U.S. Attorneys

Email: Rich Lowry Offered To Help White House Spin Firings

Zachary Roth | August 11, 2009, 4:09PM

Here's a fun nugget from the U.S. attorney documents (h/t reader B.M.):

It looks like Rich Lowry of National Review offered the White House his services in doing some positive P.R. on behalf of Rove protege Tim Griffin, who the administration had sought to muscle into the U.S. attorney job in Arkansas as a replacement for the fired Bud Cummins.

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Harriet Miers

Report Shows White House Engineered U.S. Attorney Firings

Zachary Roth | October 1, 2008, 4:28PM

Now that the dust has settled on the U.S. attorney firings report, released Monday morning by the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General, we thought it was worth taking some time to lay out what it tells us.

Almost since the scandal broke early last year, there have been clear signs that the plan to fire U.S. attorneys as a means of advancing the Bush administration's political goals was being driven by the White House. That impression has been strengthened as top current and former White House officials, including Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, have consistently stonewalled efforts to look into the matter.

The OIG investigation was no exception. As the report notes, Miers, Rove and several other Whte House officials refused to talk to investigators, and the White House wouldn't provide internal emails or documents relating to the firings. Perhaps the most crucial of the documents denied to OIG was a memo, written in March 2007, which contained the results of an internal White House investigation into the firings, conducted by associate White House counsel Michael Scudder. Scudder had interviewed top DOJ and White House officials, including Rove, and had compiled a timeline that "appeared to contain information we had not obtained elsewhere in our investigation," according to the OIG report.

Still, a close examination of the report makes clear that, although on a day-to-day basis the plan was put into effect by mid-level DOJ political appointees -- enabled by a shocking lack of oversight from top department officials, principally former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- the impetus for the move came straight from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Many of the individual pieces of information have been previously reported, as DOJ provided emails and internal documents to Congress for its 2007 investigation. But the OIG report provides a far clearer sense of the longer-term trajectory of the plan, and the consistent interest in it from Miers and Rove, than we've yet been offered.

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Alberto Gonzales

The OIG Report: Tying Up Loose Ends

Kate Klonick | October 1, 2008, 3:00PM

In the almost two years that TPMmuckraker has been covering the scandal over the removal of the U.S. attorneys, there have been many questions raised over the reasons behind the firings. On Monday, the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General's report answered some of those, but raised others. While it concluded that only three of the firings were carried out for political reasons or to interfere with active prosecutions, it could not gather sufficient evidence to conclude the rest of the firings were politically based. Regardless, the report strongly condemned the DOJs overall mishandling of the firings, calling the process "fundamentally flawed . . unsystematic and arbitrary."

As we wrote earlier this week, the report reveals that Todd Graves, David Iglesias and Bud Cummins were fired for reasons of politics, not performance.

The report lays out the investigations into each of the remaining U.S. attorney firings, but repeatedly states that its analysis and investigation were "hindered" due to many witnesses' "lack of recall"; the refusal of many witnesses to cooperate with the investigation or give testimony; and the administration's stonewalling in disclosing documents. Citing these obstacles, the report hedges its findings, requesting a prosecutor to continue the investigation with the power to compel testimony.

In the case of Margaret Chiara, the former Western Michigan U.S. attorney, the report could find no evidence that the rumors that Chiara was in a lesbian relationship with one of her subordinates were behind her removal.

Chiara has stated publicly that she believes the rumors -- which she called "false and malicious" in a statement yesterday from her attorney -- were the reason for the loss of her position.

Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of California, was believed to have been asked to resign over her prosecution of former Executive Director of the CIA, Dusty Foggo and Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor who bribed former Republican Rep. Duke Cunningham and Foggo. But the report "found no evidence" to support those claims, stating that "the investigation and prosecution of Cunningham and Foggo were aggressively pursued by career prosecutors in Lam's office, both during and after her tenure."

Instead, the report supports the Department's previous claims that Lam was removed because of her poor statistics on gun and immigration prosecution statistics -- but blames the DOJ for poor handling of her removal.

In the case of Daniel Bogden of Nevada, little was known about his removal, except that he had not been diligent in prosecution of obscenity cases. The report found the claim to be behind Bogden's removal, but added some color to the removal. Interestingly, the report found that the complaints of Bodgen's dalliance in obscenity prosecutions were made by Brent Ward, the head of the DOJ Obscenity Prosecution Task Force -- who was friends with Attorney General Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson's brother and had direct conversations with Sampson regularly.

When questioned by the DOJ, Sampson stated he "did not recall whether those complaints played a role in the decision to remove Bogden," a response the report found "particularly suspect, given his role in the removal process."

In Arizona, Paul Charlton's termination was believed to be connected to his investigation of Republican Rep. Rick Renzi, but the report states that it could find no evidence to support that claim. Charlton had previously clashed with Main Justice on a decision he made to not seek the death penalty on a case involving a murder that transpired during a drug deal. Charlton believed it was this death penalty case as well as his policy of tape recording interrogations that led to his removal -- theories the IG report confirmed as the primary reasons for his dismissal.

Lastly, there is Seattle's John McKay who was believed to have been fired over his failure to prosecute voter fraud related to the 2004 Washington governor's election.

McKay famously received a call from Ed Cassidy, chief of staff to Washington Rep. Richard Hastings (R) asking about his prosecution, to which McKay responded, "Ed, I'm sure you're not about to start talking to me about the future direction of this case," after which Cassidy quickly ended the call.

Hastings claimed ignorance and told investigators that "he could not remember telling Cassidy to call McKay. . . or whether Cassidy had told him he had done so."

The report also mentions a meeting in Washington between McKay and White House Counsel Harriet Miers in which Miers reportedly asked McKay "why Republicans in the state of Washington were angry with him."

The report concludes that the "evidence suggests" that the primary reason for McKay's removal was an argument with Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty over an information sharing program -- not because of failure to prosecute voter fraud as McKay conjectured.

The OIG report, though nearly 400 pages long, is far from comprehensive. The investigation lacked the power to compel testimony or documents outside of the Justice Department and were consequently limited in their investigation. As a result, the report is forced to reserve judgment on whether many of the firings were inappropriately political, though it recommends that a prosecutor be appointed to look into whether crimes were committed.

Nora Dannehy, appointed on Monday by Attorney General Michael Mukasey will take up that mantle. It remains to be seen if that will be enough to ferret the truth out of unwilling witnesses and departments.

U.S. Attorneys

Fired USA: DoJ Should Fire Lying Mouthpiece

Paul Kiel | December 19, 2007, 10:54AM

Back in August, we pointed out that Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse, unlike virtually the entire senior leadership at the Department, survived the U.S. attorney scandal. In fact, he more than survived it: Despite serving as Alberto Gonzales' attack dog (and giving statements that ranged from misleading to lies), he emerged with a promotion to director of public affairs at the DoJ.

It's all too much for former U.S. Attorney for Little Rock Bud Cummins, who often found himself on the wrong end of Roehrkasse's spin, to bear. So in this issue of the Washington Monthly, he takes aim, calling on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to fire Roehrkasse.

After noting some of hiss biggest whoppers, he observes that the "pattern of deception employed by this young man is deeply unsettling to me....

Now, I don't have any way of knowing how Brian Roehrkasse came to make so many dubious or misleading statements. I've never met the man or communicated with him directly. For all I know, his superiors were writing them, and he was simply reading them. But once you realize you are being repeatedly marched out to say untrue things, integrity dictates that you push back or resign before you do it again. Fool me twice, shame on you. Fool me over a dozen times, I'm a willing liar."

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U.S. Attorneys

Committees Subpoena Former Rove Aide, Miers

Paul Kiel | June 13, 2007, 10:21AM

The House and Senate judiciary committees will issue subpoenas to former Karl Rove aide Sara Taylor and former White House counsel Harriet Miers this morning, the AP is reporting.

The subpoenas follow fast on Justice Department emails turned over to Congress last night that fattened the already substantial case that the White House was intimately involved in installing Timothy Griffin, a former aide to Karl Rove as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

The Justice Department, in a letter vetted by the White House, wrote Congress back in February that Karl Rove didn't play "any role" in Griffin's nomination -- a statement the Department has since admitted was false. And how: emails have shown that Rove's aides worked closely with Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson at the Justice Department to get Griffin in the spot, and that Sampson, working with Rove's aides, plotted to keep Griffin in place despite objections from Arkansas' senators, stringing them along with the promise that another nomination would be made if Sens. Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) objected. A little-noticed provision in the USA PATRIOT Act enabled the attorney general to appoint U.S. attorneys for indefinite terms without Senate confirmation.

Sampson testified to congressional investigators that Taylor, formerly Rove's top aide (she resigned last month), was "upset" when Alberto Gonzales finally decided not to follow Sampson's plan in January. From a January 25th email, it appears that Taylor was still committed to Sampson's plan of stringing the senator's along at that late date. Reacting to a draft of a Justice Department letter to Sen. Pryor, Taylor wrote "I'm concerned we imply that we'll pull down Griffin's nomination should Pryor object."

The emails released last night show how worked up Taylor was about Griffin's nomination.

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U.S. Attorneys

DoJ Official to Cummins: Circumventing Senate Was "White House Plan"

Paul Kiel | May 2, 2007, 2:13PM

Alberto Gonzales and others at the Justice Department have been desperately claiming for months that they'd never intended to circumvent the Senate in the confirmation of U.S. attorneys.

But apparently Timothy Griffin, the former aide to Karl Rove who was appointed as the U.S. Attorney for Little Rock, didn't know it was so taboo.

In written response to questions from Congress made public today, Griffin's predecessor Bud Cummins says that Griffin had been telling a number of people in Arkansas that he would remain as the U.S. attorney there for the remainder of Bush's term whether he was confirmed by the Senate or not. An obscure provision in the Patriot Act reauthorization bill, of course, had made just such a thing possible.

Cummins writes of a conversation he had with Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, in late January, the day after Alberto Gonzales had testified to the Senate. Gonzales had said, among other things, that the Justice Department would seek a presidential nomination for the U.S. attorneys in every district. Cummins had called Elston to contest this idea, because "it appeared to [him] that there was no intention to put Tim Griffin through a nomination." Elston disagreed...

Elston rejected that notion and assured me that every replacement would have to be confirmed by the Senate. I told him if that was the case, then he had better gag Tim Griffin because Griffin was telling many people, including me, that officials in Washington had assured him he could stay in as USA pursuant to an interim appointment whether he was ever nominated or not. Elston denied knowing anything about anyone’s intention to circumvent Senate confirmation in Griffin’s case. He said that might have been the White House’s plan, but they “never read DOJ into that plan” and DOJ would never go along with it. This indicated to me that my removal had been dictated entirely by the White House. He said Griffin would be confirmed or have to resign. I remember that part of the conversation well because I then said to Elston that it looked to me that if Tim Griffin couldn’t get confirmed and had to then resign, then I would have resigned for nothing, and to that, after a brief pause Elston replied, “yes, that’s right.” [emphasis mine]

Remember that emails show that Kyle Sampson didn't want Bud Cummins testifying to Congress because he worried that Cummins would testify that Griffin had been blabbing about the Patriot Act provision.

The entirety of Cummins' account of this phone call with Elston is below.

You can see all of the U.S. attorneys questions and answers here.

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U.S. Attorneys

Former Rove Aide in on Senate Bypass Scheme?

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 1:32PM

Here's the email frequently cited in today's press reports where Alberto Gonzales' right hand Kyle Sampson, responding to a question about whether U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins should testify before Congress, says, "I don't think he should."

It's clear why Sampson thought so. As Justice Department official Michael Elston wrote, relaying his conversation with Cummins, if he testified, Cummins “would tell the truth about his circumstances.” The truth, of course, was that Cummins had been forced out in order to install Karl Rove's former aide Timothy Griffin in his spot -- something that Cummins knew because he had been told as much. And Sampson didn't want that, as he clearly illustrated.

How would Cummins answer, Sampson wanted to know, several uncomfortable questions? But there's one question in particular that raised even my eyebrows: "Did Griffin ever talk about being AG appointed and avoiding Senate confirmation?"

Sounds to me like Griffin was in on the scheme to have him installed by bypasssing the Senate.

In his two appearances before Congress, Cummins wasn't asked that question. But I know what my next call will be...

Update: I reached Cummins just now, and he replied (ever the Southern gentleman) with "My answer is a polite 'I don't want to talk about it.'... I don't want to appear to be in any way trying to injure Mr. Griffin's prospects as to whether or not he can serve as a U.S. Attorney." He did add, however, that he would answer that question if subpoenaed and put under oath before Congress.

Ed. Note: Thanks to TPM Reader tekel for catching this in the comments.

U.S. Attorneys

Ousted USA: DoJ Smeared USAs with "Fabricated Assertions"

Paul Kiel | March 16, 2007, 4:08PM

Speaking by phone today, former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins made his view of the Justice Department's firing of seven other U.S. attorneys perfectly clear: not only did the DoJ not fire them for performance-related reasons, but they fabricated such issues to cover that up.

Cummins is a unique case of the eight prosecutors, since the Justice Department has admitted that he was dismissed for no other reason than to give former aide to Karl Rove, Timothy Griffin, a job.

"I've heard every one of the [Justice Department's "performance related" issues with the other dismissed US attorneys], and I'm completely convinced at this point that they are fabricated assertions, and that they were in no way on the table when the decisions to dismiss those seven USAs were made," he told me, continuing:

"I gave them the benefit of the doubt at the beginning of this. They told me directly that my case was completely different from the others, that there were significant performance issues involved in the other decisions, and if I saw, I'd agree that they'd have to go.

Now that I've seen the decisions, not only don't I see why they had to go, I see that [the charges of performance issues] are really not true."

Cummins, who is a lifelong Republican, even running for the House once in the nineties, says that this was a ""reluctant conclusion," but one he was forced to reach, and one he felt compelled to speak out about.

"When they made the decision to lie about these seven people to Congress, that's when the trouble started," he said.. Cummins added that if the Justice Department were to retract the statements that the others were fired for deficiencies in performance, "I'll disappear."

U.S. Attorneys

Cummins: GOPer Probe Didn't Lead to Firing

Paul Kiel | March 16, 2007, 3:34PM

Earlier, we noted an article in today's Los Angeles Times, which quoted former U.S. attorney Bud Cummins as wondering whether his forced resignation had anything to do with his office's investigation into Missouri's Republican governor Matt Blunt.

In response, Cummins wrote in to TPMm, wanting to make it clear that " I do not know of any connection whatsoever to the Missouri investigation and my firing. I am not asking myself (or anyone else) about that."

We've posted his entire email below.

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U.S. Attorneys

LAT: Ousted U.S.A. Wonders Whether GOPer Probe Led to Firing

Paul Kiel | March 16, 2007, 11:08AM

From The Los Angeles Times:

Still uncertain exactly why he was fired, former U.S. Atty. H.E. "Bud" Cummins III wonders whether it had something to do with the probe he opened into alleged corruption by Republican officials in Missouri amid a Senate race there that was promising to be a nail-biter.

Cummins, a federal prosecutor in Arkansas, was removed from his job along with seven other U.S. attorneys last year.

In January 2006, he had begun looking into allegations that Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt had rewarded GOP supporters with lucrative contracts to run the state's driver's license offices. Cummins handled the case because U.S. attorneys in Missouri had recused themselves over potential conflicts of interest.

But in June, Cummins said, he was told by the Justice Department that he would be fired at year's end to make room for Timothy Griffin — an operative tied to White House political guru Karl Rove.

In an interview Thursday, Cummins expressed disgust that the Bush administration may have fired him and the others for political reasons. "You have to firewall politics out of the Department of Justice. Because once it gets in, people question every decision you make. Now I keep asking myself: 'What about the Blunt deal?' "

A couple points to be made about this, one that adds credence to Cummins' charge, and one that doesn't.

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U.S. Attorneys

Purged Prosecutor: No "Paper Trail" for Administration Alibi

Paul Kiel | March 15, 2007, 9:07AM

From McClatchy this morning:

In an interview Wednesday, [former U.S. Attorney for Little Rock, Arkansas Bud] Cummins questioned whether the Justice Department seriously evaluated any of the other U.S. attorneys who they insisted were removed for performance reasons.

"If they had serious questions, where are the memos proving there was a real performance review?" he asked. "They released all of these embarrassing memos, don't you think they would have released the paper trail?"

Cummins also said that e-mails released by the White House earlier this week demonstrated that performance wasn't the issue. "It's clear that, in at least some instances, politics played a significant part," he said.

U.S. Attorneys

Purged Prosecutor: DoJ Offered Me "A Deal"

Paul Kiel | March 11, 2007, 1:37PM

It's easy to get lost among the scandals and subscandals that make up the administration's firing of eight U.S. attorneys, but one chief allegation is that the Justice Department did its best to discourage the prosecutors from talking to the media and Congress about the firings.

Bud Cummins, the former U.S.A. for Little Rock, Arkansas, testified before Congress about a call he received from Justice Department official Michael Elston in late February with the following message: if the prosecutors didn't stop talking, the Justice Department would hit back.

Now another prosecutor, Seattle's John McKay, says he got a similar call much earlier, before the firings had even been reported. From Newsweek:

After McKay was fired in December, he says he also got a phone call from a "clearly nervous" Elston asking if he intended to go public: "He was offering me a deal: you stay silent and the attorney general won't say anything bad about you."

As with his chat with Cummins, Elston doesn't deny that he made the call. But he tells Newsweek, that he "can't imagine" how McKay interpreted the call that way.

Similarly, Elston wrote in a letter earlier this week that he was "shocked and baffled" by Cummins' interpretation of that call. And he tells Newsweek that all he said to Cummins was that "it's really a shame that all this has to come out in the newspaper." Somehow, Cummins interpreted that as a threat.

U.S. Attorneys

DoJ Official: "I Am Shocked and Baffled"

Paul Kiel | March 7, 2007, 12:47PM

One of the more damning pieces of testimony yesterday came from Bud Cummins, who received a call from a Justice Department official on February 20th wtih a clear message: if the fired proscutors continued speaking out, then the department would be forced to hit back and dish dirt on them.

Now that official, Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, has sent a letter to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to give his side of the story (you can read his letter here). In it, Elston claims that he's "shocked and baffled" at Cummins' interpretation of the call: "I do not understand how anything that I said to him in our last conversation in mid-February could be construed as a threat of any kind."

Let's review what happened. In a February 19th article in The Washington Post, Cummins was quoted on the firings:

"They're [the Justice Department] entitled to make these changes for any reason or no reason or even for an idiotic reason,... But if they are trying to suggest that people have inferior performance to hide whatever their true agenda is, that is wrong. They should retract those statements."

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U.S. Attorneys

USAs: Justice Official Intimidation Call Resembled "Possible Obstruction of Justice"

Paul Kiel | March 6, 2007, 2:06PM

During his questioning, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked all four prosecutors that if they were told by a witness in an ongoing invsetigation that he had received a call similar to the one Bud Cummins got from Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, what would they think? All four said that they would investigate to see whether obstruction of justice or witness tampering had occurred.

The video:

U.S. Attorneys

Cummins Describes Conversation with DoJ Official

Paul Kiel | March 6, 2007, 11:54AM

Here's testimony from U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins about his conversation with Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty:

And here's the email Bud Cummins sent to the other USAs outlining the conversation.

U.S. Attorneys

Purged Prosecutors: First, The Senate

Paul Kiel | March 6, 2007, 10:10AM

Act I of today's congressional hearing marathon on the administration's firing of federal prosecutors takes place in the Senate. Four of the prosecutors will be testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee: San Diego's Carol Lam, Seattle's John McKay, New Mexico's David Iglesias and Arkansas' Bud Cummins. The hearing has just started, and we'll be posting running updates.

For those readers who want to watch, the hearing is being broadcast on C-Span 3 and webcast on the Senate Judicary's website.

Update: The first revelation of the hearing comes from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who says that in August of last year, in response to her letter questioning U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's office's performance prosecuting immigration cases, she received a letter from the Justice Department supporting Lam, saying that the DoJ was "satisfied" with Lam's performance.

Update: David Iglesias just gave a devastating rendering of his conversation with Sen. Pete Domenici. We'll get the video up as soon as we can. Details here.

Update: Bud Cummins and John McKay just corroborated the McClatchy report that Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, communicated a threat to the USAs that if they continued to stir up controversy, more information would come out. Details and video soon. McKay called the call "hugely inappropriate." Bud Cummins has a copy of the email describing the call, which will be released as part of the hearing.

Update: John McKay also revealed that Rep. Doc Hastings' (R-WA) chief of staff called him to question him about an investigation. Details here.

Update: David Iglesias just recounted his conversation with Michael Battle, the DoJ official who recently resigned and who made the calls to fire the prosecutors on December 7th. Iglesias said that he asked Battle why he wasn being fired. Battle replied, according to Iglesias: "I don't know and I don't want to know. All I know is that this came from on high."

Update: Here's a copy of the email that U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins gave to the committee outlining his conversation wtih Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

Update: We've begun uploading video from the hearing. See here and here.

Update: Maybe the biggest bombshell during the hearing was admissions from Cummins, McKay and Iglesias that they would have opened an obstruction investigation based on the phone call to Cummins from Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, if they were still in office.

U.S. Attorneys

Purged Prosecutors: "We Served Well"

Paul Kiel | March 5, 2007, 2:53PM

As a kind of preview of tomorrow's hearing, here's the prepared statement of the six former United States attorneys who will be testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law tomorrow afternoon (four of them will be testifying first in the Senate).

In the statement, which will be given by Carol Lam, the attorneys underline the successes of their offices prosecuting a wide range of cases. "We served well and upheld the best traditions of the Department of Justice," reads the statement. The statement, however, is just meant as an overview. It goes on to note that the attorneys "will be responding individually to the Committee's questions, and those answers will be based on our own individual situations and circumstances."

An excerpt:

Recently, each of us was asked by Department of Justice officials to resign our posts. Each of us was fully aware that we served at the pleasure of the President, and that we could be removed for any or no reason. In most of our cases, we were given little or no information about the reason for the request for our resignations. This hearing is not a forum to engage in speculation, and we decline to speculate about the reasons....

The members of the panel regret the circumstances that have brought us here to testify today. We hope those circumstances do not in any way call into question the good work of the United States Attorneys Offices we led and the independence of the career prosecutors who staff them. And while it is never easy to leave a position one cares deeply about, we leave with no regrets, because we served well and upheld the best traditions of the Department of Justice.

The full statement is below...

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