ATF

Emails: Bush-Era Embassy, Prosecutor's Office Approved ATF 'Gun Walking' Tactic

Ryan J. Reilly | October 14, 2011, 5:00PM

As House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) continues to try to pin the flawed "gun walking" tactic employed in Operation Fast and Furious on the Obama administration, it's becoming increasingly clear that problems with ATF's Phoenix division date back at least into the Bush era.

TPM has obtained the documents relating to another Bush-era ATF operation (on top of Operation Wide Receiver) which deployed the "gun walking" tactic. The development was first reported by Pete Yost of the Associated Press.

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Eric Holder

'Operation Wide Receiver': The Bush Administration Had Its Very Own ATF 'Gun Walking' Scandal

Ryan J. Reilly | October 4, 2011, 3:50PM

Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and President George W. Bush

Updated: Oct. 4, 6:45PM

Know how Republicans have been blaming the Obama administration for a local ATF office's decision to let thousands of guns "walk" into Mexico? Turns out the Bush administration had a "gun walking" program of their very own.

Republicans on Tuesday called for a special prosecutor to look into whether Attorney General Eric Holder perjured himself during testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on ATF's Fast and Furious scandal.

Holder had testified on May 3 that he was "not sure of the exact date, but I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks."

Documents have now emerged showing that the "Fast and Furious" program came up in the course of a couple of Holder's extensive weekly reports on ongoing developments in the Justice Department and its components in July 2010 and again in October 2010.

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Alberto Gonzales

Alberto Gonzales Named 'Distinguished Chair of Law' By Belmont University

Jillian Rayfield | October 3, 2011, 6:03PM

Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and President George W. Bush

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, last seen expressing "disappointment" in himself for failing to stop the politicization of the Justice Department honors program during the Bush era, has a new gig as the Doyle Rogers Distinguished Chair of Law at Belmont University College of Law in Tennessee.

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Alberto Gonzales

Alberto Gonzales: 'I Feel Disappointment In Myself'

Ryan J. Reilly | May 24, 2011, 7:04PM

Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and President George W. Bush

For the first time since he left office, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that he felt some disappointment in himself for failing to stop the politicized hiring process taking place in the Justice Department's honors program.

"Obviously everyone is smarter in hindsight. In hindsight you wish you would do some things differently and ... I feel disappointment in myself," Gonzales said, according to a transcript of a recent deposition, as first reported by Tony Mauro of the National Law Journal. "I, the attorney general, am ultimately responsible," Gonzales says.

Internal Justice Department reports on the honors program and the summer intern program found that officials at DOJ were biased in their selections. In 2002 for example, 100 "liberals" were nominated by various DOJ offices, but 80 percent of them were "deselected" by the screening committee.

Gonzales also goes on to discuss Monica Goodling's role in politicizing the honors program.

"I do remember distinctly thinking and probably asking: How could the White House liaison not know what kind of questions to ask? I remember thinking: Didn't anybody at the White House -- didn't anybody at the department tell her she couldn't ask these questions?" Gonzales said.

As Mauro reports, the depositions came up in a lawsuit filed on behalf of applicants to the honors program who were rejected for political or ideological reasons:

The suit as it now stands is based mainly on the Privacy Act, which bars the government from maintaining records about individuals' exercise of First Amendment rights unless authorized by law. In September 2009, Bates dismissed other claims of constitutional violations directed at the Justice Department officials personally. The plaintiffs are seeking monetary damages for the Privacy Act violations totalling around $250,000, based on the lower salaries they are now earning because they were not hired at Justice.

The Gonzales deposition is embedded below.

Gonzales Depo

Kyle Sampson

Gonzales Chief Of Staff Kyle Sampson Gets His D.C. Law License

Ryan J. Reilly | February 28, 2011, 10:50AM

Former Bush Admn. Justice staffer Kyle Sampson

After a two-year battle, Kyle Sampson -- the former chief of staff to then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who was caught up in the legal and political scandal that grew out of Gonzales' term in office -- has won his fight for a law license in the District of Columbia.

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House Judiciary

Rove Protege Tim Griffin Now On Judiciary Committee

Ryan J. Reilly | January 3, 2011, 1:45PM

A few years ago, Tim Griffin was a key figure in of the biggest scandals in the Bush administration. Democrats said -- and the Justice Department Inspector General later concluded -- that the Bush White House and Justice Department pushed out U.S. Attorney H.E. "Bud" Cummins III to give Griffin, a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove, a plum spot as interim U.S. attorney that would pad his resume.

Now Griffin, who was elected to Congress from Arkansas in November, has been named by House Republicans to be a member of the House Judiciary Committee -- the very same committee which took a close look at his own role in the scandal that ultimately lead to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

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Alberto Gonzales

Bush Team Reunites To Cover 'Vindicated' Alberto Gonzales' Defense Bills

Ryan J. Reilly | December 3, 2010, 11:18AM

Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and President George W. Bush

With the Justice Department investigation of the U.S. Attorneys scandal wrapped up without charges, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has some big legal bills to pay. So Gonzales called on several Bush administration officials -- including former President George W. Bush himself -- to help.

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John Yoo

Yoo: I Said Torture Was Legal, But It Doesn't Mean They Should've Done It (VIDEO)

Ryan J. Reilly | November 22, 2010, 1:56PM

Former Justice Department lawyer and "torture memo" author John Yoo used a speeding metaphor to explain that just because he gave George W. Bush the legal justification for the "unpopular" decision to waterboard Khalid Sheikh Muhammed didn't mean Bush had to go through with it.

"Just because a law says you can drive 65 miles per hour doesn't mean you have to drive 65 miles per hour," Yoo said. "There's still a lot of discretion and choice that the leaders of our government had to make."

"I know part of the job from being the lawyer is defending sometimes unpopular decisions that your clients make. I'm willing to do that part of the job. But I also think that there's no escaping responsibility if people who make the policy decision," Yoo said in an interview on CNN on Friday.

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Alberto Gonzales

Gonzales: I Was 'Aware' Of Waterboarding

Ryan J. Reilly | November 22, 2010, 9:15AM

Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told TPM in an exclusive interview that he was aware of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used against suspected terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

He wouldn't say, however, whether he remembered when George W. Bush approved KSM's waterboarding. Bush recalled in his book that he told the CIA "Damn right" when asked whether to waterboard the man accused of planning Sept. 11.

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Alberto Gonzales

Alberto Gonzales: My Book Will 'Set The Record Straight'

Ryan J. Reilly | November 20, 2010, 9:23AM

Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and President George W. Bush

George W. Bush isn't the only official in the prior administration with writing chops. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is also hard at work on a book that he told TPM will "set the record straight" on his public service and offer a "very candid, very honest" assessment of the people he worked with and decisions he made in the White House and at the Justice Department.

Gonzales also told me that he's in the midst of reading Bush's book Decision Points -- and while he's found his former boss' memoir "insightful," he remembers some events a bit differently than the former president.

"I would just simply urge your readers [to note] that he and I could observe the same thing and come away with completely different conclusions or memories of what we observed," said Gonzales. "So the fact that I might observe something or remember something differently than what he writes about in the book is just, I think, the human condition of people remembering something or observing something differently."

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U.S. Attorneys

Gonzales: 'I'm Probably The Least Political Animal Of The Bush Administration'

Rachel Slajda | September 13, 2010, 5:52PM

Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and President George W. Bush

The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal is out this weekend with a glowing profile of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, just about two months after the Justice Department dropped its investigation into whether Gonzales politicized the DOJ during his tenure.

As you might expect, Gonzales denied that his 2006 firing of U.S. attorneys was politically motivated.

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U.S. Attorneys

AP: Case Closed In U.S. Attorney Firings With No Charges

Rachel Slajda | July 21, 2010, 3:21PM

Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

The AP is reporting that the Department of Justice has closed its investigation into the U.S. attorney firings and will not file any charges.

The Bush Administration spent several years fighting allegations that it had fired several U.S. attorneys for politically motivated reasons, and then ignoring subpoenas by Congress to testify about the firings. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned because of the scandal.

You can find past TPMmuckraker coverage of the scandal here and here, and a timeline here.

Alberto Gonzales

Gonzo Asking For Donations To Cover Legal Bills, Still Looking For Book Publisher

Ben Frumin | June 4, 2010, 4:07PM

Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told Main Justice in an interview yesterday that he's looking for donations to cover his extensive legal bills -- and that he still hasn't found a book publisher.

"We need to do a better effort raising additional money, and so we're going to try to do that as soon as the last investigation [ends]," the ex-attorney general said. "That investigation has been out there going on forever. I'm not sure what's going on there, but we're waiting for that to be completed."

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Jennifer Koester

The Torture Memo Author You've Never Heard Of

Zachary Roth | February 22, 2010, 11:28AM

Jennifer K. Hardy (formerly Jennifer Koester)

The Torture Memos will forever be known as the work of John Yoo, the former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer who took the lead in preparing them. But the internal Justice Department report on the memos, released Friday, reveals that a less experienced OLC attorney, working under Yoo, played a key role in the process -- in some cases writing initial drafts of the opinions before getting feedback from Yoo and others.

The name of that lawyer is redacted throughout the report. But in what appears to be an oversight in the redaction process, a footnote identifies her as Jennifer Koester. (The Justice Department didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the reason for the redaction, and about the oversight.)

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Bush Administration

Gonzo: We Should Have Known We'd Get Caught Purging US Attorneys

Justin Elliott | December 9, 2009, 9:11AM

Esquire's interview with Alberto Gonzales

Alberto Gonzales has taken a break from his teaching load at Texas Tech to give a remarkably unselfconscious interview with Esquire, saying the Bush Administration should have dropped its plan to purge U.S. attorneys in 2006 because "at that point we could really not count on Republicans to cut off investigations or help us at all with investigations."

By Gonzo's reasoning, the problem was not the firings themselves, but rather the prospect that the Bush Administration would get caught:

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Alberto Gonzales

Iglesias: Evidence Of Politicization By Arizona Sheriff "Felt Very Familiar"

Zachary Roth | November 2, 2009, 2:37PM

Fmr. US Attorney (NM) David Iglesias

David Iglesias is comparing Sheriff Joe Arpaio's alleged targeting of political foes to the notorious Rove-Gonzales politicization of DOJ, which led to Iglesias's own improper firing.

The evidence against the Arizona sheriff was "very similar to what was going on at the Department of Justice under the Bush administration," Iglesias said in an interview with TPMmuckraker. "It unfortunately felt very familiar."

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Mary Beth Buchanan

U.S. Attorney Who Played Role In Firings Scandal To Step Down -- Congressional Bid Next?

Zachary Roth | October 30, 2009, 10:04AM

Mary Beth Buchanan

Mary Beth Buchanan, the Bush-appointed federal prosecutor who had a cameo in the U.S. attorney firings scandal and was charged with pursuing politically motivated prosecutions, is stepping down.

Buchanan, a Republican, is said to be mulling a run for Congress against incumbent Democrat Rep. Jason Altmire. In a statement yesterday, she said she was "looking forward to the next chapter of my professional career," without elaborating.

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Global Warming

Could Coal Lobby Chief Be Probed For Perjury?

Zachary Roth | October 29, 2009, 4:49PM

CEO of ACCCE Steve Miller

Could apparently false statements made by the head of a coal-industry lobby group before Congress this morning end up being referred to the Justice Department for a criminal perjury probe? Congressional investigators aren't ruling it out.

As we reported, Steve Miller, the director of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), appears to have twice misled Congress while under oath during his testimony this morning over those forged letters sent on the coal lobby's behalf by Bonner and Associates.

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Mary Beth Buchanan

New Allegations Against Bush-Appointed U.S. Attorney Linked To Firings Scandal

Zachary Roth | October 23, 2009, 2:00PM

Mary Beth Buchanan

The office of a top Bush-appointed federal prosecutor who played a role in the U.S. attorney firings scandal received improper recordings of telephone calls between defense lawyers and their clients, and appears not to have turned them over to authorities, as required by law.

On Wednesday evening, Lisa Freeland, a Pittsburgh-based federal public defender, sent a lengthy email to fellow defense lawyers, reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, exposing the episode. "I am incensed," Freeland wrote.

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Joe Arpaio

'America's Toughest Sheriff' Teams With Beltway GOP Power Couple In 'Inquisition' Of Arizona Official

Zachary Roth | October 7, 2009, 3:41PM

Republican lawyers Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing

Notorious anti-immigrant sheriff Joe Arpaio is working with a husband-and-wife GOP lawyer team that was one of Bill Clinton's biggest tormentors during the 90s, to go after a local Arizona official. But critics are calling the effort a politically motivated fishing expedition. And the defense lawyer on the case knows something about politicized justice: he was one of the US attorneys improperly fired by Alberto Gonzales.

Here's the back-story. It's got a few twists and turns. But stay with us -- it's worth it:

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Justice Department

Judge Dismisses Large Part Of Hiring Case Against Bush DOJers

Justin Elliott | September 17, 2009, 10:39AM

Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

A federal judge has thrown out most of the class action suit alleging the Bush-era Justice Department improperly rejected intern applicants, the Legal Times reports.

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Alberto Gonzales

Gonzo On Support For Torture Probe: Um, Never Mind

Zachary Roth | September 3, 2009, 3:22PM

Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

Oh this is good...

Remember how Alberto Gonzales came out the other day and said he supports Eric Holder's decision to investigate torture, as long as the probe is limited to CIA personnel who exceeded the lawyers' legal guidance?

Well it looks like even that qualified position was too much for torture supporters on the right. Because now Gonzo has crawled back to the Washington Times to say that, actually, he didn't really mean it.

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Alberto Gonzales

Gonzo Backs Torture Probe

Zachary Roth | September 1, 2009, 1:00PM

Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

Eric Holder is getting support for his decision to announce a criminal probe of torture from an unlikely source: Alberto Gonzales.

The former Attorney General told a radio interviewer for the Washington Times:

We worked very hard to establish ground rules and parameters about how to deal with terrorists. And if people go beyond that, I think it is legitimate to question and examine that conduct to ensure people are held accountable for their actions, even if it's action in prosecuting the war on terror.

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U.S. Attorneys

Key Figure In US Attorney Firings Can Still Practice Law, Court Rules

Zachary Roth | August 25, 2009, 6:10PM

Former Bush Admn. Justice staffer Kyle Sampson

Via National Law Journal (sub. req.)...

This one'll make your skin crawl...

Kyle Sampson, the Bush Justice Department staffer who played perhaps the most active operational role in the U.S. attorney firings, has been granted a rare waiver to practice law in Washington D.C., despite an ongoing criminal investigation into the scandal.

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