A big new bundle of documents just got dumped by the Department of Justice. Here's a link to the documents in PDF form at the House Judiciary Committee website. As per our routine in recent document dumps, if you'd like to help us cull through the mails and reports, use this thread to share your findings with us and other TPMm Readers.

Identify the items you find by document dump set number and page number.

After his controversial tenure at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, Bradley Schlozman was rewarded by being installed as the U.S. attorney for Kansas City. His time as U.S.A. there, which ended only a week ago, is notable mostly for his decision to bring four "voter fraud" indictments shortly before the election last year. (We'll have more on that later.)

But Schlozman isn't done at the Justice Department. In fact, he's headed back to Washington to work at the office that supervises U.S. attorneys all over the country. A Justice Department spokesman told CBS Investigative Producer Laura Strickler that Schlozman will be "an attorney in the Counsel to the Director staff at the Executive Office for United States Attorneys." It's not clear exactly what that means, and the spokesman did not indicate precisely what Schlozman's duties would be. The EOUSA serves as the liaison beween U.S. attorneys all over the country and DoJ leadership in Washington.

Schlozman certainly has friends in high places. Salon has quoted a former senior Justice Department official as saying that Schlozman was "one of Gonzales' guys," and that "several of us were scratching our heads when we heard about [his appointment as U.S. attorney in Kansas City] because he was not a very well-regarded trial attorney."

The official also told Salon that Schlozman likely would have remained as U.S. attorney there indefinitely if the administration's firing of eight U.S.A.s had not become controversial: "They weren't going to replace him."

Schlozman, it's fair to say, would have stood little chance at being confirmed by the Senate. Instead, the president nominated John Wood to replace Schlozman in the middle of January, just as the controversy of the fired U.S. attorneys was beginning to simmer. Wood was confirmed by the Senate and took office last week.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) wants former CIA chief George Tenet to testify to the House oversight committee.

Think of it as part of the book tour.

The Jack Abramoff investigation continues to burst with renewed vigor. Now, it's ex-Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) -- who was defeated back in November due in large part to his ties to Abramoff -- who might be in trouble.

In the current issue of the National Journal (not available online), Peter Stone reports that "two sources say that the Justice Department is making new inquiries into Hayworth’s past links to Abramoff."

Put Hayworth together with Reps. John Doolittle (R-CA) and Tom Feeney (R-FL), ex-Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT), and ex-Rep. Tom Delay (R-TX), and you have five current and former members of Congress who are reportedly under scrutiny by investigators.

From Roll Call:

Despite rumors to the contrary, embattled Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) issued two statements Friday insisting that he has no intention of resigning....

“For several weeks, I have been the subject of leaked stories, conjecture, and false attacks about a land exchange,” the three-term Congressman said. “None of them bear any resemblance to the truth, including the rumor that I am planning on resigning.”

Last night, the Justice Department provided Congress with a list of documents related to the U.S. attorneys firings that it was withholding -- all of them either documents or emails sent to or received by Kyle Sampson. You can see the list here.

The reason Congress won't be seeing these, Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling wrote in a letter to the House and Senate judiciary committees, is because the Department has "substantial concerns about the disclosure of documents that were generated after December 7, 2006 for the purpose of responding to congressional and media inquiries about the resignations of the U.S. Attorneys."

All of the withheld documents disclosed today supposedly meet that description -- but then, so do a number of the documents the Department has already released. So what makes these different? It's not clear.

And some of these documents do sound very interesting. Take, for example, Sampson's email to White House counsel Harriet Miers on January 7th. It's described as "Discussion, re: processes for filling USA vacancies, including appointment of acting/interim USAs." In other words, it sounds like Sampson was conferring with Miers over how the fired U.S. attorneys should be replaced -- and possibly who they might be replaced with. And it seems like it was a spirited discussion. Sampson sent two more two page emails to Miers that day, which are only described as "further discussion" of the issue. Over the next couple days, Sampson forwarded that discussion to a number of senior Justice Department officials.

Marcy Wheeler has a rundown of other withheld documents of note.

The judiciary committees are in talks with the Justice Department over the withtheld documents, which are, after all, under subpoena.

Note: Along with the list of withheld documents, the Justice Department also turned over a couple of emails that have DoJ officials reacting to stories about the firings in the Post and the Times. You can see them here.

House Committee Asks for More Records of Political Briefings
Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif) of the House Oversight and Government reform Committee “asked 27 federal departments and agencies yesterday to turn over information related to White House briefings about elections or political candidates, substantially widening the scope of a congressional investigation into the administration's compliance with the law that restricts partisan political activity by government employees. (Washington Post)

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George Bush insulates himself from reality! The administration didn't seriously entertain the notion that Iraq didn't have WMD's! Dick Cheney is an asshole!

OK, so the revelations in George Tenet's new book aren't going to shock anyone, but they are notable considering the source.

Tenet will appear on 60 Minutes this Sunday to roll out his new memoir, which will be released next week. The New York Times got a copy. And, well, are you shocked by this?

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

I didn't think so.

Most talk about the book so far has centered on Tenet's head-scratching explanation for his "slam dunk" comment. It took place in a private 2002 White House meeting:

During the meeting, the deputy C.I.A. director, John McLaughlin, unveiled a draft of a proposed public presentation [on Iraq's possession of WMDs] that left the group unimpressed. Mr. Tenet recalls that Mr. Bush suggested that they could “add punch” by bringing in lawyers trained to argue cases before a jury.

“I told the president that strengthening the public presentation was a ‘slam dunk,’ a phrase that was later taken completely out of context,” Mr. Tenet writes. “If I had simply said, ‘I’m sure we can do better,’ I wouldn’t be writing this chapter — or maybe even this book.”

I'm not sure that the distinction between Tenet's intended meaning and the administration's interpretation of the comment is quite as glaring as he wants it to be. But his broader point -- that the "slam dunk" comment was far from the watershed moment it's been made out to be because Bush's and Cheney's minds were already made up -- is a solid one. But then, we already knew that.

Among other unsurprising revelations, the book portrays the president as slow to accept the reality in Iraq. This description comes from The Los Angeles Times, which got details of the book from two former CIA officials who've read it:

...[T]he book describes warnings from the CIA station in Baghdad that were greeted with dismay and mounting suspicion within the White House, including a November 2003 assessment that described the situation as an insurgency.

After that assessment was leaked to the press, Bush summoned Tenet and other CIA officials to the White House and warned that he didn't want anyone in his administration to use the term "insurgency," according to the officials.

"There's a lot of stuff in the book that paints a picture of an administration wrapped in its own beliefs, not being able to handle information that was contrary to those beliefs," said the former official who commented about Tenet's view of Cheney.

Shocked?

According to Dana Perino, there's not a thing wrong with the presentations given by Karl Rove and his deputies to agencies throughout the federal government.

Perino was in full spin mode during the White House briefing today, at one point calling a reporter's question about the presentations "ridiculous." As we detailed earlier, the presentations detailed the electoral prospects for Republicans, giving employees the "not-so-subtle" suggestion that they should do what they could to help. It's against the Hatch Act to use government resources for poltical ends, and Rove and his aides seem to have gambled that dropping such hints went right up to the line without crossing it.

According to Perino, the briefings just provided information. And what could be wrong with that?

Q: But why? Why do they [the federal employees] need this information?

Perino: Why are you asking these questions? You’re asking for information as well. I mean, it’s the same thing.

For a fun drinking game, try taking a swig every time Perino says "poltical" or "information" or "landscape" during this Q&A:

Here are all the buzz words tied up into one neat quote:

"There’s nothing wrong with political appointees providing other political appointees with an informational briefing about the political landscape in which they are working.”

So far, Bradley Schlozman has been a minor character in the U.S. attorneys scandal. He ought to be a major one.

To put the case succinctly: Schlozman was the most aggressively political of the political appointees in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. And the administration installed him as the U.S. attorney in a key swing state in an election year. And to clinch it all, as we'll see in our next post, he delivered.

Schlozman was appointed to be the interim U.S. attorney in western Missouri on March 23, 2006 -- just two weeks after the president had signed the USA Patriot Act into law; the bill contained a provision that allowed interim U.S. attorneys to serve indefinitely.

There are indications that Schlozman's predecessor, Todd Graves, was forced out. He resigned suddenly, and local news reports noted in passing that he quit without having his next job lined up. And there is strong circumstantial evidence that his name appeared on one of Kyle Sampson's list of U.S. attorneys to fire shortly before he resigned.

By the time Schlozman arrived in Missouri, he'd already left a strong imprint at the Justice Department. The career attorneys and analysts who worked under him in the Civil Rights Division's voting section describe what can fairly be described as a reign of terror.

Bob Kengle, formerly the deputy chief for the voting section, told me that Schlozman "led by power":

"What he sought to inculcate into people was a fear that if you disagreed, if you asked for reconsideration on something, if you pointed out something that was not correct in a decision that had been made, then you’d pay for it."

Kengle, who joined the division in 1984, said that Schlozman would change performance evaluations for lawyers and analysts who disagreed with him. Two weeks ago, we reported on the experience of Toby Moore, a geographical analyst with the section who quit after invoking Schlozman's ire. Moore's sin, among others, was objecting to a Georgia voter I.D. law that would later be compared to a Jim Crow-era poll tax by a federal appeals judge.

Joe Rich, the former chief of the voting section, had a similar experience with Schlozman. "He was universally despised by career people. He was the most disdainful and vitriolic guy I've ever dealt with, and he had it in for everybody." Rich described Schlozman as "very central" in the department's hiring. As I reported earlier this week, Schlozman apparently gauged potential recruits by whether they were active Republicans.

Rich and Kengle left the division together in 2005. "I reached my personal breaking point," Kengle said.

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Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey is scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee at a hearing Thursday next week to testify about his involvement in the plan to fire certain U.S. attorneys. The committee will vote on authorizing a subpoena for Comey's testimony on Tuesday.

Comey's expected to shed light on the early part of the purge process -- and perhaps explain why his list of U.S. attorneys was so different from Kyle Sampson's.

Before Comey left the Justice Department in the summer of 2005, he reportedly generated his own list of U.S. attorneys to fire. But as U.S. News has reported, Comey's list was completely different than the list generated by Sampson -- save one name:

...a former Justice official says that Comey's list bore little resemblance to the list of those fired last year. The only prosecutor on the fired list who also was on Comey's list was Kevin Ryan, in San Francisco, who, the Washington Post reported Tuesday, had "widespread management and morale problems in his office."

A former Justice official explained the discrepancy: "Comey's definition of incompetence turned out to be quite different from Sampson's and had nothing to do with politics."

From The Hill:

Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) failed to disclose a $200,000 payment he received from a business partner in 2005 in apparent violation of House ethics rules. Prosecutors could use the omission as evidence that Renzi intended to conceal a transaction he knew to be controversial or even improper.

The $200,000 was a payment from James Sandlin to settle a debt related to a previous business transaction involving land in northeast Arizona, one of the lawmaker’s attorneys, Grant Woods, told a newspaper last week.

This explanation might have been expected to dispel suspicion that Sandlin gave Renzi an illegal gift in exchange for action Renzi took to help Sandlin sell a $4 million parcel of land.

But Renzi’s claim that Sandlin’s $200,000 payment was a legitimate business transaction is weakened by the fact that he failed to disclose it in his personal financial disclosure report for 2005 filed with the House clerk.

Political Briefings at US Agencies Disclosed
"White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity, a White House spokesman and other administration officials said yesterday. The previously undisclosed briefings were part of what now appears to be a regular effort in which the White House sent senior political officials to brief top appointees in government agencies on which seats Republican candidates might win or lose, and how the election outcomes could affect the success of administration policies, the officials said." (Washington Post)

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The entire scheme has been laid out before us. The question now is whether Karl Rove will get away with it.

Here's the scheme, as revealed over the past month: Rove and his deputies traveled to various agencies throughout the government, lecturing management there about Republicans' political prospects. Which House and Senate members were in trouble? Which Democratic seats were vulnerable? What were the major issues in the election?

But there was a line to be drawn: no commands were to be given -- because such a directive would be a blatant violation of the Hatch Act, which forbids the use of government resources for political ends.

On the contrary, the government officials receiving the briefing were supposed to get the hint -- as Tom Hamburger reported, "employees said they got a not-so-subtle message about helping endangered Republicans." The briefing simply gave them the tools to be helpful in the next election. They were supposed to take the ball and run with it.

The Washington Post reports today that Rove and his deputies gave such briefings to at least 15 different agencies (ranging from NASA to the Department of Homeland Security). But one briefing in particular continues to shine a light on all the rest: the one given this January to officials at the General Services Administration, the government's massive procurement agency.

Rove's deputy Scott Jennings simply showed up and gave the briefing (the slides (pdf) for which have been obtained by the House oversight committee -- that's one of them above). Employees were supposed to get the "not-so-subtle" message. But unfortunately for Jennings, GSA chief Lurita Doan doesn't do "not-so-subtle." From today's Post:

At its completion, GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan asked how GSA projects could be used to help "our candidates," according to half a dozen witnesses. The briefer, J. Scott Jennings, said that topic should be discussed "off-line," the witnesses said. Doan then replied, "Oh, good, at least as long as we are going to follow up," according to an account given by former GSA chief acquisition officer Emily Murphy to House investigators, according to a copy of the transcript.

"Something was going to take place potentially afterwards" regarding Doan's request, GSA deputy director of communications Jennifer Millikin told investigators she concluded at the time.

Doan was obviously supposed to come to the tacit understanding that such things should be discussed "off-line." But, as anyone who watched Doan testify before the House last month can attest, she doesn't think well on her feet.

Now, the White House has adopted the line that the briefings were simply to provide employees a look at "the political landscape." And apparently that talking point has been widely distributed, as R. Jeffrey Smith from the Post found:

By the end of yesterday afternoon, all of those describing the briefings on the record had adopted a uniform phrase in response to a reporter's inquiries: They were, each official said, "informational briefings about the political landscape."

It's all about plausible deniability. As Scott Bloch, the head of the Office of Special Counsel -- the office that is charged with investigating Hatch Act violations -- tells Smith, "Political forecasts, just generally . . . I do not regard as illegal political activity." Bloch, remember, is the one who announced to the world earlier this week that he'd leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of Karl Rove. (There's more on Bloch here.)

The burning question here is this: what about those agency officials who are smarter than Doan? The briefings have been going on since the beginning of the Bush administration. Somebody got the hint, had that "offline" conversation, and successfully helped "our candidates." How many? When? Where?

Yet another questionable prosecution brought by U.S. Attorney for Milwaukee Steve Biskupic has been reversed by an appeals court.

This time, it was one of the voter fraud prosecutions Biskupic's office pushed, as part of a joint task force his office created with local prosecutors to investigate whether Democrats had conspired to steal the 2004 election.

From the AP:

The supervisor of a voter registration drive did not commit a crime during the 2004 election when he failed to stop others from submitting fraudulent voter registration forms, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The court reversed the conviction of Damien Jones on one count of falsifying statements relating to voter registration as party to a crime. Jones, 27, supervised a voter registration drive for a liberal-leaning group in Racine and Kenosha.

The appeals court said he was guilty of poor supervision but that is not a crime.

"We recognize the trial court's concern about voter fraud, and we respect the integrity of the electoral process," Judge Daniel Anderson wrote for the District 2 Court of Appeals. "However, one cannot be convicted of a nonexistent crime."...

Prosecutors initially said Jones took part in the fraud and encouraged the conduct, but after further investigation they acknowledged he was not personally involved and those beneath him were responsible.

In a plea agreement, they agreed to drop the charges in exchange for Jones' guilty plea to a single violation of being party to the crimes....

The appeals court ruled Jones could withdraw his guilty plea, saying state laws "do not criminalize poor supervision of voter registration."

It's been a bad month for Biskupic, who had a prominent prosecution overturned and learned that he'd once been on a list of U.S. attorneys to be fired.

Update/Clarification: The prosecution resulted from Biskupic's joint voter fraud task force with local prosecutors. Some of the cases targeted by the task force were pursued by Biskupic's office, some were pursued by local prosecutors The case above was one of the cases pursued by local prosecutors, which is why it was heard by a state court.

Update/Correction: I'm proud to say that it's rare that I get something wrong, and it's even rarer that I get things grossly wrong, but I'm ashamed to say that this post fits that description. Biskupic's task force was in conjunction with the Milwaukee County D.A., not the Racine County D.A. (directly to Milwaukee County's south), which brought the charges discussed above. Biskupic's office had nothing to do wtih the case. I sincerely regret the error.

The Jack Abramoff investigation has certainly come roaring out of its hibernation.

Next on the list, apparently, is Tom DeLay's former right-hand man, Ed Buckham. From The Houston Chronicle:

...prosecutors could decide within weeks whether to bring charges against former DeLay staff chief Edwin Buckham, according to sources close to the investigation who spoke on the condition that they not be identified. The decision should give a clear signal on whether DeLay remains in legal jeopardy, the sources said.

As we've noted before, Buckham was the main cog in DeLay's operation and a close associate of Abramoff.

And he also -- to further burnish his status as a distinguished muckrakee -- acted as the lobbyist for Brent Wilkes, the defense contractor who was recently indicted for bribing Duke Cunningham and CIA #3 Dusty Foggo.

In today's episode of TPM TV, we took a hard look at just where Karl Rove got the bulk of the voter fraud stories he imparted at an April 7, 2006 speech before the Republican National Lawyer's Association. We noted that three of the seven "hot spots" he mentioned in that speech appeared to come directly from a 2000 New York Post op-ed by Stephen Bronars and John Lott, Jr. entitled, It's the Fraud, Stupid.

We're sure you took our word for it, but in case you're incredulous, here's a direct matchup of Rove's words from the speech and the corresponding quote from the Bronars and Lott piece, so you can see for yourself.

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FromCQ:

The Democratic-run House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on today authorized subpoenas for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice....

Waxman has been trying to get Rice to testify about claims Iraq was attempting to obtain uranium, a vital element for nuclear weaponry, in the buildup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The committee voted 21-10 to authorize him to issue a subpoena to Rice.

Update/Correction: This post originally incorrectly stated that the panel had issued the subpoena.

Today, Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) and ranking member Arlen Specter (R-PA) wrote to Alberto Gonzales asking him to "promptly supplement your testimony of April 19 with answers to those questions for which you responded that you could not recall or did not know." You can read the full letter here.

By the senators' "conservative" count, Gonzales failed to provide answers "well over 60 times." I'm not sure how many questions Gonzales was asked, but it can't be much more than that.

Noting that despite weeks of preparation, Gonzales did not appear ready to answer a number of key questions at the hearing, the senators wrote:

"We believe the Committee and our investigation would benefit from you searching and refreshing your recollection and your supplementing your testimony by next Friday to provide the answers to the questions you could not recall last Thursday."

It's not often that I'm embarrassed for a figure in this administration, but this is one of those times.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has just voted 20-8 to authorize subpoenas for both RNC Chairman Mike Duncan and emails held by the RNC. They are set to vote on three more subpoenas this afternoon.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) from today's Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, on the president's expression of increased confidence in Alberto Gonzales:

"The statements coming out of the White House on this matter seem disconnected to reality. It is reminiscent of the President’s “heckuva job” assessment of the head of FEMA who failed to prepare for Hurricane Katrina and then failed in our recovery efforts. And, again, the White House wants to turns the page and move on. Just as they have left so many displaced residents of New Orleans without the relief they needed then — and that many still need — this White House is ready to leave federal law enforcement in shambles."

Leahy's committee is likely to authorize a subpoena today for Sara Taylor, another of Karl Rove's deputies.

The House Judiciary Committee, by a vote of 32-6, just authorized a subpoena for Monica Goodling's testimony and an offer of immunity.

As former U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias pointed out yesterday, Goodling should prove to be a very valuable witness to investigators. Since Goodling acted as the liaison to the White House at the Justice Department, communications from Karl Rove or other White House officials are likely to have gone through her. As Iglesias put it, she has "the keys to the kingdom."

ThinkProgress has more from Iglesias' interview on Hardball yesterday here.

Update: The Republican dissenters, we understand, were Reps. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Chris Cannon (R-UT), Randy Forbes (R-VA), Steve King (R-IA), Trent Franks (R-AZ), and Louie Gohmert (R-TX). Rep. Cannon claimed that the investigation was harming the Justice Department's ability to conduct business, and Rep. Forbes called the committee's investigation the "hearings to nowhere," saying that the investigation was interfering with the committee's legislative work. Rep. Sensenbrenner wondered whether it was wise to grant Goodling immunity, because doing so would let her off the hook.

Update: It is likely to be weeks before the committee actually gets to interview Goodling. That's because the law requires that the Justice Department be allowed an opportunity to provide its views on immunity -- i.e. whether it might interfere with an existing or possible investigation. If the DoJ objects to giving Goodling immunity, then the committee would be forced to consider whether to defer or delay conferring immunity. And regardless of what the DoJ says, the local federal court has to approve giving Goodling immunity. All this is likely to take several weeks.

Critics Doubt Official Looking Into Rove
"Even as Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch moved forward with plans for a sweeping probe of the Bush administration, several advocacy groups complained that his ties to the administration and to conservative groups, as well as his record on gay rights and whistle-blowers, made him the wrong man for the job. 'There is a serious question as to whether Bloch will just provide cover for an administration that is covering for him,' said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a Democratic-leaning group." (LA Times)

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Congrats to Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) for issuing the boldest denial of the Jack Abramoff scandal.

A lot of lawmakers have said they never met Abramoff, or they never met him in their office, or when they met him, they didn't like him, or they wouldn't recognize him if they saw him, etc. But Feeney has gone above and beyond:

Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) says he is not worried that the Justice Department is looking into his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and is voluntarily cooperating with the investigation....

...Feeney denied having any kind of relationship with Abramoff.

“There’s no relationship,” he said flatly.

Feeney, remember, was one of seven people Abramoff took on a golf junket to Scotland in 2003. He flew over on a private jet. He played golf with Abramoff twice a day there.

Now, even though a sham charity covered the cost of Feeney's trip, Abramoff was not someone who, when it came to lawmakers, was interested in charity. Consider some of the others who joined Abramoff on his junkets: ex-Rep. Bob Ney (jail), Mark Zachares (pled guilty), Neil Volz (pled guilty), David Safavian (convicted), ex-Rep. Tom DeLay (under investigation), etc., etc.

Feeney, no doubt, was not an exception. Here's McClatchy on Abramoff's strenuous efforts to cooperate with prosecutors:

"He's talking so much he doesn't have time to eat," one lawyer involved in the matter quipped, insisting upon anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. "Everybody who had business dealings with the guy should be nervous."...

Feeney is among those who might be nervous over the ex-lobbyist's chatter, said the knowledgeable lawyer.

The revelations come fast and furious.

Last night, the AP reported that when the local press revealed that Rep. Rick Renzi's (R-AZ) was under investigation just weeks before the election, his top aide called U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton's aide to ask about it. Charlton was one of the U.S. attorneys who was fired little more than a month later. And even though Charlton's aide had reported the contact to the Justice Department (as the rules dictate), that report was not among the thousands of pages the Justice Department turned over to congressional investigators.

And now this. From The Wall Street Journal:

As midterm elections approached last November, federal investigators in Arizona faced unexpected obstacles in getting needed Justice Department approvals to advance a corruption investigation of Republican Rep. Rick Renzi, people close to the case said.

The delays, which postponed key approvals in the case until after the election, raise new questions about whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales or other officials may have weighed political issues in some investigations....

Investigators pursuing the Renzi case had been seeking clearance from senior Justice Department officials on search warrants, subpoenas and other legal tools for a year before the election, people close to the case said....

...the investigation clearly moved slowly: Federal agents opened the case no later than June 2005, yet key witnesses didn't get subpoenas until early this year, those close to the case said. The first publicly known search -- a raid of a Renzi family business by the Federal Bureau of Investigation -- was carried out just last week....

...the Renzi case -- like many that involve members of Congress -- is being handled jointly by the local U.S. attorney and the department's public-integrity section. In such cases, a senior department official must approve requests for wiretaps and warrants and other formal legal steps.

There's another revelation in the piece: that investigators had lobbied Washington for clearance to tap Renzi's phone for months. That clearance was only given in October of last year. And unfortunately for the investigators, word broke of the investigation in late October -- disrupting their wiretap.

The allegations against Renzi are complicated, involving a land swap, allegedly channeling a kickback through a family company, etc. The Journal laid it all out in a piece this last weekend.

All this raises a question. The bosses at main Justice seem to have been similarly reluctant to proceed with regard to the Duke Cunningham probe. As TPM reported a couple of weeks ago, U.S. Attorney for San Diego Carol Lam had to wait sometimes for months for clearance on certain moves in her investigation. So is there a pattern here?

Continuing to backpedal after the FBI raided one of his family busineses last week, Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) said in a statement today that he'll be resigning "all my committee assignments." Renzi already resigned from his seat on the sensitive House Intelligence Committee last week. He also holds seats on the Committee on Financial Services and Committee on Natural Resources.

This past weekend, The Wall Street Journal detailed the tangled business dealings that have investigators probing whether Renzi received a kickback on a land deal.

Here's Renzi's full statement:

"For several weeks, I have been the subject of leaked stories, conjecture, and false attacks about a land exchange. None of them bear any resemblance to the truth.

"So that no one can question the motivation behind the land exchange, which I and other leaders from both parties have argued is critical to the future of Arizona, I have spoken to Congressman Pastor who will introduce a new version of the Resolution Copper land exchange. In addition, I will take a leave of absence from all my committee assignments. I will continue to focus on important district work and issues critical to my constituents."

Earlier today, I noted the Office of Special Counsel's sprawling investigation into Karl Rove and others in the administration, reported by The Los Angeles Times. But there was something missing from the LA Times piece -- that Bloch himself is under investigation and something of an open joke among watchdog groups.

Justin over at The Blotter has the highlights:

...government watchdogs have accused Bloch himself of similar behavior. In April 2005, they and others complained the White House appointee had allowed his office to "sit on" a complaint that then-White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice used government funds to travel in support of President Bush's re-election bid.

By contrast, they said, Bloch ordered an immediate on-site investigation of a complaint that Bush's challenger for the White House, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., improperly campaigned in a government workplace, which had been filed around the same time.

Bloch is under investigation by the White House-run President's Committee on Integrity and Efficiency for that and a host of other infractions, which means, as David Corn summarizes, "The investigator [is] investigating officials who oversee the agency that is investigating the investigator."

That's all a long way of saying that there are a number of questions about Bloch's pledge to "not leave any stone unturned."

When Ty Clevenger, a line attorney in the Civil Rights Division, forwarded a friend's resume to deputy division chief Bradley Schlozman, he was expecting questions about his friend's experience as a lawyer. But what Schlozman wanted to know, according to Clevenger, was whether his friend was a Republican.

Clevenger, a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association, told Schlozman that his friend was conservative. He just wasn't sure how active his friend was politically. The friend never got an interview.

It's the most direct account yet of politicization at the Justice Department. There have been many other signs -- and not just the administration's preference for "loyal Bushies" as U.S. attorneys. Last week, a group of anonymous Justice Department employees wrote to the House and Senate judiciary committees to complain about politicization in the department's hiring process. The deputy attorney general's office, they alleged, was screening department applicants to eliminate Democrats.

"We take allegations like this one very seriously," House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) told me, reacting to Clevenger's account. "Specific to the Civil Rights Division, we are investigating complaints of politicization both in hiring and prosecutions. The Justice Department is not the place for this type of political cronyism, and we will get to the bottom of it."

Clevenger, who graduated from Stanford Law School in 2001, told me that he came to work at the Civil Rights Division when a friend, also a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association (RNLA), asked him if he'd be interested working there. Clevenger said yes and gave him his resume. Relatively soon, he received a call from Schlozman, then the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, who asked him to come in for an interview.

It's certainly not surprising that the RNLA was used as a recruiting ground for the division -- as McClatchy detailed last month, at least 25 members of the RNLA work in the Justice Department, including at least 10 in the Civil Rights Division.

But apparently membership in the RNLA was not the only way that Schlozman gauged applicants. In an interview with McClatchy last month, Schlozman claimed that he'd tried to "depoliticize the hiring process" at the Civil Rights Division.

But Clevenger found quite the opposite to be the case.

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From Roll Call (sub. req.):

With Attorney General Alberto Gonzales vowing to remain in his job and President Bush standing by him, Senate Democratic leaders are seriously considering bringing a resolution to the floor expressing no confidence in Gonzales, according to a senior leadership source....

The vote would be nonbinding and have no substantive impact, but it would force all Republican Senators into the politically uncomfortable position of saying publicly whether they continue to support Gonzales in the wake of the scandal surrounding the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

Here's the story told by Mark Geragos, Brent Wilkes' lawyer: then-U.S. Attorney for San Diego Carol Lam was so determined to bring an indictment against Wilkes before she was forced from office in February that she leaked details of the case to reporters to force the Justice Department's hand.

You can read the motion to dismiss that he filed in the case yesterday here. Geragos argues that the leaks prejudiced members of the grand jury investigating Wilkes, and that the case should be thrown out.

Wilkes, remember, is one of the defense contractors who allegedly bribed Duke Cunnigham. Lam's office filed two indictments two days before she left office, indicting Wilkes for his dealings with Cunningham and for his dealings with Dusty Foggo, formerly the executive director of the CIA.

Last month, Geragos claimed in court that Lam was "meeting resistance from bosses in the Justice Department, who had rejected drafts of indictments against Wilkes and former CIA official Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, saying they needed revisions." It wasn't clear what Geragos' source for those claims were, and he didn't expand on them in his filing yesterday. Though, as TPM has reported, those bosses did drag their feet on the Cunningham investigation, delaying the approval of indictments for sometimes months.

There's no doubt that leaks did occur. Geragos quotes one of the prosecutors as saying that the leaks were "embarrassing... reprehensible and inexcusable." Whether those leaks were part of "a deliberate campaign by the former United States Attorney, Carol Lam, to use Mr. Wilkes and the other defendants here in her political squabble with the Justice Department’s main office in Washington D.C." and "a gesture of defiance by Carol Lam as she was forced out of office," as Geragos argues, is another matter.

A hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 14.

Apparently I wasn't paying close enough attention to the hearing last week, because I missed this.

From The Hill:

Former White House Counsel Harriet Miers discussed firing ex-U.S. Attorney Debra Yang, who was leading an investigation into lucrative ties between Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) and a lobbying firm before she left her government post voluntarily last fall, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) charged in a hearing last week.

Feinstein has repeatedly questioned the circumstances surrounding Yang’s departure, but until last week she provided no reasons for her suspicions. Last Thursday, however, during the questioning of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales late in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Feinstein flatly stated that Miers had discussed “whether to remove Debra Yang from Los Angeles.”

A Feinstein spokesman indicated only that the senator had learned that Miers had considered ousting Yang “through interviews” and did not respond to repeated questions to elaborate. Andrew Koneschusky, a spokesman to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who is leading the probe, also did not respond to questions about whether Miers had targeted Yang and any evidence Feinstein may have about it.

Yang resigned last October, months before Democrats began reviewing the Justice Department’s decision to fire eight other federal prosecutors. According to a report in the American Lawyer, she was lured away by a $1.5 million-plus offer to become a partner at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP, which is defending Lewis in the probe.

Security Breakdown at the White House?
"Security practices at the White House are dangerously inadequate say current and former employees of the security office there, according to a letter sent today from the House Oversight Committee to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, asking that he cooperate with the committee's investigation into the alleged security lapses. 'These security officials described a systemic breakdown in security procedures at the White House,' wrote the chairman of the committee, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)." (ABC's The Blotter)

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You know it's bad news for the White House when agencies you'd never even heard of start launching investigations into the administration.

This time, it's the Office of Special Counsel, a federal investigative unit that's charged with monitoring federal employees, not to be confused with a special counsel or special prosecutor such as Patrick Fitzgerald. The OSC is charged with policing Hatch Act violations and protecting whistleblowers, among other duties. It's a permanent federal agency, and it's prosecutions are not criminal prosecutions.

But the OSC does have teeth. If it successfully prosecutes a federal employee before the Merit Systems Protection Board (which acts as its judge), then that employee can be terminated. That employee, in this instance, is Karl Rove.

Well, it's Rove and others in his office... and possibly others still. Here's how The Los Angeles Times frames the OSC investigation:

... the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House....

"We will take the evidence where it leads us," Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday. "We will not leave any stone unturned."

Bloch (who is, by the way, a Bush appointee) seems to have combined a host of investigations -- 1) whether U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias was wrongly terminated due to his Navy reserve service, and 2) the White House's use of RNC-issued email accounts to conduct government business, and 3) Rove's and his deputy's presentations to federal employees about Republican electoral prospects -- into one big stew pot of wrongdoing.

Of all three, Rove's now-infamous briefings would seem to be the most fertile investigatory ground for Bloch. As Tom Hamburger reports, Rove has been giving those presentations to federal employees since the beginning of the administration:

...Rove and his top aides met each year with presidential appointees throughout the government, using PowerPoint presentations to review polling data and describe high-priority congressional and other campaigns around the country....

A former Interior Department official, Wayne R. Smith, who sat through briefings from Rove and his then-deputy Ken Mehlman, said that during President Bush's first term, he and other appointees were frequently briefed on political priorities.

"We were constantly being reminded about how our decisions could affect electoral results," Smith said.

Employees, Hamburger reports, "got a not-so-subtle message about helping endangered Republicans."

It's hard to imagine how such presentations are not violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits using federal resources for political ends. But that doesn't mean that the White House isn't already trying out a line of defense. Yesterday, 25 Democratic senators wrote the White House to demand answers about the presentations. And the White House replied, via a spokesman:

"It is entirely appropriate for the president's staff to provide informational briefings to appointees throughout the federal government about the political landscape in which they implement the president's policies and priorities."

It sounds so innocuous, doesn't it? Much more innocuous than the slides themselves.

Update: A number of readers have written in to point out that Bloch, who heads up an agency that is supposed to protect federal whistleblowers, is himself under investigation for intimidating and threatening his own employees. Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Shakespeare's Sister has more.

Yet another shoe drops in the Jack Abramoff investigation. A former aide to Rep. Don Young (R-AK), Mark Zachares, looks set to plead guilty to corruption charges.

The Justice Department filed a criminal information today on Zachares, laying out the facts to which he'll be pleading guilty. You can read it here. A plea hearing has been scheduled for tomorrow.

According to the document, Zachares and Abramoff had what they called their "two year plan": Zacheres would work for Abramoff on the inside, taking advantage of his congressional position to throw business Abramoff's way, and eventually, when Zachares left Congress, Abramoff would reward him. As the information reads: Abramoff "would 'credit' Zachares with the 'business' Zachares... referred or developed for Abramoff's firm, and would ultimately employ Zachares as a lobbyist credited 'with business,' warranting a high annual salary."

In addition to the usual stream of junkets, meals, and sports tickets, Abramoff also funneled $10,000 to Zachares through one of his phony charities. In return, Zachares referred clients and provided a number of favors for Abramoff's various clients.

The document does not implicate Rep. Young, but it does mention that in 2002, Abramoff "assisted Zachares in obtaining his position as a staffer on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee," which Young chaired. And Young has come up often in the course of the Abramoff scandal.

My call to Young's office was not immediately returned.

Update: Some background on Zachares, courtesy of The Washington Post last year below.

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During the White House press briefing today, Dana Perino mounted the latest rousing defense of the attorney general.

When asked how the president could have increased confidence in Gonzales after he'd pled a faulty memory some 64 times during the hearing, Perino replied that "many of those questions were repeated over and over.... [he] was asked multiple questions in various different ways on the same topics." So in other words, Gonzales only had to say "I don't remember" so often because the senators asked so very many questions. Shame on them.

And Perino also added some much needed perspective. While Gonzales may have made some people unhappy with all that memory failure, "what would have been dishonorable is if [he] had made it up." Touché.

While we're at it, here's my choice for Gonzales' most risible failure of memory.

Move over, Al Gonzales, there's a new campaign for the resignation of a Bush appointee.

General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan shocked the world last month when she gave a performance at a House hearing that was enough to make even Gonzales cringe.

In January, Karl Rove's deputy, Scott Jennings, arrived at the GSA to give a briefing on Republican political prospects. After the presentation, Doan reportedly asked aloud what the GSA could do with its considerable taxpayer-funded assets "to help our candidates." When asked about the briefing at the hearing, Doan pleaded a fuzzy memory.

Ever since the briefing was revealed, Democrats have been vainly trying to get answers from the White House about this and other presentations. So today, 25 senators wrote the White House, demanding answers. You can read the letter here. "The Executive Branch is not an extension of the Republican National Committee," it reads, "nor of any political party. Those who treat it as such must be held accountable."

Also today, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) called for Doan's resignation -- because of the presentation... and a host of other reasons enumerated below the fold.

Any guesses on how long it is before Doan joins that"pretty small number" of administration figures in whom Bush has to express confidence?

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At this point, I think it's a re-re-re-reaffirmation of his confidence in Gonzales -- but I'll have to go back and check. From this morning:

Q The Attorney General is still getting a lot of criticism over the U.S. attorneys situation. Was his explanation sufficient, or is there more he needs to do to try to turn things around?

THE PRESIDENT: The Attorney General went up and gave a very candid assessment, and answered every question he could possibly answer, honestly answer, in a way that increased my confidence in his ability to do the job.

One of the things that's important for the American people to understand is that the Attorney General has a right to recommend to me to replace U.S. attorneys. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. In other words, we have named them, and I have the right to replace them with somebody else. And as the investigation, the hearings went forward, it was clear that the Attorney General broke no law, did no wrongdoing. And some senators didn't like his explanation, but he answered as honestly as he could. This is an honest, honorable man, in whom I have confidence.

I'm going to assume his comment that Gonzales answered all the questions he could "honestly answer" is just yet another of Bush's infelicitous phrasings. But that didn't stop me from snickering.

Gonzales Hearing Showcases Policy Shift
Most of the public dissection of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ testimony last week dwelt on the pummeling he took at the hands of the Senate Judiciary Committee, particularly from members of his own party. But beyond the relentless back-and-forth combat between Gonzales and hostile senators, some crucial details emerged about how management of the Justice Department has changed during the Bush administration." (Legal Times)

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If there's one good thing that's come out of the U.S. attorneys scandal, it's that it's shining a bright light on the Justice Department. And as a result, it's become clear that the most grossly politicized section of the department is the Civil Rights Division.

The reason is plain. As we've seen, many Republicans, and Karl Rove in particular, are obsessed with "voter fraud" -- the idea that minorities in Democratic strongholds are taking advantage of lax record systems to stuff the ballot. There's evidence that at least two of the fired U.S. attorneys were let go because they did not pursue such prosecutions. But the obsession is nothing new; it's one of the defining preoccupations of the Bush administration. The hysterical claims have led Republicans to push voter I.D. laws in several swing states -- efforts that have been backed by the White House.

It is the job of the Civil Rights Division to watchdog the voting rights of minorities. And due to the Voting Rights Act, several states cannot even enact such laws without first getting clearance from the division. So to make sure that no career staffers get in the way -- with evidence, for instance, that a voter I.D. law would disproportionately impact African Americans -- the Civil Rights Division has been gutted.

But, as McClatchy reported in detail late last week, the strategy goes beyond voter fraud. The division has made an effort to purge voter rolls while minimizing actions or programs that help register poor or minority voters, and McClatchy gave a nice rundown of the lowlights. Political appointees in the Civil Rights Division have:

-Issued advisory opinions that overstated a 2002 federal election law by asserting that it required states to disqualify new voting registrants if their identification didn't match that in computer databases, prompting at least three states to reject tens of thousands of applicants mistakenly.

-Done little to enforce a provision of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act that requires state public assistance agencies to register voters. The inaction has contributed to a 50 percent decline in annual registrations at those agencies, to 1 million from 2 million.

-Sued at least six states on grounds that they had too many people on their voter rolls. Some eligible voters were removed in the resulting purges.

The whole thing is worth a read, especially as a companion piece to The New York Times' excellent piece earlier this month on voter fraud.

So that's the big picture. As more comes out (and more will), keep that in mind.