corona Transit Center."

OK, so let's just say that I'm a property-rich lawmaker who wants to push the boundaries and play the earmark game for all its worth. What would it take for me to get into trouble? Just how self-serving of a project would actually garner the House ethics committee's disapproval?

“You’d have to be remodeling your kitchen,” Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense told me.

The committee's ruling is great news for Calvert (whose earmarking shenanigans have attracted attention before) and the growing group of lawmakers in the "honest graft" game (Justin had a great round-up over at ABC yesterday). And it's yet another indication that the House ethics committee actually has a lower standard for wrongdoing than our criminal justice system, which is why far more lawmakers have come under federal investigation in the past several years than have been investigated by the ethics committee (Calvert is no exception).

The Washington Post reported this morning that Michael Elston, chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, had suggested five U.S. attorneys to be fired in November of last year, just a month before the firings.

Now Elston's lawyer is saying that you got him all wrong. Elston didn't mean for those U.S. attorneys to be fired. No. He was just passing along some names suggested to him by others. Totally different. From The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

"At no time did Mike ever believe that any of the U.S. attorneys mentioned in the Nov. 1 e-mail should be dismissed," Driscoll said in a statement. "To the contrary, Mike's view is that the five U.S. attorneys mentioned in the e-mail are among the department's best."...

Elston simply passed on the names suggested to him by others after he was asked in October to find out if concerns existed about any U.S. attorneys that top Justice Department officials were not aware of, according to Driscoll.

"Mike did what was requested of him, and forwarded the names that others had suggested," Driscoll stated. "...Mike recommended that they not be added to the list of those whose resignations would be requested, and to his knowledge, they never were."

You can read Elston's email here. Funny, I'm not seeing "Don't Fire These Prosecutors" in the subject line (actually, it's "Other Possibilities").

Note: Elston's suggestions, remember, were the most curious -- including Mary Beth Buchanan, Pittsburgh's U.S. attorney, who's very close to the department leadership and was even consulted on which U.S. attorneys should be fired.

Surprise, surprise. From The Washington Post:

Attorneys for Vice President Cheney and top White House officials told a federal judge today they cannot be held liable for anything they disclosed to reporters about covert CIA officer Valerie Plame or her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV....

Attorneys for Cheney and the other officials said any conversations they had about Plame with each other and reporters were part of their normal job duties because they were discussing foreign policy and engaging in an appropriate "policy dispute." Cheney's attorney went farther, arguing that Cheney is legally akin to the president because of his unique government role, and has absolute immunity from any lawsuit.

"So you're arguing there is nothing -- absolutely nothing - these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment [whether it was] true or false?," U.S. District Judge John D. Bates asked.

"That's true, your honor. Mr. Wilson was criticizing government policy," said Jeffrey S. Bucholtz, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's civil division. "These officials were responding to that criticism."

And we're back.

Since our last roll call, Gonzales received some Republican support during his House Judiciary Committee testimony. But the loss of his #2 Paul McNulty and the recent testimony of former Deputy Attorney General Comey have gained Gonzales a few more detractors in the Senate. Here -- as Democrats push for a no-confidence vote in the Senate -- is a complete list of Republicans who are saying (or hinting) that the Attorney General should go.

Update: We've added Sen. Coleman to the list, who joined the club today.
Update: Sen. Kit Bond has joined us.

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In a press conference today, Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), following the revelations in James Comey's testimony Tuesday and The Washington Post's story today that as many as 26 U.S. attorneys were considered for removal, called for a no-confidence vote concerning Alberto Gonzales in the Senate.

Here's some video:

Ever since James Comey's testimony Tuesday, there's been a renewed burst of speculation about just what secret domestic surveilance program(s) the administration has been running.

Marty Lederman over at Balkinization offers a great rundown of the best guesses about what the administration has been up to.

But Comey's testimony and new details in The New York Times this morning mean that it's now possible to lay out a timeline of why all of this came to a head in March of 2004 when the program had been going on for more than two years at that point.

A TPM Reader writes in to lay it all out:

We’re starting to see a timeline emerge on the confrontation between the White House and Justice on domestic spying.

The first date to mark on your calendar, I think, is October 3, 2003. That’s when the Senate confirms Jack L. Goldsmith as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. In June, with Goldsmith’s nomination before the senate, John Yoo had left his job as the deputy at OLC to return to his teaching gig at Boalt.

Fast forward to December 11, 2003, when Comey is confirmed as Deputy Attorney General. He immediately assumes a more aggessive posture than his predecessor, Larry Thompson. The Times reports this morning that “with Mr. Comey’s backing, Mr. Goldsmith questioned what he considered shaky legal reasoning in several crucial opinions, including some drafted by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo.”

But that was just the beginning. Thompson had not been authorized access to the details of the NSA program. But, reports the NYTimes, “Comey was eventually authorized to take part in the program and to review intelligence
material that grew out of it” (1/1/06). He set Goldsmith to the task of sorting through the program’s dubious legality. Goldsmith’s “review of legal memoranda on the N.S.A. program and interrogation practices became a source of friction between Mr. Comey and the White House,” the Times reports today. And we know from Comey’s testimony that by “the White House,” we mean, principally, Dick Cheney and David Addington.

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No Dissent on Spying Program, Says Justice Department
"The Justice Department said yesterday that it will not retract a sworn statement in 2006 by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that the Terrorist Surveillance Program had aroused no controversy inside the Bush administration, despite congressional testimony Tuesday that senior departmental officials nearly resigned in 2004 to protest such a program. The department's affirmation of Gonzales's remarks raised fresh questions about the nature of the classified dispute, which former U.S. officials say led then-Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey and as many as eight colleagues to discuss resigning." (Washington Post)

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It's a U.S. attorney firing extravaganza!

26 of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys were on the firing list at one time or another, reports The Washington Post. It's a list too long and mixed to even try to make sense of. As Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) puts it, the many lists "show how amok this process was."

Let's start with those names that make some sense, given with what we know about the firings so far, and move on to those that don't.

McClatchy reports that two of those names were Gregory Miller, the U.S. attorney for the northern district of Florida in Tallahassee, and Bill Leone, the former acting U.S. attorney for Colorado. Both are battleground states, McClatchy notes, "where allegations of voter fraud and countercharges of voter intimidation have flown in recent years" -- and both are states that preoccupy Karl Rove. Miller appears to have been on the chopping block from the beginning of the process through the end, but somehow escaped -- he's still there. Silsby's still there, too.

Neither Miller or Leone claim to have much of a clue as to what might have put them on a list of U.S. attorneys to be fired. But from both of their backgrounds -- Miller is a career federal prosecutor and Leone is a career trial lawyer who had five years prosecutorial experience when he became the U.S. attorney -- it's evident that neither comfortably fit the description of "loyal Bushies."

The same goes for Maine's Paula Silsby, who apparently made a number of appearances on the firing lists through November 2006, according to the Post. Silsby is that rare thing -- a court appointed U.S. attorney (appointed in 2001, far before the Justice Department slipped in a provision to take that power away from the courts). And although she enjoys the support of Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-ME), Silsby has never been nominated for the spot by President Bush. You won't be shocked to learn that Silsby's only real qualification is that she's qualified -- she's been an assistant U.S. attorney in that office for 24 years.

But now on to those U.S. attorneys on the list who don't fit the pattern. From the Post:

One memo sent to Sampson last November from Michael J. Elston, chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, suggested firing Mary Beth Buchanan, the U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh, who supervised the nation's prosecutors for a year and now heads the Office on Violence Against Women, sources said.

The same e-mail also listed prosecutor Christopher J. Christie in New Jersey, a major GOP donor who has undertaken several high-profile public-corruption probes -- including one into the real estate deals of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) -- and who announced indictments in a terrorism case last week.

Now, I just find this confusing. Buchanan is an administration favorite -- she's one of those few U.S. attorneys who've pulled double duty with a second job at main Justice and was even consulted as part of the U.S. attorney firing process. And Christie, as the Post points out, has all the right qualifications and has pursued all the right prosecutions. So what gives?

Of course, neither Buchanan or Christie actually got the ax. And with all these names flying back and forth, some of them suggested by Justice Department officials, there are still only six U.S. attorneys who are at the center of this controversy, all of whom were apparently targeted for removal by the White House for reasons that no one has explained. Those names stuck. Why?

Here's Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) on Hardball earlier this afternoon on how long Alberto Gonzales will be able to stick around at the Department Justice.

Democrats are loathe to use the tool of impeachment, Whitehouse said, but added "I think that as we continue to put the pressure on, it may get to the point where even if the president’s highest purpose is to get his administration out of Washington without further indictment, it’s still not worth it to carry the weight of Attorney General Gonzales and his incompetent and very unprincipled administration of the Department of Justice."

With immunity secured, Monica Goodling has been scheduled to testify about the U.S. attorney firings before the House Judiciary Committee next Wednesday, May 23rd at 10:15 AM.

As ex-U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias has said, Goodling, the former White House liaison to the Justice Department, holds the "keys to the kingdom."

Nothing like an angry letter from two senior senators to get results.

Late this afternoon, the Justice Department responded to the Senate Judiciary Committee's subpoena for any of Karl Rove's emails in the Department's possession that might be relevant to the U.S. attorney firings.

And the results? (pdf) Underwhelming. The Department searched the email accounts of sixteen Justice Department officials over the period of November 1, 2004 through May 2, 2007. All they found, according to the letter from Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling, was a single email sent on February 28, 2007 forwarding a copy of McClatchy's bombshell story on U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias. Attached is an already produced email from Rove's aide Scott Jennings warning that the story was on its way (Jennings notes that Sen. Pete Domenici's (R-NM) strategy is "not to respond [to requests for comment] and hopefully make this a one day story").

Hertling added in the letter that the Department is continuing to search for relevant documents.

Hertling also revealed that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald also didn't have any relevant documents. Fitzgerald, remember, obtained a number of Rove's emails as part of the Valerie Plame investigation. But Hertling said that Fitzgerald had only obtained emails relevant to the Plame investigation -- not all of Rove's emails. And none of what Fitzgerald has, Hertling says, is relevant to the U.S. attorney firings.

Remember that Rove seems to have used an email account provided by the Republican National Committee for virtually all of his email correspondence (and Rove apparently deleted a lot of those). The RNC has said that it will turn over all relevant emails to the White House, which will then make a determination of whether the emails are protected by executive privilege before turning anything over to Congress. In other words, it's going to be hard slog before Congress gets what it's looking for.

A third corruption guilty plea since last week came out of Alaska yesterday. This time, prominent lobbyist Bill Bobrick owned up to a conspiracy to bribe former state Rep. Tom Anderson, who himself was indicted on seven felony counts of bribery, extortion and money laundering in December. Last week, top executives at one of Bobrick’s client companies, VECO Corp., pled guilty to charges of bribing three state representatives and two senators. The Anchorage Daily News had the story on Bobrick this morning.

The prosecution says in court papers that Bobrick and Anderson began conspiring in July 2004. Bobrick created a sham company to funnel payments to Anderson in exchange for his doing the bidding of a private corrections company in the state Legislature, the prosecution says. Prosecutors quote Bobrick telling an informant that he and Anderson were "pitching a bunch of people" to get money for the legislator.

Either Alberto Gonzales lied under oath last year or the administration has another major domestic spying program we don't know about.

Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Russ Feingold (D-WI), and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) want to know which one it is.

In Sen. Pat Leahy's (D-VT) letter to the White House today was a bit of news. A bit of bad news for Alberto Gonzales.

According to Sen. Leahy, Kyle Sampson has told congressional investigators that when Alberto Gonzales finally nixed the plan to permanently install Karl Rove's former aide as a U.S. attorney without Senate confirmation, Rove's senior aide Sara Taylor was "upset." And according to Sampson's testimony, Gonzales didn't say no until late in the game -- when the U.S. attorney firings controversy was already gaining steam. That's not what Gonzales told Congress.

When Gonzales testified before the Senate last month, he claimed that he'd always rejected the idea of using a Patriot Act provision to appoint handpicked U.S. attorneys and keep them in place indefinitely without Senate confirmation as "interim" U.S. attorneys. In a December 19, 2006 email to the White House, Kyle Sampson had specifically advocated using the provision to install Timothy Griffin, Rove's former aide who was installed as the U.S. attorney for Little Rock, over the objections of the state's two Democratic senators. But Gonzales said that he'd never seen that email and he'd never considered Sampson's plan. "I didn't consider it and wouldn't consider it," Gonzales testified.

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Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT), following up an angry letter last night to Alberto Gonzales, wrote White House counsel Fred Fielding today to warn that if the White House did not stop stonewalling the committee's U.S. attorney firings investigation, then "I will have no choice but to issue subpoenas to try to get to the truth in this matter."

Leahy first requested interviews with Karl Rove and other White House staff two months ago. Leahy's request was met with a White House offer to have Rove and others interviewed privately with no oath and no transcript. Efforts by Leahy and others, including ranking member Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), to get the White House to moderate its offer have been unsuccessful.

During those two months, the Senate and House judiciary committees have been steadily accumulating evidence of White House involvement in the firings. And so Leahy's writing again. You can read the letter here.

Some excerpts below the fold.

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We'll have video of James Comey's testimony yesterday soon over at TPM (Update: Here it is.), but until then, a TPM Reader writes in to provide some context:

Trust the Washington press corps to lunge for the process story, and ignore the substance.

When the warrantless wiretap surveillance program came up for review in March of 2004, it had been running for two and a half years. We still don't know precisely what form the program took in that period, although some details have been leaked. But we now know, courtesy of Comey, that the program was so odious, so thoroughly at odds with any conception of constitutional liberties, that not a single senior official in the Bush administration's own Department of Justice was willing to sign off on it. In fact, Comey reveals, the entire top echelon of the Justice Department was prepared to resign rather than see the program reauthorized, even if its approval wasn't required. They just didn't want to be part of an administration that was running such a program.

This wasn't an emergency program; more than two years had elapsed, ample time to correct any initial deficiencies. It wasn’t a last minute crisis; Ashcroft and Comey had both been saying, for weeks, that they would withhold
approval. But at the eleventh hour, the President made one final push, dispatching his most senior aides to try to secure approval for a continuation of the program, unaltered.

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Yes, this sort of thing has become sadly routine.

George W. Bush appointed a senior manufacturing industry lobbyist to oversee consumer lawsuits filed against companies whose interests he pushed, reports The New York Times.

And the lobbyist, Michael E. Baroody, will get a $150,000 severance package from the National Association of Manufacturers.

But, not to worry, Baroody has assured everyone that the payment won’t influence his impartiality.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena for any of Karl Rove's emails in the Department's possession that might be relevant to the U.S. attorney firings. The deadline was 2 PM yesterday. The deadline came and went. And now Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) and ranking member Arlen Specter (R-PA) are angry.

“You ignored the subpoena, did not come forward today, did not produce the documents and did not even offer an explanation for your noncompliance,” the senators wrote in a letter to Alberto Gonzales today. “Your action today is in defiance of the Committee’s subpoena without explanation of any legal basis for doing so.” You can read the letter here.

The senators set a new deadline, this Friday at May 18, 10 AM. If the Justice Department does not respond to the subpoena, the senators ask that they at least explain why they're not responding "so that the Chairman and the Committee can assess any objections to the subpoena or privileges claimed by the Department."

"The Committee intends to get to the truth," they conclude.

Looks like James Comey's testimony yesterday has added new momentum to the already crowded Gonzales resignation bandwagon. Here's Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) today:

“The American people deserve an Attorney General, the chief law enforcement officer of our country, whose honesty and capability are beyond question. Attorney General Gonzales can no longer meet this standard. He has failed this country. He has lost the moral authority to lead. Comey’s testimony yesterday brings to light the latest episode in a series of questionable actions by Attorney General Gonzales. It is another part of a pattern of flawed decision making by the Attorney General.

“America is a nation of laws. In the interest of the American people, Alberto Gonzales should resign now."

White House Shifts Away from Wolfowitz
For the first time since Paul Wolfowitz's employment imbroglio with Shaha Riza, the White House has shown signs of something other than unquestioned support itself from its former Deputy Secretary of Defense. The New York Times reports that Bush would be willing to have Wolfowitz resign voluntarily if the bank board dropped its drive to declare him unfit to remain in office. Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that the World Bank Board is still deliberating what action to take against Wolfowitz.

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It took little more than 12 hours after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty announced that he will resign for Alberto "I accept responsibility" Gonzales to lay the U.S. attorney firings at his feet. As many have pointed out, Gonzales barely gave McNulty any time to turn around before he stabbed him in the back.

Actually, it was a clever double stab by Gonzales -- his resigned chief of staff Kyle Sampson (who's been stabbed before) collected the recommendations and it was McNulty's job to vet those recommendations. What's left for an attorney general to do?

But there is an important point to be made here. Everything that Gonzales said about the duties of the deputy attorney general is true. For instance:

The Deputy Attorney General has a unique position at the DOJ. Most of the operational authority and decisions are made by the Deputy Attorney General. He is the chief operating officer — that’s the way I’ve structured the Department. And so he occupies a very central place in the work of the Department....

Mr. Sampson provided the recommendations. The one person I would care about would be the views of the Deputy Attorney General because the Deputy Attorney General as a direct supervisor of the United States Attorneys...

Gonzales' appalling dereliction of duty has tended to obscure McNulty's appalling dereliction of duty. It shouldn't. There's plenty of blame to go around.

Here, for instance, is how McNulty's predecessor, James Comey, described the duties of the deputy attorney general:

"I was the direct supervisor of all the U.S. attorneys, and so dealt with them quite frequently on a variety of matters: resolving disputes, talking with them about resources, trying to support them in any way that I could."

"Trying to support them in any way that I could."

By contrast, we have a deputy attorney general who allowed himself to be steamrolled by his inferiors to fire eight U.S. attorneys for, in most cases, no apparent reason. And then after that was done, he helped smear their reputations in order to cover for the Department and the administration.

You need look no further than the case of U.S. Attorney for Nevada Daniel Bogden as a vivid example of this.

Here's McNulty meekly writing to Sampson two days before the firings that he was "a little skittish about [firing] Bogden... I'll admit I haven't looked at his district's performance." Later, he would tell congressional investigators that "he had hoped for some explanation for Bogden's inclusion on the list because he saw no apparent reason to fire him." Nevertheless, he testified to Congress that Bogden had been fired for "performance" reasons. He now says that he regrets the firing.

Maybe this was Gonzales' strategy -- to surround himself with such an eminently blameworthy staff?

What do you do if you're competing for a transportation contract with the Department of Homeland Security but don't actually own any buses? Get Duke Cunningham.

From The Blotter:

The Department of Homeland Security violated government regulations by awarding a multi-million-dollar contract to a limousine company with ties to the Duke Cunningham scandal, a recent investigation concluded....

What's more, the inspector general's report determined that DHS failed to conduct due diligence on Shirlington to ensure they could fulfill the terms of the contract, which required the company to run several shuttle buses for DHS employees and provide drivers and dispatchers for a fleet of government cars.

Shortly after Shirlington got the contract, it told DHS it did not have buses for the agency, according to the report. It said it did not have the money to buy new buses and asked for a cash advance from the department to help buy new ones, investigators found.

DHS declined the request. It took several weeks for Shirlington to lease new buses to ferry department employees to and from work, according to the report.

In his testimony today, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey described an attempt by the White House in 2004 to go behind Comey's back -- even though he was the acting attorney general because Ashcroft was hospitalized -- to get John Ashcroft's signature on the reauthorization order for the administration's warrantless wiretapping program.

Ashcroft at the time was in the intensive care unit of George Washington University Hospital with pancreatitis and was recovering from gall bladder surgery. Comey testified that the late night effort by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and White House chief of staff Andrew Card to get Ashcroft to sign the order was a plan to "take advantage of a sick man."

But Tony Snow doesn't see what the big deal is: "Because he had an appendectomy, his brain didn't work?" (Yes, he got the organ wrong.)

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), along with subcommittee chair Linda Sanchez (D-CA) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) wrote Alberto Gonzales today to press for details about the firing of U.S. Attorney for Kansas City Todd Graves and the subsequent hiring of Bradley Schlozman. They also took some time to point out that Gonzales' answers about Graves and Schlozman last week didn't hold up to scrutiny.

Gonzales testified, for example, that Gonzales had not mentioned Graves' firing before because his firing had been outside of the "process" -- that's despite the fact, the lawmakers, point out, that Graves was fired in exactly the same manner as the other eight U.S. attorneys (with a phone call from Justice Department official Michael Battle who assured the U.S. attorney that there was no particular reason he/she was being asked to step aside) only weeks after Graves' name appeared on Kyle Sampson's list of prosecutors to be fired.

And Gonzales was simply wrong, they write, when he argued that the Justice Department's lawsuit to purge Missouri's voter rolls, pushed by voter-fraud hawk Bradley Schlozman, was defeated mainly on jurisdictional grounds. On the contrary, they write, quoting portions of the judge's opinion against the Justice Deparment, the judge found that the suit was fundamentally flawed -- pointing out, for instance, that the Department had failed to show that any actual voter fraud had occurred as a result of ineligible voters being on the rolls.

Full text of the letter is below the fold.

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The search for a reason, any reason for U.S. Attorney for Nevada Daniel Bogden's firing continues.

On Monday, The Washington Post reported that a Justice Department official had raised concerns about Bogden's performance on voter fraud. Maybe that was why he was canned?

Well, if so, it wasn't because Nevada Republicans were up in arms about it, reports The Las Vegas Sun. Despite the fact that Karl Rove had "made sure to mention it to state officials during a campaign swing through Las Vegas just months before the contested 2004 election," the Sun reports, there seem to have been no complaints at all:

Secretary of State Ross Miller, a Democrat, said he knew of no cases brought to the U.S. attorney’s office in recent years. Nevada Republicans say the same.

The biggest case Nevada had seen recently were allegations in 2004 that a Republican-financed group had shredded registration cards from Democratic voters. The FBI investigated but it appears the case was not forwarded to Bogden.

But as we've learned in New Mexico, Washington, and Missouri, there doesn't actually have to have been credible allegations of voter fraud in order for the administration to be unhappy with a U.S. attorney's lack of attention to it.

Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) takes his case before a Washington, D.C. appeals court panel today, in a move to get back documents the congressman’s lawyers say were wrongfully snatched from his office by the FBI in a raid.

Jefferson has been the brunt of FBI searches and a battery of allegations after he accepted $100,000 from an undercover FBI informant last year, and then stashed the money meant to bribe the Vice President of Nigeria, in his freezer, wrapped in frozen food packaging and aluminum foil.*

The freezer cash isn’t at issue today, though.

Jefferson’s lawyers are going to argue that the Constitution’s “Speech or Debate” clause should have shielded their client from the search of his Congressional office. Politicians on both sides of the aisle rallied around Jefferson last year in support of his argument.

The clause, found here in Article 1, Section 6, reads:

They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

*Update: This post originally stated that Jefferson has been charged. He has not.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey detailed the desperate late night efforts by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and White House chief of staff Andrew Card to get the Justice Department to approve a secret program -- the warrantless wiretapping program.

According to Comey's testimony this morning, only when faced with resignations by a number of Justice Department officials including Comey, his chief of staff, Ashcroft's chief of staff, Ashcroft himself and possibly Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, did the White House agree to make changes to the program that would satisfy the requirements of the Justice Department to sign off on it (Comey refused to name the program, but it's apparent from the context and prior reports that this was the warrantless wiretapping program).

The events took place in March of 2004, when the program was in need of renewal by the Justice Department. When then-Attorney General John Ashcroft fell ill and was hospitalized, Comey became the acting-Attorney General.

The deadline for the Justice Department's providing its sign-off of the program was March 11th (the program required reauthorization every 45 days). On that day, Comey, then the acting AG, informed the White House that he "would not certify the legality" of the program.

According to Comey, he was on his way home when he got a call from Ashcroft's wife that Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card were on their way to the hospital*. Comey then rushed to the hospital (sirens blaring) to beat them there and thwart "an effort to overrule me."

After Comey arrived at the hospital with a group of senior Justice Department officials, Gonzales and Card arrived and walked up to Ashcroft, who was lying barely conscious on his hospital bed. "Gonzales began to explain why he was there, to seek his approval for a matter," Comey testified. But Ashcroft rebuffed Gonzales and told him that Comey was the attorney general now. "The two men turned and walked from the room," said Comey.

A "very upset" Andrew Card then called Comey and demanded that he come to the White House for a meeting at 11 PM that night.

After meeting with Justice Department officials at the Justice Deaprtment, Comey went to the White House with Ted Olson, then the Solicitor General to the White House. He brought Olson along, Comey said, because he wanted a witness for the meeting.

But Card didn't let Olson enter and Comey had a private discussion with Card. This discussion, Comey testified, was much "calmer." According to Comey, Card was concerned about reports that there were to be large numbers of resignations at Justice Department. Gonzales entered with Olson and the four had an apparently not very fruitful discussion.

The program was reauthorized without the signature of the attorney general. Because of that, Comey said, he prepared a letter of resignation. "I believed that I couldn't stay if the administration was going to engage in conduct that Justice Department said had no legal basis."

At this point, according to Comey, a number of senior Justice Department officials, including Ashcroft, were prepared to resign.

When Comey went in on that Friday, March 12th to give the White House its customary morning briefing, Comey said that the president pulled him aside. They had a 15 minute private meeting, the content of which Comey would not divulge. But Comey did suggest at the conclusion of that conversation that the president speak with FBI Director Mueller. And so that meeting followed. Following that meeting, Comey said that Mueller brought word that the Justice Department was to do whatever was "necessary" to make the program into one that the Justice Department could sign off on.

Comey said that it took two to three weeks for the Justice Department to do the analysis necessary to have the program approved. During that time, the program went on without Justice Department approval. But following the Justice Department's suggested changes, the Justice Department (either Ashcroft or Comey) did sign off on the program.

More on this soon.

*Update: A commenter below rightly points out that, according to Comey, the call to Ashcroft's wife that Gonzales and Card were on their way to the hospital came from the president himself.

Update: Here's The New York Times' story last January first reporting word of Gonzales' bedside visit. Comey's, obviously, is a much fuller account.

Update: After hearing Comey's "shocking" account, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that it made him wonder anew how Gonzales could remain as the attorney general, since he evidently had so little respect for the rule of law.

Update: ThinkProgress has a transcript of Comey's testimony.

Former CIA Official Pleads Not Guilty
"A former top CIA official pleaded not guilty Monday to new charges that he pushed a proposed government contract worth at least $100 million for his best friend in return for lavish vacations, private jet flights and a lucrative job offer. The indictment, returned last week, replaced charges brought in February against Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who resigned from the spy agency a year ago, and defense contractor Brent Wilkes. Foggo and Wilkes now face 30 wide-ranging counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. Each faces more than 20 years in prison if convicted, prosecutors said." (Associated Press)

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So Paul McNulty is on his way out, but as The Washington Post points out, his successor's confirmation is likely to be a flash point in the battle between the White House and Congress:

McNulty's pending departure may add to the tumult at the upper reaches of the Justice Department, where only Gonzales and a handful of others involved in the prosecutor dismissals remain. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.) and other top Democrats have indicated that they will not confirm any senior Justice nominees until they receive e-mails they have demanded from the White House and are allowed to conduct interviews about the firings.

Since McNulty has signalled that he'll remain in place until the administration nominates a successor, he could be there for a long while.

Oversight, the Bush administration way.

The White House's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has been an open joke ever since it was launched as a result of a recommendation from the 9/11 Commission's 2004 report. The panel was supposed to keep a sharp eye on the government's possible infringement on citizens' civil liberties. But it turns out that it's a bigger joke than people even realized.

Yesterday, one of the board's five handpicked members, Lanny Davis, resigned. Davis, a former Clinton White House official, left over "administration attempts to control the panel’s agenda and edit its public statements."

Now, we already knew that the board had virtually no power or independence. Here's how Justin described it last November:

The board can't demand documents; it can't force bureaucrats who actually implement the program -- and who might be aware of malfeasance -- to speak with them under oath. Instead, its sole and complete authority is to take the administration at its word.

But apparently even this powerless watchdog was too much of a threat to the White House. According to The Washington Post, the White House "made more than 200 revisions" to the board's annual report to Congress this April, some of them deletions of entire passages.

Like, for instance:

Davis charged that the White House sought to remove an extensive discussion of recent findings by the Justice Department’s inspector general of FBI abuses in the uses of so-called “national security letters” to obtain personal data on U.S. citizens without a court order. He also charged that the White House counsel’s office wanted to strike language stating that the panel planned to investigate complaints from civil liberties groups that the Justice Department had improperly used a “material witness statute” to lock up terror suspects for lengthy periods of time without charging them with any crimes.

And the reason for striking the passage about the "material witness statute"?

Chairman Carol E. Dinkins told board members March 29 that the White House counsel's office had asked to delete the passage, fearing the revelation might inflame the ongoing political controversy over the administration's dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys.

OK, so the White House deleted two passages. The first was a discussion of an already completed investigation, the results of which had already been made public. Presumably the White House didn't want to reopen old wounds. The second was spiked because it was inconvenient from a PR perspective. You get the picture.

But it gets even better. Here's the White House's unapologetic response when asked why it had been tying the hands of its internal watchdog:

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called the editing "standard operating procedure," saying it was appropriate because the board remains legally under the supervision of the Executive Office of the President.

"When you have a formal document going to Congress from any part of the Executive Office of the President, it stands to reason that it must be formally reviewed before it is released," Perino said Monday evening.

I think what Perino's describing is more accurately described as "undersight."

Although Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty cites "the financial realities of college-age children and two decades of public service" in his resignation letter as the reasons behind his "long overdue transition," it's apparent to everyone why he's leaving now, and why he's been rumored to be on his way out since late March.

From the AP:

...his ultimate decision to step down, [two senior Department of Justice] aides said, was hastened by anger at being linked to the prosecutors' purge that Congress is investigating to determine if eight U.S. attorneys were fired for political reasons. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about McNulty's decision.

McNulty also irked his boss, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, by testifying in February that at least one of the fired prosecutors was ordered to make way for a protege of Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser. Gonzales, who has resisted lawmakers' calls to resign, maintains the firings were proper, and rooted in the prosecutors' lackluster performances.

Here's a statement just put out by the Department of Justice:

The Department of Justice will be losing a dynamic and thoughtful leader with the departure of Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty. Paul announced today that he would leave the Department later this summer after more than eight years of service.

In his position as Deputy Attorney General, for which he was confirmed in March 2006 and served in an acting capacity since November 2005, Paul has been an effective manager of day-to-day operations. He has also been the principal driver of the Department’s policies and efforts to prevent corporate fraud and stop those who seek to defraud the taxpayers through fraudulent procurement practices. In addition, he has made significant contributions to establishing the rule of law in Iraq. Before serving as Deputy, Paul was U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, where he successfully prosecuted some of our Nation's highest profile cases in the War on Terror. From 1990-1993, he served in the Department as the director of the Office of Policy and Communications under Attorney General William P. Barr.

Paul’s long career in public service includes his work for the U.S. Congress and the Commonwealth of Virginia, and there can be no doubt that the Nation has benefited from his selfless dedication to good government.

Paul is an outstanding public servant and a fine attorney who has been valued here at the Department, by me and so many others, as both a colleague and a friend. He will be missed. On behalf of the Department, I wish him well in his future endeavors.

The AP is reporting that Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty will resign according to "two Justice Department officials." We'll have more when it becomes available.

Kyle “Dusty” Foggo and Brent Wilkes head to federal court today where they will likely plead not guilty to new conspiracy and money laundering charges.

Indictments against the pair came Friday that expand the charges filed against them in February.

In addition to the old charges, in the new indictment, Foggo, former executive director of the CIA, is accused of slipping his lifelong friend, Wilkes, a $132 million federal contract to “provide commercial cover for CIA air operations.”

You can see the portion of Foggo’s indictment describing the scam here.

The indictment says Wilkes was patently unqualified to handle the task, seeing that he had no prior air-support experience.

How, then, did Wilkes get such a contract?

According to the indictment, Foggo had been funneling Wilkes classified government documents, despite Wilkes’ lack of security authorization, that seemed to prepare him for the pitch.

In exchange for Foggo’s cooperation, Wilkes took his pal on vacation to exotic locations like Hawaii and Scotland, offered Foggo rides in a private jet and treated him to fancy dinners at such restaurants as the Capital Grille (which recently won Consumer Reports’ award for the best hamburger in America). Judging by the $344.78 bill rang up by Foggo, he probably ordered something else.

Was U.S. Attorney for Nevada Daniel Bogden fired because he didn't prioritize voter fraud prosecutions? That's the latest theory at least.

Bogden's firing has elicited a number of strained rationales from the Justice Department, but we've heard precious little from Bogden himself.

For his part, Bogden says he doesn't know why he was fired, but since we're engaging in a guessing game, he ought to get a shot too.

There have been a number of "theories" for his dismissal, he wrote (pdf) in answers given to Congress. And "one of the noteworthy articles of interest pertaining to my situation," he wrote, "was an article that recently appeared in the Las Vegas Review Journal...."

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Concerning The Philadelphia Inquirer's story about a "voter alert!" going out to New Jersey voters in a local election, the following statement was just released by Michael Drewniak, Public Affairs Officer of the U.S. Attorney's office in New Jersey:

A story published in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer which said the U.S. Attorney's Office flooded Camden with taped phone messages warning against buying votes in that city's recent election was false. Neither the U.S. Attorney's Office or the Voting Rights Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice had any role in the phone-message blitz.

As U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie noted, the U.S. Attorney's Office would never engage in such a practice, which clearly could have been used as a voter-suppression tactic. The U.S. Attorney's Office was not contacted to authenticate the matter or comment for the story, which implied the office sanctioned or was the source of the recorded phone-message blitz.

The Inquirer's story contained a transcript of the call, which cleverly gave the impression of coming from the U.S. attorney's office, while not actually saying that it was:

"Voters alert!" said the taped message. "Please note that it is a federal crime to be paid for a vote. I repeat, it is a crime. If you or your neighbor have been offered payment, please report it immediately to the U.S. Attorney's Office at 856-757-5026."

So now the question is: who paid for the robo calling? And where else have such robo calls been used?

On her last day in the Civil Rights Division's voting rights section, an African-American 33-year veteran of the Justice Department wanted to send her colleagues a message: "I leave with fond memories of the Voting Section I once knew," she wrote, "and I am gladly escaping the 'Plantation' it has become. For my colleagues still under the 'whip', hold on - 'The Times They are A Changing.'"

The woman, who retired in late December of last year, was not alone in seeing racial discrimination in the Civil Rights Division and the voting rights section in particular. The section, which is charged with protecting the voting rights of minorities, has seen a dramatic drain in African-American staff over the past few years. And a number of those who have remained have alleged discrimination -- according to a knowledgable source, at least two African-American employees have filed Equal Employment Opportunity complaints against their supervisors, claiming they've routinely been passed over for promotions given to white staff.

Carl Goldman, executive director of AFSCME's Council 26, the union that represents non-attorney staff in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, told me that he frequently hears similar complaints:

“When I ask our members in the Civil Rights Division what’s their biggest problem, their answer is discrimination.... They tell me stories about minority employees being continually passed over for jobs that are given to white employees. They talk about disrespect from managers. They talk about explicitly racist comments that are made by attorneys, the same attorneys that have been brought in by the Republican political appointees that run [the Justice Department].

"While there are serious problems throughout the Civil Rights Division," Goldman said, "the worst offender is the voting section.”

Over the past two years, there's been a continual drain of African-American attorneys from the section. Six African-American attorneys have left; there are currently only two out of a total of approximately thirty-five, estimates Joe Rich, the former chief of the voting section.

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When your bid to build a bridge to nowhere is shut down, try to get federal funding for another bridge, to a different part of nowhere – where your friends own property.

John Stanton of Roll Call wrote a great story (Sub. Req.) that parses out the likely motivations for the Alaska Congressional delegation’s work over the last few months to snag federal cash for a bridge to connect an area where no one lives to Anchorage.

Why bother to invest in infrastructure to nowhere?

Well, it could make the remote area, called “Knik Arm,” a major suburb, but more importantly, folks with familial and political ties to Republican Rep. Don Young and Sens. Ted Stevens and Lisa Murkowski would profit:

If the area is successfully developed, that could mean a significant windfall for a number of people close to the Congressional delegation — including Young’s daughter, Joni, Stevens’ chief of staff and campaign manager and Murkowski’s state director — some of whom purchased land in the area just a few months before then-Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Young began substantive work on a massive highway bill in early 2003.

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Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House oversight committee, announced today that former CIA Director George Tenet has agreed to testify before his committee. The topic: the White House's hyping of false intelligence in the run-up to the war, specifically Iraq's alleged efforts to procure uranium from Niger.

June 19th's the date. And to make things even more interesting, Waxman has also scheduled Condoleezza Rice to appear at the same hearing. Waxman's committee has already issued a subpoena for Rice's testimony, a subpoena that Rice has signalled she will ignore. Waxman "continues to expect that she will comply with the congressional subpoena," notes the committee's press release. Rice had been scheduled to testify tomorrow.

Colleagues Cite Partisan Focus by Justice Official
"Two years ago, Robin C. Ashton, a seasoned criminal prosecutor at the Department of Justice, learned from her boss that a promised promotion was no longer hers. 'You have a Monica problem,' Ms. Ashton was told, according to several Justice Department officials. Referring to Monica M. Goodling, a 31-year-old, relatively inexperienced lawyer who had only recently arrived in the office, the boss added, 'She believes you’re a Democrat and doesn’t feel you can be trusted.'" (NY Times)

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Just how many of the fired U.S. attorneys were canned because they didn't pursue claims of voter fraud fervently enough?

The Washington Post counts 'em up: we know that David Iglesias of New Mexico and John McKay of Washington had angered state Republicans by not bringing indictments after highly publicized investigations of alleged liberal malfeasance. And we know that Todd Graves of Kansas City perhaps disappointed the leadership in D.C. by refusing to sign a Justice Department lawsuit to purge Missouri's voter rolls. And we know that Steven Biskupic of Milwaukee, despite a state full of unhappy Republicans, narrowly avoided being fired because he was lucky enough to have a very powerful political patron.

So that's three firings and one near miss.

And now the Post adds another: Daniel Bogden of Nevada, who was among the seven U.S. attorneys fired last December 7th. Bogden's firing has remained the greatest mystery -- and the efforts by Justice Department officials to justify it the most pathetic (an official told Congress that they wanted "renewed energy" in Bogden's district). But voter fraud prosecutions had not been raised as a possible reason for Bogden's dismissal until now.

Here's what the Post adds: When Justice Department official Matthew Friedrich -- following up on Karl Rove's request last October to investigate voter fraud allegations in three jurisdictions (Philadelphia, Milwaukee, New Mexico) -- called Benton Campbell, chief of staff for the Criminal Division, Campbell told him that Nevada was also "a problem district."

It's not clear from the Post's account whether Friedrich brought this news back to Kyle Sampson or whether word of Nevada's "problem" made it back to the White House. But what we do know now is that there's reason to believe that displeasure with a lack of voter fraud prosecutions was behind at least four of the nine prosecutors fired last year. Somehow, all four were in battleground states.

Put that together with the Justice Department's efforts to install U.S. attorneys who are gung-ho about voter fraud prosecutions and the picture becomes clearer.