The fact that a prosecutor has been named to continue the investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys doesn't seem to faze former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who issued a statement yesterday expressing relief that the process was over.

"My family and I are glad to have the investigation of my conduct in this matter behind us, and we look forward to moving on to new challenges," Gonzales said in a statement yesterday.

But the investigation, led by the Department of Justice's Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility might be far from "behind" Gonzales. Yesterday, Attorney General Michael Mukasey named Nora Dannehy, a Connecticut interim U.S. attorney, as a prosecutor in the firings. At the IG report's behest, Dannehy will continue the investigation and work of the OIG and OPR offices, but with the power to compel testimony.

Nevertheless, Gonzales and his attorney, George J. Terwilliger III seem to be operating in a cloud of denial.

The investigation "is clearly over as to him," Terwilliger is quoted as saying in the New York Times. "The inspector general after 18 months of investigation has basically concluded that the facts and circumstances regarding Judge Gonzales's activity do not include any unlawful conduct."

The IG report released today provides new details on the White House's involvement in the firings of U.S. attorneys, especially the administration's involvement in the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias.

Prior to Iglesias' removal on Dec. 7, 2006, New Mexico GOP Sen. Pete Domenici had already made multiple complaints to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about Iglesias. In addition, Mickey Barnett, a former GOP New Mexico state senator and a prominent lawyer, had met in Washington with DOJ White House Liason Monica Goodling to discuss his problems with Iglesias' handling of voter fraud cases.

But emails disclosed in the recently released IG report between Barnett, Domenici and White House political operative Karl Rove reveal that the complaints against Iglesias went beyond talks with the Justice Department, and that the White House was aware and involved in the removal of Iglesias from his post as U.S. attorney.

According to today's report, on October 2, 2006, Barnett e-mailed Karl Rove an article from a local paper expressing frustrations with the apparently stalled investigation into bribery of Democratic state Sen. Manny Aragon (NM).

In the email, Barnett blamed Iglesias' office for delaying the case against the Democratic lawmaker, something he had spoken to Goodling, Rove and Domenici about before, according to conversations detailed in the report. Specifically, Barnett and Rove had previously discussed "kick[ing Iglesias]. . . upstairs" as a way to get rid of him.

The October 2 email from Barnett to Rove again mentions the possibility of a "promotion" for Iglesias, and their face to face discussion of it the weekend before at a Republican fundraiser in New Mexico.

From page 173 of the report:

Karl,
This article confirms what I mentioned Saturday. An FBI agent told me more than six months ago that their investigation was done and been turned over to the US Attorney a long time ago. He said agents were totally frustrated with some even trying to get out
of New Mexico. I can put you or anyone you designate with lawyers knowledgeable about the US Atty office - including lawyers in the office - that will show how poorly it is being run.
Scott Jennings was kind enough to set up an appointment at the Justice Department several months ago where Pat Rogers and I laid all this out. I hope Justice can now be persuaded to send out some cracker jack prosecutor and perhaps promote Iglesias to a Justice department position.
We still await the results of the task force Iglesias convened about this time two years ago on the clear Acorn fraudulent voter registrations. We were told it would look to [sic] "political" to indict anyone that close to the election. Then we never heard anything else

Just a few weeks after Barnett's email, Domenici's chief of staff Steve Bell emailed Rove on Nov. 7, 2006, the day of mid-term Congressional elections complaining about ballot problems in a New Mexico precinct. Bell closed the email with the statement, "We worry about the USA here."

Rove responded just 32 minutes later stating, "I'd have the Senator call the Attorney General about this."

Exactly one month later, Iglesias was fired.

John Conyers (D-MI), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, released a statement today calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor from outside the Justice Department, to continue to investigate the U.S. attorney firings.

"We assume that Attorney General Mukasey will heed the report's call for further investigation, including determining whether criminal offenses were committed, and urge him to appoint a special counsel from outside the Justice Department to work with the Inspector General so the investigation will have the credibility and independence that it needs," Conyers said in a statement this morning.

In addition, because of Congress' impending adjournment, Conyers called an HJC hearing for this coming Friday to discuss the issues raised in the recently released IG report.

In a scathing statement released this morning, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) heralded the assignment of a prosecutor to the investigation into the removal of the U.S. attorneys stating "[p]erhaps a prosecutor can break down walls others cannot."

Leahy, who also chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, is holding a press conference at noon to discuss the findings of the IG report released this morning.

"This report verifies what our oversight efforts this Congress showed, that partisan, political interests in the prosecution of voter fraud and public corruption by the White House and some at the Department played a role in many of these firings," Leahy said in a statement.

"These abuses are corrosive to the very foundations of our system of justice."

Read all of Leahy's statement after the jump.

Read more »

The IG report released today requests a special prosecutor to continue the work of the investigation into whether the nine U.S. attorneys removed in 2006 were fired for partisan political reasons.

From page 357 and 358 of the IG report:

The most serious allegation that we were not able to fully investigate related to the removal of David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, and the allegation that he was removed to influence voter fraud and public corruption prosecutions. We recommend that a counsel specially appointed by the Attorney General assess the facts we have uncovered, work with us to conduct further investigation, and ultimately determine whether the evidence demonstrates that any criminal offense was committed with regard to the removal of Iglesias or any other U.S. Attorney, or the testimony of any witness related to the U.S. Attorney removals.

Late update: The report also describes the stonewalling the investigation received in trying to gather information on the removals. Specifically, it mentions a "fact memo" created for Alberto Gonzales by the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, which outlined the events chronologically, using a draft written by Michael Scudder, associate White House Counsel. Investigators were refused the timeline by the OLC who claimed they were ordered not to release it by the White House Counsel's office.

From page 94 of the report:

We asked OLC for a copy of the memorandum and all the drafts, but OLC declined, stating that the White House Counsel's Office had directed OLC not to provide them to us. We thereafter engaged in discussions with the White House Counsel's Office during this investigation in an attempt to obtain the Scudder memorandum. The White House Counsel's Office agreed to read one paragraph of the memorandum to us, and provided us with two paragraphs of information concerning Rove that had already been reported publicly, but declined to provide any further information from the memorandum.
Eventually, the White House Counsel's Office provided us with a heavily redacted version of the document. We believe the refusal to provide us with an unredacted copy of this document hampered our investigation.

The Justice Department Office of the Inspector General has released its 392 page tome on its findings in the investigation into the removal of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.

The report can be found here (pdf). We'll be digging through it all day, but since it's a monster of a report, we welcome you to sift through it and let us know in the comments section what you find.

We'll be bringing you updates throughout the day so stay tuned.

Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general who oversaw the Justice Department during the firings of nine U.S. attorneys, won't be presently referred to a grand jury for his role in the affair, but a prosecuter will be appointed to continue investigating the involvement of the Bush administration and other law makers in the firings, according to Washington Post sources familiar with a report expect to be released today.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey is preparing to name a prosecutor from within the DOJ to continue the work of the Offices of Professional Responsibly and the Inspector General, the same sources told the Post.

The report, the product of more than a years worth of investigations into the attorneys' firings is expected out this morning. It is co-written by the DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine and the OPR Director H. Marshall Jarrett.

We'll be bringing you more from the OIG report as soon as it's released today so check back for updates

We noted yesterday that the Justice Department Office of the Inspector General issued a report on the found that former Attorney Gen. Alberto Gonzales had mishandled classified documents during his time in office -- and that the DOJ had decided not to press charges.

But that doesn't seem to be half as bad as what CQ Politics' Jeff Stein dug up -- fact checking Gonzales' testimony to investigators with . . . well, the report's own stipulated facts.

From CQ Politics' SpyTalk:

But the IG report shows that Gonzales did more than "mishandle" his notes, which included operational details on what he himself, somewhat ironically, called -- after it had leaked -- "one of the most highly protected [programs] in the United States ... a very, very secretive, protected program," and correspondence between congressional Intelligence Committee leaders and CIA chief Gen. Michael Hayden.

In a statement that doesn't pass the laugh test, Gonzales told IG investigators he didn't know the documents were secret.

Gonzales said that he was unaware of the classification level and compartmented nature of the NSA program he referenced in the notes. Gonzales also stated he did not recall thinking that the notes themselves were classified.

But the IG found the smoking gun -- in Gonzales's hand, no less.

The envelope containing documents related to the NSA surveillance program bore the handwritten markings, "TOP SECRET - EYES ONLY - ARG" [the attorney general's initials] followed by an abbreviation for the SCI codeword for the program.

Inside the envelope, moreover, were "documents relating to a detainee interrogation program," which were all classified with cover sheets and markings in the top and bottom margins, as Top Secret/Sensitive Classified Information.

From the AP:

The report says Gonzales failed to store the documents in proper secure facilities and at one point took them home. The report released Tuesday also says he stored them in his briefcase because he did not know the combination to the safe at his house.

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine referred the security breach to the department's National Security Division. But the reports says prosecutors there declined to bring charges against Gonzales.

. . . Additionally, Gonzales kept some of the documents in a safe in his office that was accessed by several employees who "lacked the necessary security clearances for this information," the report concludes.