U.S. Attorneys

Goodling to House Dems: I'm Not Talking to You, Either

Paul Kiel | March 30, 2007, 5:22PM

In a letter to House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) today, Justice Department official Monica Goodling's lawyer informed the committtee that she would plead the Fifth if called.

The committee struck a deal last night for the testimony of eight Justice Department officials, Goodling among them.

Goodling's letter was nearly identical to an earlier letter sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But there was one interesting detail in the letter: "Ms. Goodling remains actively employed by the Department of Justice, though she is temporarily and voluntarily using some of her accrued leave time," John Dowd, Goodling's lawyer, writes [my emphasis].

So just to be clear: the departure from the Justice Department of the two aides (Goodling and Kyle Sampson) at the center of the U.S. attorney firings has lent the appearance that they were called to task. But that's not at all true. Sampson left voluntarily, even remaining on the payroll for a number of days after he resigned -- until questions were raised. And Goodling hasn't really left at all. And, despite having pled the Fifth, she apparently plans to return to her job as if nothing ever happened.

U.S. Attorneys

Gonzales: "I Am Fighting for The Truth"

Paul Kiel | March 30, 2007, 2:56PM

Inspiring words from the AG:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, amid a growing clamor for his resignation, acknowledged Friday confusion about of his role in firing eight U.S. attorneys but said he doesn't "recall being involved in deliberations" over which prosecutors were to be ousted.

"I believe in truth and accountability and every step that I've taken is consistent with that principle," Gonzales said when asked why he is not heeding calls to resign. "I am fighting for the truth as well."

Gonzales said he had his former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, coordinated performance evaluations for the 93 U.S. attorneys "to see where changes might be appropriate."

"I signed off on the recommendations and signed off on the implementation plan, and that's the extent of my involvement," he told reporters....

Of course, Gonzales' denial that he was involved in "any deliberations" about firing the U.S. attorneys doesn't mean much. If Sampson's testimony yesterday was any guide, there doesn't appear to have been any deliberations at all.

U.S. Attorneys

Rove Aide Resigns

Paul Kiel | March 30, 2007, 1:13PM

Maybe it's a coincidence.

White House political director Sara Taylor is out the door at the White House, according to Washington Wire. Taylor came up a number of times yesterday during the Kyle Sampson hearing as having worked closely with Sampson (along with another Karl Rove aide Scott Jennings) to install Rove's former aide Tim Griffin as the U.S. Attorney in eastern Arkansas.

"Barry Jackson, a longtime aide to Karl Rove, also is thought to be leaving soon.... All the departures appear to be more-or-less routine turnover," reports the Washington Wire.

U.S. Attorneys

Former DoJ Official: Department Used to "Skew" Elections

Paul Kiel | March 30, 2007, 12:40PM

Straight from the horse's mouth.

Joseph D. Rich was chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil right division from 1999 to 2005. Today he penned an Op-Ed in The Los Angeles Times, and he didnt' mince words:

Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.

It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.

And Rich gives a specific example of the type of U.S. attorney this administration prefers -- a "loyal Bushie" to be sure:

In March 2006, Bradley Schlozman was appointed interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo. Two weeks earlier, the administration was granted the authority to make such indefinite appointments without Senate confirmation. That was too bad: A Senate hearing might have uncovered Schlozman's central role in politicizing the civil rights division during his three-year tenure....

Missouri had one of the closest Senate races in the country last November, and a week before the election, Schlozman brought four voter fraud indictments against members of an organization representing poor and minority people. This blatantly contradicted the department's long-standing policy to wait until after an election to bring such indictments because a federal criminal investigation might affect the outcome of the vote. The timing of the Missouri indictments could not have made the administration's aims more transparent.

Read the whole thing.

Jim Gibbons

More Trouble for Gibbons

Paul Kiel | March 30, 2007, 9:51AM

The Wall Street Journal continues (sub. req.) to make life miserable for Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons. The paper first reported a month ago that Gibbons was under federal investigation for improper gifts (possible bribes) from a defense contractor.

Now the paper reports that Gibbons' business as a legislator was intertwined with a second defense contractor:

The wife of Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons was hired as a consultant to a defense contractor at the same time that her husband, who was then a member of Congress, helped the company get funding for a no-bid federal contract.

Dawn Gibbons got about $35,000 in consulting fees in 2004 from Sierra Nevada Corp., of Sparks, Nev., the company said. Mr. Gibbons, a five-term Republican who served on the armed services and intelligence committees, sought funding that year for Sierra Nevada for a $4 million contract to develop a helicopter radar-landing system.

If this seems like déjà vu, it's because the role of wives has been key in the Jack Abramoff investigation. Abramoff often selected lawmakers' and staffers' wives for busy work --- one former staffer, Tony Rudy, has pled guilty for accepting bribes from Abramoff in the form of consulting work for his wife.

There are more than shades of similarity here. Gibbons has the same defense lawyer as Abramoff: Abbe Lowell. And Lowell tells the Journal that Mrs. Gibbons "had a pre-existing relationship" with the contractor that began long before Mr. Gibbons was elected to Congress and had "no knowledge" of the federal contract. Just a coincidence.

Now, there's another major revelation in the Journal story, one that touches on the U.S. attorney scandal. John Wilke reports that "a federal grand jury in Washington has begun to issue subpoenas for documents, according to witnesses contacted in recent weeks."

A lot of the suspicion over U.S. Attorney for Nevada Daniel Bogden's firing has centered on the assumption that it was his office leading the investigation against Gibbons. Not the case, reports Wilke: "Mr. Bogden wasn't involved in the Gibbons probe, which was initiated by prosecutors in Washington."

U.S. Attorneys

House Dems to Question DoJ Officials in Private

Paul Kiel | March 30, 2007, 9:14AM

The House Judiciary Committee has worked out an agreement to have transcribed interviews with at least eight current and former employees of the Justice Department behind closed doors. The committee said that the deal followed a series of phone and written negotiations.

The first interview will be today with Michael Elston, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty's chief of staff. Following will be interviews with McNulty, Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis; the former director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys Michael Battle; Monica Goodling, the DOJ's liaison to the White House (now on leave); acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer; and Assistant Attorney General William Moschella. Goodling, of course, has already said that she'd plead the Fifth. Congressional interviews are typically not under oath, but false statements are prosecutable (just ask David Safavian and Steven Griles).

Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and the other leaders have agreed that "investigators would keep the content of the interviews confidential pending consultation with Department officials." It's not clear when or if such a release might come, or if the interviews will be followed by open hearings.

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson: If I Had It To Do Over....

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 7:31PM

Here it is, the culmination of the hearing, where a very, very tired Kyle Sampson admits that if he had it to do all over again, well...

U.S. Attorneys

DoJ Spokesman: Gonzales Already Took It Back

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 7:07PM

Still fightin'. Reacting to Kyle Sampson's testimony that "I don't think the Attorney General's statement about not being involved in any discussions about USA removals is accurate," Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse released the following statement:

The Attorney General recently clarified his statements from a March 13 press conference, as Mr. Sampson stated during the testimony. The Attorney General explained in a recent interview on March 26, 2007, "[f]rom time to time, Mr. Sampson would tell [him] something that would confirm in [his] mind that that process was ongoing." During the interview, the Attorney General stated he "was never focused on specific concerns about United States Attorneys as to whether or not they should be asked to resign." Rather, as the Attorney General has already explained, his discussions with Mr. Sampson were focused on ensuring that appropriate people were aware of and involved in the process. Furthermore, the Attorney General explained -- consistent with Mr. Sampson’s testimony today -- in an interview on March 14 that he directed Mr. Sampson to lead the evaluation process, was kept aware of some conversations during the process, and that he approved the recommendations to seek the resignations of select U.S. Attorneys.

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson: We Didn't Consider Corruption Investigations

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 6:45PM

Here, Kyle Sampson claims that it didn't even cross his mind, nor was it an issue, that Carol Lam was in the middle of a sprawling public corruption investigation when she was fired.

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson Admits Lam Was Never Confronted on Immigration

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 6:22PM

Here it is, under questioning by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Kyle Sampson admits that Carol Lam was never told of the Justice Department's disaffection with her performance on immigration prosecutions, the supposed reason for her firing.

U.S. Attorneys

Specter Questions Sampson on Avoiding the Senate

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 5:39PM

Under questioning from Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), Sampson testifies about his "bad idea" to circumvent Senate confirmation for the appointment of Tim Griffin as the U.S. Attorney in Eastern Arkansas.

"I did not think the White House would consider doing that in 92 districts," he said, meaning that he only intended to use it for Griffin. "In my discussions at the staff level with folks at the White House, I believe it was a consideration then... at the staff level, we discussed it." But he says it wasn't adopted by "the principals" (meaning Harriet Miers).

Upon further questioning by Specter, he admits that he spoke with Gonzales about the idea. "I don't think he liked the idea very much," Sampson says. He's then asked whether Gonzales specifically rejected it and says that he did after speaking with Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) about the appointment of Griffin. But it's unclear when that conversation was.

Sampson says it could have been in late December or early January. When Specter asks whether that was after Sampson wrote in a December 19, 2007 email that they should use the provision, Sampson says it was.

He says he has no recollection of Harriet Miers rejecting the idea.

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson Testifies about Conversation with Gonzales about Iglesias

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 4:51PM

Sen. Pat Leahy asks Kyle Sampson how David Iglesias ended up on the list of prosecutors to be purged, and Sampson replies,

"I don't remember hearing any complaints or anything about Mr. Iglesias' handling of corruption cases in New Mexico -- I do remember learning from, I believe, the attorney general, that he had received a complaint from Karl Rove about U.S. attorneys in 3 jurisdictions, including New Mexico. The substance of the complaint was that they were not pursuing voter fraud complaints aggressively enough."

The video:

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson Suggested Removing Fitzgerald

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 3:30PM

Here's Kyle Sampson's testimony about suggesting to White House counsel Harriet Miers and deputy White House counsel Bill Kelley that they remove U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) asks if Fitzgerald was ever considered for removal?

Sampson says:

"On one occasion in 2006, in discussing the removal of U.S. attorneys... that I was speaking with Harriet Miers and Bill Kelley and I raised Pat Fitzgerald, and immediately after I did it, I regretted it. I thought, I knew it was the wrong thing to do, I knew it was inappropriate. And I remember at the time that Harriet Miers and Bill Kelley just looked at me.... I said, "Patrick Fitzgerald could be added to this list."... They just looked at me."

Durbin asks why he suggested that. And Sampson says he doesn't know why, that maybe it was just to "get a reaction out of them."

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson Explains Rove's Role in U.S. Attorney Nomination

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 2:54PM

Watch Kyle Sampson thread the needle on Karl Rove's involvement in the appointment of his former aide Timothy Griffin to be the U.S. Attorney for Eastern Arkansas.

U.S. Attorneys

Republicans Stop Sampson Hearing... And Then It Starts Again

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 2:40PM

While Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was talking, Senate Judiciary Chairman suddenly interrupted him to say,

"we've just received word that the Republicans have objected under the Senate rules to this meeting continuing. I think that's unfortunate, but I will follow the rules of the Senate... The Republicans are the ones who don't want to have the hearings, the Republicans have the right under the rules to do that.... we will stand in recess until the Senate recesses."

Whatever the disruption, apparently it was immediately reversed. Republicans are saying that it was based on a misunderstanding. Now we're back on.

U.S. Attorneys

Whitehouse Questions Sampson about His Experience

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 2:00PM

Obviously unimpressed with the qualifications of the people (Sampson, Monica Goodling) who seem to have driven the U.S. attorney purge, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) grills Sampson on what actual lawyering experience Sampson and his colleague has.

U.S. Attorneys

Schumer Questions Sampson about Gonzales Remarks

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 1:59PM

Here Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) questions Kyle Sampson about the preparation for Justice Department officials to testify before Congress. Counter to earlier remarks by Alberto Gonzales, Sampson says that "I was very open and collaborative in the process."

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson Didn't Think of "Perception Problem"

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 1:49PM

Here Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) questions Kyle Sampson about whether it ever occurred to him when he was making the list of U.S. attorneys whether there would be a "perception problem" with firing U.S. attorneys in the middle of important investigations. Sampson says no.

U.S. Attorneys

Feinstein Questions Sampson on Lam Firing

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 1:04PM

Two big things came out of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) questioning of Kyle Sampson.

The first was a glowing letter about Lam that Feinstein presented from the Director of Field Operations for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. Lam was supposedly fired, remember, because she performed poorly on immigration prosecutions. You can read the letter here.

The second was the revelation that after the FBI bureau chief in San Diego complained to the press about Lam's firing, Samspon called FBI headquarters to complain.

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson Defines "Loyalty"

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 12:44PM

Here it is. Kyle Sampson explains (away) what a "loyal Bushie" is.

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson on the Patiot Act Provision

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 12:20PM

Here Kyle Sampson says that he did have the idea to use the Patiot Act provision to avoid Senate confirmation for the administration's U.S. attorney picks, but that the Attorney General and White House counsel nixed it.

U.S. Attorneys

Specter Asks Sampson about What "The Problem" with Carol Lam Was

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 12:03PM

Here you go. Sen. Arlen Specter asks Sampson about why he wrote on May 11th that the "real problem" we have "now" is with Carol Lam. Sampson dodged at first, but then said that the "real problem" referred to her "office's prosecution of immigration cases." Nothing to do with Lam's search warrant of CIA Executive Director Dusty Foggo.

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson Testifies before The Senate

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 10:08AM

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Kyle Sampson is set to begin. I'll be providing running updates on the testimony to this post below the fold.

We'll also be providing clips of the testimony as it goes forward.

The hearing is being broadcast through the committee's website and also on C-Span3. Those watching at home are invited to weign in with a comment.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson: Answers To Look For

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 10:03AM

So what, exactly, will Democrats be grilling Kyle Sampson about, starting in a couple minutes?

U.S. News has a general rundown which is a good start, but there a few key things to look for, a couple of which they touch on.

1) Sampson claims that the firings were the result of a broad, "consensus based" process. So let's hear the reasons, however subjective or unscientific they were. How was it, for example, that the Justice Department's second most senior official wrote two days before the firings that he was getting "a little skittish" about firing U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden?

2) On May 11, 2006, Sampson emailed deputy White House counsel William Kelley: "The real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires." It was sent the day after Carol Lam had notifed the DoJ that she intended to serve search warrants to Foggo. It'll be interesting to hear Sampson explain that away.

3) Sampson repeatedly advocated for using the Patiot Act provision to circumvent Senate confirmation for Timothy Griffin, Karl Rove's former aide. Senators will want to hear about that, and why Alberto Gonzales and other DoJ officials told Congress that they did indeed plan to seek Senate confirmation.

4) How did Sampson know that Griffin's appointment was "important" to Karl Rove? And why did he tell Congress that Rove had no role in Griffin's appointment?

5) What was Rove's role in the firings in general? How often did he communicate with Rove, who is reportedly deeply involved in the appointment process, about the firings?

6) Why did he rate Patrick Fitzgerald as an "undistinguished" U.S. attorney?

7) Before he left, then Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who managed the U.S. attorneys, made up his own list of incompetent U.S. attorneys. It was completely different from Sampson's final list, save one -- the only one who indisputably had real performance issues. Why the difference?

There's more, to be sure. Are there other questions you're listening for answers to? Let us know in the comments.

U.S. Attorneys

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 29, 2007, 9:21AM

Well, it's finally time to hear from Kyle Sampson. You can read his opening statement for this morning's hearing here (pdf).

Josh already gave a good introduction to the central aspect of Sampson's testimony, his assertion that there's nothing wrong with "political" motivations for the firings. It's an idea Sampson most succinctly formulates here:

A U.S. Attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective, either because he or she has alienated the leadership of the Department in Washington or cannot work constructively with law enforcement or other governmental constituencies in the district important to effective leadership of the office, is unsuccessful.

The key question, of course, is how some of these U.S. attorneys managed to "alienate" Washington. Sampson denies that any of them were removed for "improper" reasons, which he defines in a lawyerly cadence as
to "interfere or influence the investigation or prosecution of a particular case for political or partisan advantage."

So why were these eight U.S. attorneys removed? How did the department establish which prosecutors were "unsuccessful?" The "process was not scientific," Sampson admits. "But neither was the process random or aribitrary." It was a "consensus-based process based on input from senior Justice Department officials." But how they arrived at that consensus, nobody knows.

For instance, here's what Sampson is expected to say about U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias, via The Washington Post:

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Sampson will describe the firing as the culmination of a series of complaints about Iglesias that hinged in part on three phone calls from [Sen. Pete] Domenici (R-NM) to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in 2005 and 2006 and another to Gonzales's deputy last October. Iglesias was not added to the list of prosecutors to be fired until fall.

How did those complaints lead to that consensus-based decision? And what precisely were the complaints about? It'll be interesting to hear Sampson tell the "benign story" that he says this is.

But there's more. Sampson will also give a rather unflattering portrait of his boss, Alberto Gonzales. Here's how this morning's New York Times paints that portion of his testimony:

... over time, friends and former colleagues say, Mr. Sampson noticed what three people who worked with the attorney general separately called a pattern of “imprecision” in Mr. Gonzales’s public statements.

...friends said Mr. Sampson could not defend the accuracy of all of Mr. Gonzales’s statements in the case like his insistence that he had no personal involvement in planning the removals or selecting prosecutors.

Justice Department records show that Mr. Gonzales discussed the removals at a meeting on Nov. 27, 2006.

Mr. Gonzales “is not a litigator, and he is not an accomplished public speaker,” said a friend of Mr. Sampson who also worked with Mr. Gonzales, known as Judge Gonzales because he was on the Texas Supreme Court. “When the judge says, ‘I wasn’t involved,’ he means something specific. If you teased it out, you would figure out what it was he meant. But in the political world where you only get one shot, it comes across as misleading.”

Your attorney general: a lawyer who even his closest advisors admit is imprecise with language.

U.S. Attorneys

AP: Sampson to Ask, What's Political Mean, Anyway?

Paul Kiel | March 28, 2007, 6:31PM

From the AP:

Eight federal prosecutors were fired last year because they did not sufficiently support President Bush's priorities, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' former chief of staff says in remarks prepared for delivery Thursday to Congress.

"The distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a United States attorney is, in my view, largely artificial," said Kyle Sampson.

The aide, who quit because of the furor over the firings, is to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. A copy of his prepared remarks was obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.

"A U.S. attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective ... is unsuccessful," Sampson said.

This is gonna be fun.

U.S. Attorneys

Emails Show Statement on Rove Involvement Went Through White House

Paul Kiel | March 28, 2007, 6:08PM

Another crucial detail from the documents just released: the White House is also complicit.

On February 22, Kyle Sampson wrote, "Because this letter mentions Rove and alludes to Harriet, I'd like to send it to [the White House Counsel's Office] today for their review, with an eye on getting it out tomorrow." The letter was sent the next day.

The mention of Rove, of course, was that he wasn't involved in the appointment of his former aide as U.S. attorney, something shown to be false by the Justice Department emails.

Reacting to the released documents, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said:

“The plot continues to thicken. It seems the Justice Department rarely acted without the knowledge and approval of the White House. In effect, the White House was involved in denying its own involvement. This makes the need for Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and others in the White House to testify under oath, with transcripts even greater.”

U.S. Attorneys

New Docs Show Sampson Behind Misleading Statement to Congress

Paul Kiel | March 28, 2007, 5:00PM

The Justice Department turned over yet more documents to Congress today -- documents which seem to show that Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson was responsible for misleading Congress about Karl Rove's role in replacing a U.S. attorney.

On February 23, acting Assistant Attorney General wrote Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other senators in response to questions about the appointment of Timothy Griffin, a former aide to Rove. In the letter, Hertling stated "The Department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin."

But emails subsequently released by the Justice Department showed that wasn't the case. Last December, for example, Sampson wrote in an email that Griffin's appointment was "important to Harriet, Karl, etc." Other emails showed that Rove's deputy had been intimately involved in the effort to get Griffin installed as the U.S. Attorney in Eastern Arkansas.

In a letter accompanying documents sent to Congress today, Hertling admits that the assertion in his letter isn't true, adding, "We sincerely regret any inaccuracy." And to answer questions about who was responsible for that inaccuracy, he accompanied his letter with 202 pages documents "reflecting the preparation and transmittal of the February 23 letter."

Among the documents is a February 8th email from Kyle Sampson providing what ultimately, with a few small revisions, comprised Hertling's letter. And in that email Sampson wrote that Hertling should say, "I am not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the Attorney General's decision to appoint Griffin."

Now, Hertling might not have known of Rove's role in Griffin's selection, but Sampson sure did.

You can bet that Sampson will be questioned about this during the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow morning.

Update: Those documents are now online.

U.S. Attorneys

Dems to White House: C'mon, Let's Talk

Paul Kiel | March 28, 2007, 3:29PM

In a letter (pdf) to White House counsel Fred Fielding today, the chairmen from the House and Senate judiciary committees sought to renew negotiations over the testimony of Karl Rove and other White House officials.

"[W]e have not heard from you" since last week, the two write. They then lay out the terms for proceeding.

The White House's offer of testimony behind closed doors, with no transcript or oath is still a non-starter, they say. But there is something else "worth pursuing" in the meantime: the White House could hand over records of communications between White House officials and members of Congress, as Fielding has already offered. The White House has said that it willl not hand over "internal" emails, a stand to which Democrats object. But that shouldn't totally stop the flow of material, they say: "Recognizing we have a dispute over those documents should not delay the Committees receiving the other documents that you indicate you are willing to provide." So let's see those third party emails.

The chairmen close by telling Fielding that they want to see more than just correspondence from White House email addresses -- since people in the White House seem to frequently use RNC-provided email addresses instead:

"we trust that you will be collecting and producing emails and documents from all email accounts, addresses and domains and that you are not artificially limiting your production to the official White House email and document retention system."

U.S. Attorneys

U.S. News: WH Aides Eschew Email

Paul Kiel | March 28, 2007, 10:13AM

From U.S. News:

...just a week after E-mails in the U.S. attorneys case became a main focus of congressional Democrats probing the firings, several aides said that they stopped using the White House system except for purely professional correspondence.

"We just got a bit lazy," said one aide. "We knew E-mails could be subpoenaed. We saw that with the Clintons but I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong."

U.S. Attorneys

The Virtue of Experience

Paul Kiel | March 28, 2007, 9:35AM

The Washington Post has a mostly flattering profile of Kyle Sampson in the Style section today. And I just had to laugh at this section in particular:

A devout Mormon born and bred in Utah and educated at Brigham Young University, where he met his wife, Noelle, Sampson coveted the U.S. attorney's job in Salt Lake City and twice approached the man who still had the job, Paul Warner -- now a federal magistrate -- to ask him when he'd be stepping down. The first occurred in a conference room in Utah, Warner said, and the second took place during a lunch in Washington on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Though they shared the same home state, Warner and Sampson followed different public service narratives. A former JAG attorney, Warner had spent 17 years in various capacities in the U.S. attorney's office, saying it "was where I wanted to be, not where I wanted to be from."

In speaking to the eager Sampson, Warner asked him to slow his motor.

"I let him know he would be helped with practical experience as a prosecutor," Warner said. "I told him he should spend some time as an assistant U.S. attorney. If you're going to be chief surgeon, it's nice to do some surgery."

Yep, and Sampson's the guy who was in charge of replacing U.S. attorneys all over the country. Too bad Warner, that relic of a prior age, didn't understand what being a U.S. attorney is really about.

U.S. Attorneys

DoJ Stories Clash

Paul Kiel | March 28, 2007, 9:20AM

Kyle Sampson says that Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty misled Congress just because the topic of White House involvement didn't come up in the prep meetings. He's expected to say the same thing under oath tomorrow.

But McNulty apparently has a very different story. From The New York Observer:

...Mr. McNulty subsequently told [Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)] that he had been purposefully kept in the dark by senior staffers inside Mr. Gonzales’ inner circle. “McNulty told me he asked explicit questions: Did you do this, this, this? And he did not get affirmative answers from Sampson,” said Mr. Schumer.

No wonder Monica Goodling, who was also at those meetings, has taken the Fifth.

U.S. Attorneys

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 28, 2007, 8:30AM

Yesterday, FBI Director Robert Mueller appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to grovel for forgiveness. Over the past several years, the FBI has used thousands of National Security Letters to improperly obtain private information on citizens. The reasons, according to Mueller: "mistakes, carelessness, confusion, lack of training, lack of guidance and lack of adequate oversight."

The senators spent some time scolding him, but relented after it was clear he wouldn't fight back. Mueller's penitence, Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) soothingly observed, "seems to be a break from many in this administration now."

But the hearing was also a golden opportunity to grill Mueller on the firings of the U.S. attorneys.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wanted to know whether Mueller had ever gotten wind of election fraud cases that should have been indicted, but were not (remember, U.S. attorneys work hand-in-hand with the FBI). Mueller responded that he'd never heard, nor asked about such a thing. Schumer followed up, asking whether the administration had consulted him about the prosecutors' performance on election fraud investigations. Again, no. Was he consulted at all about any of the prosecutors' performance before the firings? No.

The bottom line: though powerful Republicans were upset with the decisions not to indict Democrats for voter fraud, the investigators on the ground were not. Mueller said that regional offices do customarily pass complaints about U.S. attorneys up the chain for "serious cases."

There was another fruitful line of questioning.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) wanted to know why the bureau chief for San Diego Dan Dzwilewski had complained to the press about Carol Lam's firing, said that he "guaranteed" politics was involved, and that without her, a number of ongoing investigations might be jeopardized. Specter didn't want to hear that from the press -- he wanted to hear that sort of thing from Mueller.

Mueller responded that Dzwilewski hadn't passed such complaints up the chain, and that "my understanding is that our chief out there believes he was misquoted, but that our investigations were continuing, without any diminishment."

Misquoted? Sen. Dianne Feinstein followed up:

FEINSTEIN: Well, we followed up and I had my chief counsel call them to verify what they said. And they said, yes, they said it. But they also said they'd been warned to say no more. Are you aware that they had been warned to say no more?

MUELLER: Yes, I am.

FEINSTEIN: And why would that be?

MUELLER: Because I do not think it's appropriate for us to comment on personnel decisions that are made by the Department of Justice....

FEINSTEIN: Well, I profoundly disagree that he was commenting on a personnel matter per se. He was simply saying that it would affect cases that were ongoing. And I think he's entitled to his opinion.

U.S. Attorneys

Gonzales Runs Away

Paul Kiel | March 27, 2007, 4:39PM

The Chicago Tribune has video of today's press conference -- in it, you can see that after the third question about the U.S. attorney firings, Gonzales decided he didn't want any more and simply left. No one got to ask him why his chief of staff thought Patrick Fitzgerald was a mediocre prosecutor. From The Tribune:

Gen. Alberto Gonzales today cut short a press conference about Internet safety, leaving the room at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago when reporters questioned him about the firings of U.S. attorneys.

The questioning was to have lasted about 15 minutes, but it ended after less than three.

U.S. Attorneys

Reason for Suspicion

Paul Kiel | March 27, 2007, 3:44PM

Having spent some time digging into the administration's stated reason for U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's firing, it's time to cleanse the palate with the reasons why we're so suspicious.

So here we go.

-- Lam was never confronted over her approach to immigration prosecutions, the given reason for her dismissal.

-- In November, shortly before Lam was fired, a Justice Department official brainstormed about how to explain firing several U.S. attorneys: "The one common link here is that three of them are along the southern border so you could make the connection that DoJ is unhappy with the immigration prosecution numbers in those districts."

-- Lam was fired midway into a historic, wide-reaching public corruption investigation that targeted a number of Republican members of Congress and the executive director of the CIA. Even Karl Rove has acknowledged the reasonableness of not dismissing U.S. attorneys who are leading "high profile cases, important investigations" -- though for some reason, this one didn't qualify.

-- Despite the fact that it was one of the highest profile federal investigations being undertaken at the Department, Lam's investigation into Duke Cunningham and others is never mentioned in the Justice Department emails that have been released. Not once. This must have been discussed at the highest levels, but we've seen no record of those communications.

-- The FBI's bureau chief in San Diego has said, "I guarantee politics is involved" in Lam's firing. When asked about the given rationales for her ouster (that she pursued corruption cases to the detriment of gun and border prosecutions), he responded “What do you expect her to do? Let corruption exist?”

-- May 11, 2006, the day after Lam informed the Justice Department that she planned to execute a search warrant on CIA Executive Director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo and the same day that it was reported that her investigation had spread to Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson wrote to a White House official: "The real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires."

-- On January 5th, 2007, less than a month after Lam had been told she was fired, but before it had been made public, Sampson wrote to his Justice Department colleagues, "... we granted 1-month extensions for [U.S. Attorney for Nevada Daniel Bogden] and [Western Michigan's Margaret Chiara], but not Carol -- right?" Lam was widely known to be leading a grand jury investigation into Foggo and others. Ultimately, she was granted a fifteen day extension, from January 31 until February 15; she ordered her office to bring the indictment against Foggo before she stepped down, and she succeeded.

U.S. Attorneys

DoJ Official Argued against Sending "Extensive Resources" to Lam

Paul Kiel | March 27, 2007, 1:53PM

The administration has repeatedly argued that U.S Attorney for San Diego Carol Lam was fired because she failed to make immigration cases a priority. Either that's true, or it's a cover story.

Yesterday I laid out Lam's performance on immigration. It's clear that in another administration, Lam would have been commended, not fired.

But it's clear from the emails that certain senior Justice Department officials just didn't like Lam -- and seemed to harbor a wish that she not succeed.

"There are good reasons not to provide extensive resources to [Carol Lam's district]," wrote Bill Mercer, a senior Justice Department official in May of 2006, responding to a suggestion that the Department provide Lam with more prosecutors. "Other border districts have done substantially more. It will send the message that if your people are killing themselves, the additional resources will go to folks who haven't prioritized the same enforcement priority."

Five days later, Mercer suggested a "range of options" for dealing with Lam, the first one being "replace Carol." The third one was to add prosecutors "immediately after Carol's successor is named."

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Fitzgerald, Gonzales to Rub Shoulders on Roundtable

Paul Kiel | March 27, 2007, 12:17PM

From The Chicago Tribune:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is likely to face questions about the allegedly mediocre status of U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald when he arrives here Tuesday for a scheduled round table discussion and press conference.

Gonzales is supposed to be at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse to discuss the "Project Safe Childhood" campaign designed to protect kids from online predators. But he's likely to be asked to field inquiries about Fitzgerald being ranked as undistinguished on a chart sent to the White House from the Justice Department in 2005, as well as the controversial fall firings of a group of U.S. attorneys.

We'll get you word of how that went later. Via Firedoglake.

U.S. Attorneys

The Fifth Made Simple

Paul Kiel | March 27, 2007, 11:51AM

Josh broached the issue of Monica Goodling's invocation of the Fifth last night, and since then a number of lawyers have written in to say that it's really not so complicated.

Here's TPM Reader/Lawyer DL:

Although Dowd's letter on Goodling's behalf is a model of lawyerly obfuscation, Ms. Goodling's affidavit, which is attached to the letter, invokes the magic word "self-incrimination," and therefore appears to satisfy the foundation for asserting the privilege.

And another TPM reader, this one a lawyer in D.C., is even more frank:

Monica Goodling does have a good faith basis for pleading the Fifth Amendment - just not the ones in her lawyer's letter that are getting all the attention.

Under the federal False Statements statute, 18 USC 1001, it is a felony to cause another person to make a false statement to Congress. Since McNulty has allegedly told Senator Schumer that he made a false statement to Congress based on information provided to him by Monica Goodling, Goodling could very well be prosecuted for a Section 1001 violation.

All the rest of the crap in her lawyer's letter is intended to sooth as much as possible White House anger at her for invoking the Fifth.

U.S. Attorneys

House Passes U.S.A. Bill

Paul Kiel | March 27, 2007, 9:58AM

Soon, it will be on its way to the president's desk. And for those curious about the roll call, only 72 Republicans voted against.

So both houses voted overwhelmingly to ensure Senate confirmation for U.S. attorneys. What a difference a scandal can make.

U.S. Attorneys

Gonzales: I Did Nothing Wrong, But My Staff...

Paul Kiel | March 26, 2007, 7:29PM

From an interview tonight with NBC:

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: I asked for their resignation not for improper reasons. I would never have asked for their resignations to interfere with a public corruption case or in any way to interfere with an ongoing investigation. I just wouldn't do that. And if you look carefully at the documentation we've provided to Congress, there's no evidence of that....

I directed the Department officials participate in interviews and hearings before the Congress. As I've indicated, I've asked OPR to be involved, to work with the Office of Inspector General so we can reassure the American public that nothing improper happened here. I've got nothing to hide in terms of what I've done. And we now want to reassure the American public that nothing improper happened here.

If I find out that, in fact, any of these decisions were motivated, the recommendations to me were motivated for improper reasons to interfere with the public corruption case, there will be swift and -- there will be swift and decisive action. I can assure you that.

PETE WILLIAMS: Meaning people would be fired?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Absolutely. Because there is no place for that. Our prosecutors have to-- there has to be no question about the integrity, the professionalism, undue influence of prosecutions in connection with public corruption kinds of cases. And if I find out that any of that occurred here involving the Department of Justice officials, yes, they will be removed.

Gonzales also explains the discrepancy between his March 13 statement that "I was not involved in any discussions about what was going on" and the revelation that he participated in just such a meeting about what was going on ten days before the firings.

What he really meant, he explains, was that he wasn't involved in the nitty-gritty: "I was never focused on specific concerns about United States Attorneys as to whether or not they should be asked to resign." And no wonder. The reasons kept changing.

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson: Nothing Can Stop Me Now

Paul Kiel | March 26, 2007, 6:29PM

Don't worry, Senate Judiciary Committee. Monica Goodling's choice to take the Fifth notwithstanding, Kyle Sampson will keep that date on Thursday. Just out from his lawyer, Bradford Berenson:

"Kyle plans to testify fully, truthfully, and publicly. Hearings in a highly politicized environment like this can sometimes become a game of gotcha, but Kyle has decided to trust the Congress and the process."

U.S. Attorneys

Lawyer to Leahy: There You Go Again

Paul Kiel | March 26, 2007, 6:13PM

Something tells me that Pat Leahy and Goodling's lawyer, John Dowd, won't be getting drinks together anytime soon.

Shortly after Monica Goodling's lawyer informed the Senate Judiciary Committee that she would take the Fifth if called to testify, committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) released a statement:

“It is disappointing that Ms. Goodling has decided to withhold her important testimony from the Committee as it pursues its investigation into this matter, but everybody has the constitutional right not to incriminate themselves with regard to criminal conduct.

“The American people are left to wonder what conduct is at the base of Ms. Goodling’s concern that she may incriminate herself in connection with criminal charges if she appears before the Committee under oath.”

The line about wondering what Goodling was hiding was too much for her lawyer, who immediately shot off a letter saying that "your comment ignores the very basis on which Ms. Goodling has asserted her constitutional right... the Fifth Amendment protects innocent persons who might otherwise be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances, as much as it protects those who may have done something wrong." [his emphasis]

He then goes on to deride the "politically charged environment" created by Leahy and his peers in which "even innocent witnesses would be well-advised not to testify." So there.

Sen. Leahy? Ball's in your court.

U.S. Attorneys

Justice Aide: All Fingers Point My Way

Paul Kiel | March 26, 2007, 5:35PM

You can read the letter from Monica Goodling's lawyer to the Senate Judiciary Committee here.

Here's her logic for pleading the Fifth in a nutshell: she won't get a fair hearing because Democrats have already concluded DoJ officials lied to Congress and one Justice Department official has already admitted to Democrats that he was "not entirely candid" in his testimony and blamed Goodling and others for the lapse.

I'll let Goodling's lawyer lay out the case, but just to fill in the blank, the "senior Justice Department official" who fessed up to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that he was "not entirely candid" is likely Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty (Assistant Attorney General William Moschella also testified).

Here's Schumer on Meet The Press last week:

SEN. SCHUMER: Paul McNulty himself, I know him, he called me on the phone and said, "I am sorry that I didn't tell you the truth. I was not told that these things were happening by the people who were supposed to brief me." Now, one of those people is Kyle Sampson, Kyle Sampson, the chief of staff to the attorney general. And Kyle Sampson says everyone knew what was going on here. We have to get to the bottom of this.

Update: Here's Schumer on Goodling's decision: "We are disappointed that we won't hear Ms. Goodling's testimony at the Judiciary Committee hearing, particularly given her two roles as senior member of Attorney General's team and liaison to the White House. Each day brings new developments making it even more imperative to find out what happened."

Update: We've fixed the bad link so you can read the full letter in the document collection now. Sorry!

U.S. Attorneys

The Record: Lam and Immigration

Paul Kiel | March 26, 2007, 4:21PM

Despite the fact that no one from the Justice Department ever confronted Carol Lam over her performance on immigration prosecutions -- and the fact that Lam's connection to the Duke Cunningham case remains a far more credible logic for her firing --, the story that she was dismissed because of that continues to gain credence. So let's take one last look at what the record shows.

First and foremost, the idea that Lam did not prioritize border cases is demonstrably false. As the Justice Department stated in a letter three months before Lam was fired, half of the prosecutors in Lam's office were dedicated to criminal immigration cases.

Second, the demand that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and others were making, that her office have a "zero tolerance" policy of prosecuting alien smuggling, was an impossible one. All you need to do is look at the numbers. There are approximately 140,000 immigration arrests in Lam's district per year -- and approximately 110 lawyers in her office to handle them. They manage to file around 3,000 cases per year total, one of the largest loads in the country.

Third (and it bears repeating), Justice Department officials never confronted Lam about her immigration policy.

The ire directed at Lam from Republican lawmakers and some within the Justice Department had to do with a choice Lam made. Given the chronic lack of resources -- approximately 140,000 immigration arrests in Lam's district per year vs. approximately 110 lawyers in her office --, she decided to use her resources to prosecute the more serious cases. As an internal Justice Department report summarized the strategy:

SDCA [the Southern District of California] does not prosecute purely economic migrants. SDCA directs its resources to bringing felony charges against the most egregious violators, focusing on illegal aliens with substantial criminal histories such as violent/major felons, recidivist felons, repeat immigration violators on supervised release, and alien smuggles and guides. SDCA does not prosecute foot guides that do not have a serious criminal history.

It was a calculation with potentially adverse poltical consequences, since it would mean a drop in the sheer number of cases filed. And it was the reason that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and others directed cricitism at Lam.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

AP: Justice Aide to Take the Fifth

Paul Kiel | March 26, 2007, 3:52PM

From the AP:

Monica Goodling, a Justice Department official involved in the firings of federal prosecutors, will refuse to answer questions at upcoming Senate hearings, citing Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, her lawyer said Monday.

"The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real," said the lawyer, John Dowd.

He said that members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees seem already to have made up their minds that wrongdoing has occurred in the firings.

U.S. Attorneys

McKay: "First Question" was about Republican Criticism

Paul Kiel | March 26, 2007, 1:53PM

In case you missed it, here's former U.S.A. for Seattle John McKay on Meet The Press yesterday. McKay described how the "first question" asked by Harriet Miers and her deputy when he sat down for an interview for a federal judgeship was "why Republicans in the state of Washington would be angry with me."

Transcript below...

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Waxman Wants RNC Emails

Paul Kiel | March 26, 2007, 1:37PM

From ThinkProgress:

Multiple congressional investigations have uncovered evidence that White House appointees regularly communicate using email accounts provided by the Republican Party. As CREW has argued, such activity violates the Presidential Records Act, which requires the White House to preserve such records.

Today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) issued letters to the Republican National Committee and the Bush-Cheney ‘04 Campaign directing them to preserve all emails by and for White House officials, and to meet with the committee about the legal issues involved in conducting official government business using partisan email accounts.

And it looks like there may be a lot there worth finding.

The RNC has said that the committee provides email addresses to White House personnel so that they can keep their official and political duties separate.

So what's the official/political breakdown for Karl Rove?

According to National Journal (not available online), Rove does approximately 95 percent of his emailing from his RNC address.

U.S. Attorneys

A Unifying Theory

Paul Kiel | March 26, 2007, 11:09AM

A glimpse of the supra-scandal?

The Washington Post's front page story today is about a meeting in January between the head of the General Services Administration, Lurita Doan, top agency officials, and Scott Jennings, Karl Rove's deputy. The topic: how the agency could help "our candidates."

The GSA is the government's landlord and heads up nearly $60 billion per year in government contracts. The meeting was about how to turn that buying power to Republican advantage.

The angle of the Post's story is that Doan's eagerness to join the scheme (get Republicans to take credit for the opening of federal facilities around the country, while preventing Democrats like Nancy Pelosi from doing so) seems a blatant violation of the Hatch Act, a law that prevents federal employees for using their positions for politics.

But there's another lens through which to view the story, a lens that may be helpful in understanding the purging of the U.S. attorneys . I yield the floor to a long-time TPM reader:

....on January 26, Lurita Alexis Doan, the administrator of the government's contracting agency, sent an e-mail to its top-level political appointees inviting them to attend or videoconference into a presentation by J. Scott Jennings, deputy director of the White House political office. The subject of the presentation? Why, polling data from the 2006 elections. And then, the article (and the indefatigable Rep. Waxman) alleges, the administrator solicited ideas for helping "'our' candidates in the next elections." Doan, of course, denies that such ideas were solicited. The White House explains that it was "a factual assessment of the political landscape." But just looking at what's already been admitted - that the conference call took place, and that Jennings presented polling data on the elections - offers prima facie evidence of a Hatch Act violation. Why on earth would regional administrators for the GSA need to be made aware of the political landscape? The White House isn't even claiming that there's a policy-driven reason for the presentation. The *defense* here is that Jennings gave an unabashedly political presentation to a group of government officials. Unbelievable.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Politico: Sampson to Shrug Shoulders

Paul Kiel | March 26, 2007, 9:14AM

Mike Allen at The Politico gets a general preview of Kyle Sampson's testimony on Thursday:

Sampson is not gunning for anybody, according to friends. He believes that the issue has blown up because the Justice Department had an inadequate system for preparing officials to testify before Congress, the friends say. The Justice Department officials testified that the firings were based on performance rather than politics, an assertion called into question by e-mails the department later delivered to Capitol Hill.

The friends say Sampson, 37, does not plan to deliver bombshells, and say that Democrats looking for plots and schemes will be disappointed. Like other Republicans, Sampson will contend there was no underlying sin, just a botched response.

“He is not personally of the opinion now, based on what he knows, that anybody at the Department of Justice did anything intentionally wrong,” said a friend familiar with Sampson’s thinking.

Sampson is testifying voluntarily, sparing the committee from having to decide whether to subpoena him. “He doesn’t feel that he has anything to hide,” the friend said. “He doesn’t feel that there’s any aspect of this story that he can’t explain publicly. He’s hoping to contribute what he knows in the hope that getting the truth out, as fully as it can be gotten out, will ultimately help calm the situation rather than aggravate it.”

Classic moments in euphemism: "inadequate system for preparing officials to testify before Congress."

Remember from Sampson's earlier statement that the White House involvement in the firings wasn't discussed in preparing for testimony because they didn't "deem it important at the time."

I'm looking forward to seeing him try that line on Pat Leahy.

U.S. Attorneys

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 26, 2007, 8:46AM

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to the Blackberry Defense.

The setup: on February 6th, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the administration intended to nominate (and have the Senate confirm) replacements for all the ousted prosecutors. But as the emails make clear, Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson was advising the use of the AG's newfound power to appoint replacements indefinitely -- without the trouble of Senate confirmation.

The Justice Department, remember, has said that Sampson was a conspiracy unto himself, and that he failed to inform McNulty of his machinations before McNulty misled Congress. Sampson, on the other hand, says many other Department officials knew, including those involved in preparing McNulty to testify.

The emails show that Sampson wasn't shy about the scheme. He discussed it freely with members of the White House counsel office, including Harriet Miers. In October of 2006, he forwarded one of these discussions to Michael Elston, McNulty's chief of staff.

But wait... if McNulty's right hand knew, how could McNulty himself not know? Your answer:

“Either Elston did not scroll down on his BlackBerry to read the last section [of the e-mail] or it made no impression on him, because he knew that it did not reflect the department’s plan for replacing the U.S. attorneys who would be asked to resign,” says spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.

There you go: the contemporary version of "I do not recall."

U.S. Attorneys

Hatch: No "Clear Evidence" Gonzales "Deliberately" Lied to Congress

Paul Kiel | March 25, 2007, 10:20AM

Now we know the high standards that Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has for an attorney general:

"He has always been straightforward and honest with me," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "So, unless there is clear evidence that the attorney general deliberately lied or misled Congress, I see no reason to call for his resignation."

The AP is running this story under the headline, "Bush, key senator still backing Gonzales." So that's a constituency of two.

U.S. Attorneys

DoJ Launches Internal USA Purge Investigation

Paul Kiel | March 24, 2007, 5:15PM

From The New York Times:

Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said Friday that the department would begin an internal review of the conduct of lawyers involved in the dismissals. The inquiry will be conducted jointly by the inspector general, Glenn Fine, and the Office of Professional Responsibility, a department watchdog unit.

Maybe Gonzales can get Bush to shut this one down too.

U.S. Attorneys

Bush Reaffirms Support for Gonzales

Paul Kiel | March 24, 2007, 5:01PM

Actually, shouldn't this be re-reaffirms? Or is it re-re-reaffirms? I've lost track.

U.S. Attorneys

DoJ Official Conferred with Others on Law Change

Paul Kiel | March 24, 2007, 10:06AM

Yet another lie.

One central aspect of the U.S. attorneys firing is that the Justice Department (via a staffer for then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA)) was able to slip in a provision to the Patriot Act Reauthorization bill that made it possible for the administration to appoint interim U.S. attorneys for an indefinite period without Senate confirmation. That way, the administration could install who they wanted for the rest of Bush's term -- like, say, Karl Rove's former aide.

Justice Official William Moschella told McClatchy ten days ago that he'd sought the change "without the knowledge or coordination of his superiors at the Justice Department or anyone at the White House." Just a rogue operator.

But look at what's in the emails:

However, Moschella's e-mails suggest that he discussed the need for proposed changes with other Justice Department officials on Nov. 11, 2005, around the time when the bill was being drawn up.

"We support eliminating the court's role" in appointing interim U.S. attorneys, Moschella wrote to officials, including Michael Battle, the director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, "and believe the AG should have that authority alone."

U.S. Attorneys

DoJ Docs: AG Met with Aides before Purge, DoJ Flack Brainstormed on Dismissals

Paul Kiel | March 24, 2007, 9:33AM

So let's start with what the major papers gleaned from the documents dumped at 7:30 last night. Then I'll return to what people found in the comments.

McClatchy hits all the high points, the main one being, of course, that Alberto Gonzales sat in on a meeting about the firings on November 27 to review the firing plan. The firings occurred ten days later. During his "I take full responsibilty but I didn't know anything about it" press conference earlier this month, Gonzales said "I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on."

The response from a DoJ spokesman is that the meeting doesn't contradict Gonzales: "This meeting concerned the roll-out of the U.S. attorney plan. The information available to us does not indicate that there was discussion at this meeting about which U.S. attorneys should or should not be on the list." Huh. Still seems to me to be a discussion about "what was going on."

There are, of course, other highlights -- an email shows public relations officials from the Justice Department and the White House apparently brainstorming about how to sell the firings to the public.

DoJ's Tasia Scolinos wrote on November 21 to the White House's Catherine Martin, little more than two weeks before the firings: "The one common link here is that three of them are along the southern border so you could make the connection that DOJ is unhappy with the immigration prosecution numbers in those districts."

Other emails between the two show Scolinos optimistic that the purge would go over quietly: "I don't see it as being a national story - especially if it phases in over a few months." Oops.

Her explanation:

Speaking with reporters on Friday evening, Ms. Scolinos said that when she sent that message she had only a fragmentary understanding of the plan to dismiss the prosecutors.

More soon.

U.S. Attorneys

Document Dump Research Thread

jmarshall | March 24, 2007, 2:00AM

After last Friday's document dump, Paul Kiel set up a post and discussion thread for digging through the 3000 pages for key nuggets and findings. And it was a TPM Reader who first flagged the email gap from mid-November through early December. So now we're doing it again. McClatchy News has just posted PDF copies of tonight's document dump. Pick one of the eleven pdfs and label your comment with the document and page number. So 1:13 would be for document one, page thirteen. Let the sleuthing begin.

U.S. Attorneys

McClatchy: Bush Admin Pushes Partisan "Voter Fraud" Cases

Paul Kiel | March 23, 2007, 5:23PM

Some highlights from the piece just out from McClatchy:

Under President Bush, the Justice Department has backed tougher state voter identification laws and steered U.S. attorneys toward investigating voter fraud _ policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes....

Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division when it was rolling back long-standing voting rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.

Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was research director for the Republican National Committee. He's denied any wrongdoing....

Several former voting rights lawyers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of antagonizing the administration, said the division’s political employees reversed the recommendations of career lawyers in key cases and transferred or drove out most of the unit’s veteran attorneys.

And Rove's preoccupation with the issue:

Last April, while the Justice Department and the White House were planning the firings, Rove gave a speech in Washington to the Republican National Lawyers Association. He ticked off 11 states that he said could be pivotal in 2008. Bush has appointed new U.S. attorneys in nine of them since 2005: Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico. U.S. attorneys in the latter four were among those fired.

Rove thanked the audience for “all that you are doing in those hot spots around the country to ensure that the integrity of the ballot is protected.” He added, “A lot in American politics is up for grabs.”...

One audience member asked Rove whether he’d “thought about using the bully pulpit of the White House to talk about election reform and an election integrity agenda that would put the Democrats back on the defensive.”

“Yes, it’s an interesting idea,” Rove responded.

Go read the whole thing.

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson: It's A Date!

Paul Kiel | March 23, 2007, 4:27PM

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee extended an invitation for Alberto Gonzales' former chief of staff Kyle Sampson to testify. If he didn't want to come voluntarily, the committee said, he'd be subpoenaed.

Today, via a letter from his lawyer to the committee, he accepted -- no subpoena necessary.

"Mr. Sampson looks forward to answering the Committee's questions," the letter reads. "We trust that his decision to do so will satisfy the need of the Congress to obtain information from him concerning the requested resignations of the United States Attorneys."

The hearing will take place at 10 AM next Thursday.

U.S. Attorneys

Senate Dems: Let's Talk

Paul Kiel | March 23, 2007, 3:44PM

Following House Democrats yesterday, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) held a press conference today to send a simple message: let's talk.

As Schumer put it:

I hope the White House recognizes a ten letter word, C-O-M-P-R-O-M-I-S-E. That’s what its all about. And now both parties at this end of Pennsylvania want to sit down and negotiate, but we’re waiting for the White House.

Schumer pointed to Sen. Arlen Specter's (R-PA) proposal to the White House yesterday as an indication that both Republicans and Democrats thought the White House offer of a private meeting with no oath and no transcript was unacceptable. Specter proposed to allow the aides to be questioned publicly by just a limited number of lawmakers without putting them under oath. "When you have the lead Democrat and the lead Republican closer to one another than the White House is to either of them, it really puts a burden on the White House," Schumer said.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) -- who's said he doesn't see what "all the hubbub is about" -- met with White House counsel Fred Fielding today to discuss the dispute.

Update: More from Sen. Feinstein:

“This is not going to go away. It’s not going to diminish. We are very serious in the pursuit of truth here. And there is only one way that we are going to get that truth. And that is in the open with a transcript, so that everybody can hear the same thing....

“What has really surprised me is the defensive mode of this White House. It’s not really called for. This is all within our right. We are the supervisory body, the oversight body. We have the right to ask these questions, we have the right to issue these subpoenas. And the stonewalling of it, I don’t think achieves anything other than encourage the American people to believe that where there is smoke there really is fire.”

U.S. Attorneys

3000 Pages and Counting

Paul Kiel | March 23, 2007, 2:21PM

We hear there's likely to be another document release from the Justice Department sometime today.

U.S. Attorneys

Gonzales Aide to Senate Staff: Nothing to See Here

Paul Kiel | March 23, 2007, 1:30PM

In the runup to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson lied to committee staff in order to convince them that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) "was wrong" to raise questions about the U.S. attorney firings.

The email was produced yesterday by Sen. Feinstein and demonstrates that the Justice Department did not turn over all documents relevant to the firings to Congress earlier this week, since the email was not among the 3000 pages.

In the email, which is an exchange between Sampson and committee staff, Sampson provided a series of bullet points of "the inaccuracies that Sen. Feinstein continues to put out there." They were:

- USAs were encouraged to resign "before their terms expired" -- not true;

- USAs were encouraged to resign "without cause" - no comment (but not true);

- USAs were pushed out so as to interfere with ongoing public corruption cases -- absolutely not true;

- Administration intends to go around the Senate and avoid confirmation of new USAs -- not true/facts conclusively establish as much

"None of these assertions is in any way accurate," Sampson wrote.

In fact, the U.S. attorneys were not told the reason for their firing when they were forced to resign. And although it's extremely debatable what the true cause of the firings was, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified under oath that U.S. Attorney for Little Rock Bud Cummins had been forced to resign without cause, and the Justice Department has still not produced any reason for Cummins' firing other than to install Karl Rove's former aide, Timothy Griffin in his place.

And there's clear evidence that the administration planned to "go around the Senate and avoid confirmation" of Griffin. Less than a month before writing this email, Sampson wrote to a lawyer in the White House counsel's office that the administration should respond to objections to Griffin's appointment by stalling for the remainder of Bush's term.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Clinton Did It Too! Talking Point Came from Justice Dept

Paul Kiel | March 23, 2007, 8:30AM

Every time I think this talking point has finally suffered its long-deserved death, it continues to make the rounds. So, here:

Three weeks ago, Justice Department officials settled on a "talking point" to rebut the chorus of Democratic accusations that the Bush administration had wrongly injected politics into law enforcement when it dismissed eight U.S. attorneys.

Why not focus on the Clinton administration's having "fired all 93 U.S. attorneys" when Janet Reno became attorney general in March 1993? The idea was introduced in a memo from a Justice Department spokeswoman.

The message has been effective. What's followed has been a surge of complaints on blogs and talk radio that it was the Clinton administration that first politicized the Justice Department.

The facts, it turns out, are more complicated.

The central "complicated" fact is this: the talking point is completely bogus. Read the rest of The Los Angeles Times piece for the rundown.

And by the way, here is a report from the Congressional Research Service showing that Alberto Gonzales' dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys in the middle of the term for no outstanding reason is unprecedented.

U.S. Attorneys

House Dems to White House: Let's Talk

Paul Kiel | March 22, 2007, 6:33PM

With subpoenas at the ready, House Democrats wrote White House counsel Fred Fielding today to tell him that they "remain committed to seeking a cooperative resolution."

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and subcommittee chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA), who oversaw a vote yesterday to authorize the issuance of subpoenas for Karl Rove and other White House officials, signed the letter. You can read it here.

Under the solution Fielding laid out in a letter sent Tuesday, Rove and others would be offered to the committee in closed meetings, with a limited number of participants, with no oath and with no transcript. The letter also said that the White House would not turn over any internal White House communications.

Democrats have said no deal. "[W]e cannot accept your proposal for a number of reasons, and would sincerely hope that your office will work with us," says the letter sent today.

The letter concludes with a request that the White House not dispose of any relevant documents: "In the meantime, we also ask that you ensure the preservation of relevant White House documents, as defined in our March 9 letter."

U.S. Attorneys

Snow: Congress Has No "Oversight Responsibility over the White House"

Paul Kiel | March 22, 2007, 2:59PM

It's official, this is a talking point. Just to show that this morning was no slip-up, here's Tony Snow during today's briefing:

Q If it's behind closed doors, what's the problem?

MR. SNOW: The thing that we have said all along is, we think that you ought to have the ability for members of Congress to get information in a way that also does not create precedence, and is going to have a chilling effect for presidential advisors to be able to give their full and fair advice to the President of the United States. We think that the compromise we shaped enables us to fulfill that obligation to the President, and to the public in terms of first-rate advice from the White House and the people working in the White House, and at the same time, allows Congress to do what it has to do, which is conduct oversight. There is nothing that says Congress has to have television; it says that Congress does have oversight responsibilities and needs to get at the facts.

Furthermore, the people who are first and foremost in the decision loop here, the folks at the Department of Justice, they aren't going to be out. I mean, they're going to be out, they're going to be testifying, they're offering all their documentation, as well.

Q They get to be in public, but you want your guys behind closed doors.

MR. SNOW: There are -- in this particular case, the Department of Justice -- the Congress does have legitimate oversight responsibility for the Department of Justice. It created the Department of Justice. It does not have constitutional oversight responsibility over the White House, which is why by our reaching out, we're doing something that we're not compelled to do by the Constitution, but we think common sense suggests that we ought to get the whole story out, which is what we're doing.

Update: Steve Benen provides a counterpoint: "...based on Snow’s comments today, this isn’t the executive privilege argument, this is the executive privilege argument on crack."

U.S. Attorneys

The Gap or "Lull" Defined

Paul Kiel | March 22, 2007, 2:24PM

OK, just for the record, I think this is the final answer on this question of an 18-day gap in the Justice Department emails.

The gap supposedly occurred between November 15, 2006 when the Justice Department asked for White House approval for the purge plan, and December 4, when the White House gave the green light. DOJ spokesman Brian Roehrkasse has responded that it's less a gap than a "lull."

In any case, here are all the emails that readers have found in the interim:

Yesterday, we turned up a November 29th email concerning a DoJ evaluation of U.S. Attorney for San Francisco Kevin "Company Man" Ryan.

Thinkprogress turned up an email chain between DoJ officials regarding obscenity prosecutions between November 20th and the 22nd.

Here's another email from December 1 with an exchange between a DoJ official and former Karl Rove aide Tim Griffin, about when Griffin would start work as the U.S. Attorney for Little Rock. We've also found a similar email between the same two on November 16th.

So that's that. Four email exchanges over the 18 day period.

Now, of course, the really interesting email traffic in this period would have been within the White House. But the administration is determined not to turn that over.

U.S. Attorneys

White House Fight Might Turn on Bush's Role

Paul Kiel | March 22, 2007, 1:59PM

The Hill had an interesting take on the looming legal battle between the White House and Congress this morning:

In an e-mail dated Nov. 15, 2006, Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, asked then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers and her deputy, William Kelley, whether he had the green light to go forward with the firing plan.

Miers responded that she was “not sure whether this will be determined to require the boss’s attention.” Her e-mail ended with the words: “We will see. Thanks.”

Sampson, who resigned last week, responded with a critical question: “Who will determine whether whether [sic] this requires the President’s attention?”...

The e-mail exchange is particularly relevant to Bush’s case because the Supreme Court has provided only limited protection for executive privilege. It acknowledges the need to protect communications between high-ranking government officials and those who advise and assist them, but it has also ruled that the public interest can outweigh that need in “non-military” and “non-diplomatic” discussions. Critics of the U.S. attorney firings argue that Bush’s case for executive privilege would be significantly weaker if his aides never discussed the plan for the firings with him.

In response to a barrage of questions from reporters yesterday, White House spokesman Tony Snow said only that Bush had “no recollection of [the firings] ever being raised with him.”

Here's The Washington Post this morning on what happens next:

If the White House refuses to comply, the judiciary committees will meet in coming weeks to decide whether to issue citations for contempt of Congress. If they do, the full Senate and House would have to follow suit.

That would set in motion the extraordinary spectacle of Congress enlisting the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to impanel a grand jury to seek the indictment of administration officials over their refusal to testify on the firings of eight of his colleagues.

U.S. Attorneys

Snow: Congress "Doesn't Have Oversight Ability"

Paul Kiel | March 22, 2007, 1:41PM

Constitutional scholar Tony Snow on ABC this morning:

The executive branch is under no compulsion to testify to Congress, because Congress in fact doesn't have oversight ability. So what we’ve said is we’re going to reach out to you – we’ll give you every communication between the White House, the Justice Department, the Congress, anybody on the outside, any kind of communication that would indicate any kind of activity outside, and at the same time, we’ll make available to you any of the officiels you want to talk to …knowing full well that anything they said is still subject to legal scrutiny, and the members of Congress know that.

U.S. Attorneys

Senate Committee Asks to Hear from Gonzales Deputy

Paul Kiel | March 22, 2007, 12:36PM

Mark it on the calendar. The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to hear from Kyle Sampson (aka "the fall guy"), Alberto Gonzales' recently resigned chief of staff, at an open hearing next Thursday.

In a letter sent today to Sampson's lawyer signed by committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and ranking member Arlen Specter (R-PA), the committee requested Sampson's "assurance" that he "will appear voluntarily at that time and that a subpoena will not be necessary." The committee has already voted to authorize such a subpoena last week.

Sampson will be the sole witness at the hearing.

U.S. Attorneys

Gonzales: I'm Staying for "The Kids"

Paul Kiel | March 22, 2007, 12:18PM

He makes a point. Sure, his leadership at the Justice Department has perverted the rule of law in an attempt to turn the nation's top law enforcement officials into agents of the Republican Party... but think of the children.

U.S. Attorneys

Senate Committee Votes to Authorize Subpoenas for WH Officials

Paul Kiel | March 22, 2007, 11:38AM

There you go. The Senate Judiciary Committee just voted to authorize the issuance of subpoenas for White House officials. As with the House committee, there's going to be one last round of negotiations before the committees pull the trigger.

And the two parties have a long way to go in those negotiations. Here, for instance, is Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) characterization of the White House's offer for Karl Rove and other White House officials to testify behind closed doors, not under oath, and without a transcript: "What they are offering is nothing, nothing, nothing."

Here's the video:

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 22, 2007, 9:16AM

It's almost too perfect. The only U.S. attorney fired by the administration in December who undeniably had performance issues was begrudingly added to the list at the last minute -- and only then because of a federal judge's threat that he would go to Congress with complaints about the prosecutor's performance.

The Los Angeles Times tells the story of San Francisco's Kevin Ryan today, who, as the scandal over the firings began to simmer early this year, telephoned the Justice Department to assure them that he's still a "company man."

Unlike seven other fired federal prosecutors who may have run afoul of the administration for political reasons, San Francisco U.S. Atty. Kevin Ryan was a team player for Bush and had influential Republican support. A friend of the president even went to bat for Ryan after his firing.

"You would have to know Kevin," said UC Hastings College of the Law professor Rory Little. "You can't find a stronger supporter of the Bush administration agenda."

His tenure, however, was plagued by morale problems and accusations that he was a bad manager. A number of the office's most experienced lawyers left....

Even with the unrest, Ryan's support in Washington held during the first few months that planning for the ousters was underway. In an e-mail from D. Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, to Harriet Miers in March 2005, Ryan was in a category described as "strong U.S. Attorneys who have produced, managed well, and exhibited loyalty to the President and Attorney General." Other U.S. attorneys who were later fired were listed in a column recommending termination.

The following January, Sampson added Ryan to a list of federal prosecutors who might be removed based on performance evaluations. But he was left off later firing lists in September and November, e-mails show.

Ryan only was added to the list in early December, after a federal judge warned the Justice Department that she was "going to ask members of Congress to get her a copy of the blistering evaluations the department had done of Ryan earlier that year." The emails strongly suggest that Ryan was fired in order to prevent that from happening.

Just let that sink in. In the only case where there was a strong case for firing, the DoJ had to be extorted to do it.

It was not always that way at the DoJ. Remember that, before he left in August of 2005, then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey* generated his own list of U.S. attorneys to be fired. Only his list was completely different from the list finally generated by Alberto Gonzales' deputy, Kyle Sampson -- save one name: Kevin Ryan.

U.S. News explained the discrepancy:

In principle, [a former Justice Department official] says, Comey was not opposed to removing incompetent people.

However, Comey's definition of incompetence turned out to be quite different from Sampson's and had nothing to do with politics, says the former official.

*Update: This erroneously read "Paul McNulty" earlier, who's the current Deputy Attorney General.

U.S. Attorneys

Dems: GOP Phone Jamming Case Stalled, Mishandled

Paul Kiel | March 21, 2007, 4:59PM

We reported earlier that people were asking questions about the Justice Department's handling of the Jack Abramoff investigation. Now New Hampshire Democrats are raising questions about another DoJ investigation into Republican wrongdoing -- the New Hampshire phone jamming case.

In a detailed, 10-page letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) signed by Kathleen Sullivan, chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, and Paul Twomey, a lawyer for the Democrats, they argue that the investigation, which targeted prominent operatives in the Republican Party, was stalled and mishandled.

On Election Day in 2002, Republicans schemed to jam the phone banks for Democratic get out the vote efforts. Two Republicans involved in the plan pled guilty, and James Tobin, formerly the New England Regional Political Director for the Republican National Committee, was convicted for his role. The case took years to play out; the first guilty pleas in the case were not until the summer of 2004, and Tobin was not indicted until after the 2004 election.

One of the reasons the investigation was stalled, Democrats argue, is that "all decisions had to be reviewed by the Attorney General himself" -- first John Ashcroft and then Alberto Gonzales. To back up that claim, the Democrats say that lawyers working on the case were told by prosecutors that delays in the case were due to the extreme difficulty in obtaining authorization from higher levels at DOJ for any and all actions in the case.

A lawyer for one of the Republicans in the case backs up that claim. John Durken, the lawyer for Allen Raymond, a Republican whose consulting firm managed the jamming, says that the lead prosecutor in the case told him during one meeting that Ashcroft was involved in every decision. "He said, 'Every decision in this case goes all the way up to Ashcroft’s desk.'" Durken told me that such a fact didn't "surprise" him, given the political nature of the case.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

An Email in The Gap

Paul Kiel | March 21, 2007, 4:05PM

As Josh noted and The Politico reported last night, there appeared to be an 18-day gap in the emails released by the Justice Department Monday night, a gap right after Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson said that they should run the purge plan by the White House and Karl Rove in particular.

But for what it's worth, a couple of TPM readers found an email in the gap (between November 15th and December 4th). You can read the email here, in which DoJ official Michael Elston forwards a review document concerning the Nothern District of California to another DoJ employee and asks that it be printed.

The U.S. Attorney for California's Northern District, Kevin Ryan was ultimately fired because of poor management, the Justice Department has said, an argument apparently supported by the department's evaluation of Ryan's performance.

That's the only document we've been able to find in that time period. If anyone has spotted anything else, please let us know in the comments.

Update: And Thinkprogress finds another email. So that's two.

U.S. Attorneys

Snow on Lack of Paper Trail to Firings: "That's a Great Question"

Paul Kiel | March 21, 2007, 2:49PM

From today's press briefing:

Click To Play

And here's Snow not having an answer as to why there's an 18 day gap in the emails turned over to Congress:

Click To Play

U.S. Attorneys

Lam Worked with DoJ on PR Damage Control

Paul Kiel | March 21, 2007, 1:59PM

Contrary to Justice Department and administration officials' attempts to paint U.S. Attorney Carol Lam as recalcitrant on prosecuting immigration cases, an internal email shows that she was "willing to change course if people think that would be beneficial" regarding her handling of criticism on the cases. Lam volunteered to stay silent despite all the personal criticism because she did not want to put the DoJ in a bad light by complaining publicly about the lack of department resources.

The email, written by Associate Deputy Attorney General Ronald Tenpas in May of 2006 and sent to numerous high level Justice Department officials, relays a conversation that Tenpas had with Lam about her office's handling of immigration cases. The conversation followed complaints made by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and other Republicans about the number of border prosecutions in Lam's district.

The email reads:

FYI Carol Lam, USA Southern California, called me earlier today to discuss matters related to the criticism Congressman Issa has been directing at the District re its practices in prosecuting/not prosecuting alien smuggling.... She wanted to communicate the following:

1. In her view, although the unrebutted criticism is making the Department look bad, she has been sitting quiet rather than attempting to respond publicly by explaining the resource limitations that she maintains affect the office's ability to do more smuggling cases;
2. She is willing to change course if folks think that would be beneficial;
3. She notes that she has never even met with Congressman Issa and would be happy to do so if that is thought useful; and
4. She will do anything else that the DAG would wish, including continuing to stand silent despite the personal criticism to which she thinks she is being subject through these comments.

She acknowledged understanding that it may be the judgment that continued silence is the best option of a set of limited options. I explained to her that, given the larger debate going on related to immigration, we would probably evaluate her observations and her offer in the context of wanting to contribute to the Administration's overall goals with respect to immigration reform.

One way or another, somebody such as myself or PADAG or CoS should probably follow-up with her to confirm our guidance lest any silence be construed as lack of guidance/indifference to her activity.

Karl Rove has claimed publicly that Lam was ordered by the attorney general to make immigration prosecutions a priority, and refused, and the Justice Department has publicly cited Lam's immigration policy as the reason for her removal.

*But Lam was apparently more than willing to change her department's policy on immigration cases* -- a policy that favored fewer, high-profile prosecutions over many more, lower-profile cases. But, despite the continued internal grumbling at the Justice Department, that request to change her policies never came, as Lam has testified under oath. Instead, she was abruptly fired.

Update/Correction: As a reader pointed out below shortly after this post went up, this might involve a misreading of the email. The line " She is willing to change course if folks think that would be beneficial" apparently refers to Lam's stance on staying silent in response to criticism, rather than her office's immigration policy.

Considering the overall context of the email, however, it's apparent the conversation that took place between two people on the same side of a debate trying to develop a PR strategy. In other words, if the Justice Department didn't agree with Lam's policy on immigration prosecutions, they would have been on Issa's side, not Lam's. But there was apparently no discussion about revising the policy, because that wasn't what was at issue.

Ed. Note: thanks to muchomaas for catching this in the comments.

U.S. Attorneys

Watchdog Asks, What about Abramoff?

Paul Kiel | March 21, 2007, 12:00PM

As former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins has written, "Once the public detects partisanship in one important decision, they will follow the natural inclination to question every decision made, whether there is a connection or not."

Today, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog Democracy 21 sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty asking whether there had been political interference in the investigation and prosecution of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

"Based on issues that have been raised in the firing of the eight U.S Attorneys , we're all in a position to want some assurance that there hasn't been political interference in the case," Fred Wertheimer, Democracy 21's president, told me. "This still remains the worse congressional corruption scandal in 30 years. There are lesser players who have been convicted. But there are still big players here, including sitting and former members of Congress whose cases apparently have not yet been resolved. "

Citing concerns about the slow pace of the investigation and high turnover of prosecutors and supervisors working on the case, Wertheimer also asks Gonzales what resources the Justice Department has committed to the investigation.

You can read the letter here.

U.S. Attorneys

Paper: GOPer Investigation at Issue in Prosecutor Firing

Paul Kiel | March 21, 2007, 11:54AM

This is one of the high profile public corruption cases we haven't talked a lot about. From The Arizona Republic:

Two weeks after Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton was ordered to give up his post, he sent an e-mail to a top Justice Department official asking how to handle questions that his ouster was connected to his investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz.

Charlton, one of eight federal prosecutors forced to resign last year, never received a written response....

When the first list of U.S. attorneys targeted for ouster was drafted, Charlton's name was not on it. But his name was on a subsequent list, drafted in September. Although the Renzi inquiry was not yet public, it is likely the Justice Department was aware of the investigation, said a former U.S. attorney who is familiar with the protocol when a sitting lawmaker is involved.

U.S. Attorneys

House Committee Authorizes Subpoenas for White House Officials

Paul Kiel | March 21, 2007, 10:59AM

Just reported on CNN. More soon.

Update: The subpoenas are for testimony from Karl Rove, his deputy Scott Jennings, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, deputy White House counsel William Kelley, and Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson. They also seek more documents from the White House.

From House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI):

"The White House's offer provides nothing more than conversations. It does not allow this Committee to get the information we need without transcripts or oaths... This motion allows the Committee to pursue good faith negotiations. We are continuing our talks with the White House, along with the Senate, but we must protect the interest of the Congress and the American people by maintaining the option to move forward with our investigation with or without continued cooperation from the Administration."

U.S. Attorneys

3000 Pages And The Missing Paper Trail

Paul Kiel | March 21, 2007, 9:41AM

I yield the floor to TPM Reader JD:

This isn't a comment about what has been found in the document dump of last night, but about what HASN'T been found. (Note: my question/comment is inspired by this 3/16 interview of [U.S. Attorney] Bud Cummins).

If the USA's had been forced to resign for performance related reasons, wouldn't you expect to see a huge paper trail of the performance review process itself? Take the case of [U.S. Attorney for Western Michigan Margaret] Chiara. If the problem was office management/morale, I would expect the following in the record:

1) Some document sent to the someone in the AG's office, saying, "Hey, I've been hearing there are some morale/managerial problems in Chiara's office.";

2) A formal letter to Chiara saying, "We would like to review your management of the office. We'll be sending officials out to your district to discuss."

3) A report to the DAG saying, "We went out to her office and, in fact, we believe there are managerial problems. Chiara offered to takes steps A, B & C to correct. Will review in 6 months.";

4) Then, 6 months later, there would be another report saying, "It's been six months since the last review. Nothing's changed. It may be time to consider removing her.";

5) A follow-up from the DAG saying, "Nope, her time is up. We'll recommend her removal and replacement to the AG.";

6) Then a series of letters/emails between offices about "Should we remove her?" and "Yes, we should remove her. Set it up." and "Here's how and why we're removing her.";

7) Finally, a series of documents setting up her formal removal, communicating that to the AG and the WH.

But, there's none of that. You'd think if such documents existed, they'd be definitive and the first set of docs the Justice Department would release. If the attorneys in the AG's office are anything like the private attorneys I know, they wouldn't do anything as significant as forcing the resignation of any single USA, without first creating a paper trail a mile long. Should be 1000 pages of docs for each USA removal, right?

Everybody seems to be looking for a smoking gun, but the real story is that the evidence we've been given is of a gun that's never been fired.

As I wrote yesterday, the Justice Department actually brainstormed on the justifications for the firings after they happened.

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 21, 2007, 9:03AM

The best bunch of prosecutors you'd ever want to fire.

I've said it before here, and I'll say it again. One of the remarkable aspects of the U.S. attorney firings is that the Justice Department didn't select a group of mediocre prosecutors and then try to smear them as underperforming -- oh, no. They chose from among the most distinguished U.S. attorneys in the country (by the DoJ's own admission), and then announced to the world that they'd canned them for "performance related" issues.

Let's go down the list, shall we?

New Mexico's David Iglesias, we pointed out yesterday, was considered for a promotion in 2004 to head up the office that oversees all U.S. attorneys. And that wasn't the only promotion for which he was considered. As The Washington Post points out this morning, he was also considered for the position of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia (the crown jewel of the U.S. attorney offices) and U.S. Attorney for Manhattan (another very high profile office -- just ask Rudy Giuliani). And just to clinch it, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey (he left in August of 2005), has called Iglesias "one of our finest and someone I had a lot of confidence in as deputy attorney general."

And then there's Arizona's Paul Charlton. Here's what Comey to say about him (from The Los Angeles Times):

"I considered you a star among U.S. attorneys," Comey told Charlton in [a Feb. 9 e-mail]. "You ran an office with a staggering caseload, in both numbers and variety, and did it beautifully."

Comey added that he knew of "no performance issues" with Charlton. "In fact, quite the contrary, because you were at the top of your class."

And Seattle's John McKay. Here's Kyle Sampson, Alberto Gonzales' right hand and the point man for the purge, writing about McKay in August, 2006: "re John, it's highly unlikely we could do better in Seattle." (Update: as a reader points out below, this was written in the context of considering McKay for a position as a federal judge in Seattle, but I think it's fair to say the point still applies.)

And then there's the case of Daniel Bogden of Nevada, the one Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty got cold feet about just two days before he was fired ("I'm a little skittish about Bogden"). Even though he was supposedly derelict in his prosecution of obscenity cases, the Justice Department is currently helping him get another position at the DoJ.

Of course, everyone knows how Carol Lam distinguished herself, but despite bringing the highest profile case in the Justice Department's recent history (with the exception of the Abramoff investigation), she doesn't seem to have had any champions inside the Gonzales Justice Department. Funny.

Ed. Note: Thanks to TPM Reader RK for catching the McKay email.

Update: The AP adds more: "Six of the eight U.S. attorneys fired by the Justice Department ranked in the top third among their peers for the number of prosecutions filed last year, according to an analysis of federal records."

U.S. Attorneys

DoJ Document Diving, Day Two

Paul Kiel | March 21, 2007, 12:45AM

This is just a big thank you to all the readers who've posted what you've found in our comment thread below. We've been reading them all and will continue to post on the findings tomorrow (and by the way, I'm sure it's not just us reading your comments for leads).

It looks like the House Judiciary Committee finally has all the documents up on their site now. We're still interested in what you might find, particularly on the documents put up later in the day (from 7 and up or so). So if you want to read some correspondence between Justice Department officials over your morning coffee, please let us know what you find.

U.S. Attorneys

Bush Will Fight Subpoenas

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 6:13PM

Here's the takeaway from Bush's press conference just now, in which the phrase "political points" and "klieg lights" found frequent use, as opposed to his administration's "reasonable proposal."

"I hope [the Democrats] don't choose confrontation. I will oppose any attempts to subpoena White House officials."

He added that the Democrats would be "wasting time" by issuing subpoenas.

To the question, "Are you going to go to the mat in protecting the principle you talked about?... You'll go to the courts?" he answered, yes.

Here we go.

U.S. Attorneys

Leahy: You Do Your Job, I'll Do Mine

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 5:38PM

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is not happy. Not happy at all:

“I was glad to meet Mr. Fielding and I welcome the fact that these issues have his full attention.

“I don’t accept his offer. It is not constructive and it is not helpful to be telling the Senate how to do our investigation, or to prejudge its outcome.

"Instead of freely and fully providing relevant documents to the investigating committees, they have only selectively sent documents, after erasing large portions that they do not want to see the light of day. Testimony should be on the record, and under oath. That’s the formula for true accountability.“I hope the President will agree to be forthcoming. The straighter the path to the truth, the sooner we will finally know the facts.”

And from House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI):

"While we appreciate the White House's gesture, we will work with the Senate Judiciary Committee to create a counteroffer. We will move forward to authorize subpoenas for current and former White House and Justice officials, as well as documents. In short, the House Judiciary Committee will take whatever steps are necessary and within our Congressional authority to get to the bottom of what has become a horrible mess that is undermining American trust in our federal criminal justice system."

The House committee will vote to authorize issuing subpoenas tomorrow, and the Senate committee will vote on Thursday.

U.S. Attorneys

Reid: Rove Should Testify under Oath

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 5:15PM

Just out from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV):

“After telling a bunch of different stories about why they fired the U.S. Attorneys, the Bush Administration is not entitled to the benefit of the doubt. Congress and the American people deserve a straight answer. If Karl Rove plans to tell the truth, he has nothing to fear from being under oath like any other witness.”

U.S. Attorneys

AP: Feinstein Wants Answers on Departed Prosecutor

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 5:08PM

As we've noted before, the U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles Debra Wong Yang left her job shortly before two of the other U.S. attorneys in California was forced out.

Now Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wants to hear more. From the AP:

"I have questions about Debra Yang's departure and I can't answer those questions right at this time," Feinstein, D-Calif. and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters in response to a question. "Was she asked to resign, and if so, why? We have to ferret that out."...

About five months before Yang's departure her office had opened an investigation into ties between Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., and a lobbyist. When Yang left her U.S. attorney's job she went to work for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, the firm where Lewis' legal team works, but government rules required that she recuse herself from that case or any other she was involved with while a government prosecutor.

Yang told The Hill earlier this month that she could have stayed “as long as I wanted to" and that she left for financial reasons, adding that she's a single mother.

U.S. Attorneys

White House Offer Withholds White House Documents

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 4:18PM

Here's the letter from White House counsel Fred Fielding laying out the White House's offer to the House and Senate judiciary committees.

In it, Fielding says that the documents and interviews from the Justice Department are providing Congress "a virtually unprecedented window into personnel decision-making within the Executive Branch." The interviews (private, no oath, no transcript) with White House officials, therefore, "should be conducted, if needed, only after Congress has heard from Department of Justice officials about the decision to request the resignations of the U.S. Attorneys."

Fielding also offers to provide certain documents related to the decisions, including White House documents between White House staff and third parties -- but not internal White House communications.

Update: Here's Sen. Chuck Schumer's (D-NY) summary of the problem with that document provision, via ThinkProgress:

So, if Karl Rove sent a communication to Harriet Miers and said, and this is purely hypothetical, “We have to get rid of US Attorney Lam. Come up with a good reason…” and the only communication we get is the good reason that Harriet Miers sent to the Justice Department.

U.S. Attorneys

Bush to Make Statement on Purge at 5:45

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 3:26PM

All we know is that it will be a "statement about the U.S. attorney matter."

Update: From CNN just now: "What is expected from the president is that he will say that Attorney General Gonzales has his full, unyielding support."

U.S. Attorneys

Snow: "Let's See Where It Goes"

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 3:19PM

President Bush called Alberto Gonzales this morning to "reaffirm his support." But listen to Tony Snow in this morning's press gaggle:

Q Is the President determined to insist that Gonzales stay on, even as his support on Capitol Hill erodes even among Republicans?

MR. SNOW: Well, I think you need to take a look at what happens over the rest of the day. You're asking yesterday's question, not tomorrow's question. And the point is, you've had two Republicans who have spoken publicly, but now you also have data available. You have evidence available. You have people who have an opportunity to take a good, hard look at the documentary record. Let's see where it goes from there....

Q All the documents that have been released suggest that whatever mistakes the President has admitted were made were confined to subordinates to Gonzales -- or does the President hold the Attorney General responsible for those mistakes?

MR. SNOW: I think I'm going to let you read the documents rather than having me characterize 3,000 pages. I've not had an opportunity to read them all.

U.S. Attorneys

White House Makes An Offer Dems Can Refuse

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 2:56PM

According to MSNBC just now, White House counsel Fred Fielding offered Democrats interviews with Karl Rove and other White House officials, but the testimony would be unsworn, behind closed doors, and no transcript would be permitted.

Both House and Senate Democrats already plan to vote on issuing subpoenas later this week.

Update: On CNN, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) just told reporters that "[Fielding] said he wanted this to be a conversation rather than a hearing. A conversation's fine. But let's have a conversation under oath with a transcript so we can see what has happened and weigh the testimony of these particular witnesses against the others.... Mr. Fielding indicated that he did not want to negotiate, but that doesn't mean we're not going to try."

U.S. Attorneys

Ousted Hispanic Prosecutor Was "Diverse Up-and-Comer"

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 2:11PM

In April, 2004, times were different. U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias hadn't yet drawn the ire of prominent conservatives by failing to indict a Democratic state senator shortly before the election or declining to pursue their pet voter fraud cases.

Then, he was in no danger of being fired. Rather, he was on the short list for being promoted to be the Director of the Executive Office of the United States Attorney. At least, that's according to an email from Kyle Sampson that listed U.S. attorneys who "might be enticed to leave their districts and come to Washington to run EOUSA."

Iglesias, who is Hispanic, appears on the list as a "diverse up-and-comer; solid."

Now, Iglesias, of course, didn't get the job. Michael Battle, formerly the U.S. Attorney for Buffalo (and, as an African-American, also "diverse") did. And irony of ironies, it was Battle who ended up making the call to fire Iglesias this past December. Battle tendered his resignation in January; his last day was Friday.

Ed. Note: Thanks to TPM Reader Matt for flagging this in the comments.

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

White House to Meet with Dems at 2 PM

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 1:06PM

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) will hold a presser after his meeting wtih White House counsel Fred Fielding, so stay tuned.

U.S. Attorneys

Senate Passes U.S Attorney Bill

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 12:59PM

From the AP:

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Thursday to end the Bush administration's ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors.

U.S. Attorneys

Docs Show DoJ Brainstorm on Firing Justifications

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 12:17PM

Among the documents last night are some showing that the "performance related" reasons for firing eight prosecutors were the result of an ongoing collobaration at Justice. In other words, the officials appear to have brainstormed on the reasons they had fired the eight.

This document (the date's unclear, but it was clearly done after the firings), for instance, shows a list of the fired prosecutors with a "Leadership Assessment" column laying out the supposed problems with the prosecutors' performance. A Justice Department official made handwritten notes on the document, for instance adding to U.S. Attorney David Iglesias' deficiencies (a scant two bullet points) two items: "under-performing generally" and "lackluster manager." The official also added "use of time management" to San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's performance woes.

Here's just one demonstration of the shifting rationale for the firings.

On the list of deficiencies for Nevada's Daniel Bogden, you can see a lot of writing in and crossing out going on. One of the bullet points (written in and then crossed out) is "Resistance to obscenity prosecutions." Now, as Salon detailed yesterday, that's a bogus charge. But that didn't stop them from using it. When Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), who had nominated Bogden, inquired as to the reason for Bogden's firing, he was told it had to do with Bogden being insufficiently aggressive on "adult obscenity cases." But when Justice Department official William Moschella testifed before Congress in March, he said that there wasn't a "particular" reason for Bogden's firing, but "given the importance of [Bogden's] district," the department felt they needed "renewed energy, renewed vigor" in that office in order to "take it to the next level."

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

House Committee to Meet Tomorrow to Vote on White House Subpoenas

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 11:51AM

At 10:15 tomorrow morning, the House Judiciary Committee will vote on whether to issue subpoenas to Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson, Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, deputy White House counsel William Kelley, and Rove's aide Scott Jennings, as well as White House and Justice Department documents, which have not been provided to date.

Today, current White House counsel Fred Fielding is expected to notify the congressional committees whether the White House will make Rove and others available. But House Democrats appear determined to hear from White House officials on their terms.

U.S. Attorneys

Cunningham, Under Investigation, Signed Letter Criticizing Prosecutor

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 11:02AM

It was nothing personal.

Four months after the San Diego United States Attorney's office launched an investigation into whether he had accepted bribes from defense contractors, and little more than a month before he pled guilty to those charges, Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) signed on to a letter criticizing U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's "lax" handling of immigration crimes.

The letter, signed by 18 other Republican lawmakers, was sent October 20, 2005. Cunningham pled guilty November 28 to bribery charges and resigned from office.

You can see the letter, released last night, here.

Thanks to TPM Reader JM for the catch.

Note: A friend adds dryly: "Cunningham, in October '05, apparently thought there were crimes being committed that Lam wasn't prosecuting."

U.S. Attorneys

Bush "Reaffirms" Support for Gonzales

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 10:37AM

Fight to the finish? At a call around 7:15 this morning, President Bush called Alberto Gonzales to "reaffirm his support."

Here's the report from earlier this morning on MSNBC:

And the White House is also denying that it's looking for a successor to Gonzales.

U.S. Attorneys

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 9:00AM

OK, reporters from the major papers, like TPM readers, spent a bleary-eyed night scanning the emails released last night. Let's look at the highlights.

The Washington Post reports that Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney for Chicago, got a middling rating from Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff and purge meister Kyle Sampson in early 2005 (the Plame investigation was in full swing). Since that information is actually redacted in the released emails, the Post got that helpful bit of information from certain "administration officials."

Sampson had a three-tiered rating system, remember -- loyal Bushies, "not distinguished" and weak. Certainly Fitzgerald is no loyal Bushie, and apparently even Sampson couldn't bring himself to rate him as weak, given that he'd won the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service in 2002.

The Post also notes the email cited last night by U.S. News as the "most worrisome" to Justice Department officials -- one that has Gonzales "extremely upset" at his deputy Paul McNulty because McNulty had the gall to admit that U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins was pushed out for no other reason than to install Karl Rove's former aide. But why was he really so upset? As Gonzales' spokesman put it in the email, "I think from a straight news perspective we just want the stories to die."

The AP cites an email written on February 1st, as the scandal was brewing. At the time, Kyle Sampson was understandably unhappy at the prospect of Bud Cummins testifying:

"I don't think he should," Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, wrote... "How would he answer: Did you resign voluntarily? Who told you? What did they say?"

One subscandal of this overarching scandal, remember, is that a Justice Official, on at least two separate occasions, threatened the fired U.S. attorneys with the release of bad information if they continued to speak out.

The AP also flags one of the more embarrassing emails, which shows DoJ #2 McNulty having second thoughts about canning Nevada's Daniel Bogden:

'I'm a little skittish about Bogden," McNulty wrote in a Dec. 7 e-mail to Sampson. "He has been with DOJ since 1990 and, at age 50, has never had a job outside government."

Still, McNulty concluded: "I'll admit have not looked at his district's performance. Sorry to be raising this again/now; it was just on my mind last night and this morning." [my emphasis]

And yes, Bogden was one of those "performance related" firings.

The Los Angeles Times flags an exchange that has Kyle Sampson assuring everyone after McNulty's testimony before the Senate in early February that this whole flap is blowing over:

[DoJ spokeswoman Tasia] Scolinos also told Sampson that she "didn't think the hearing had gone all that well" for the Justice Department.

But Sampson told Roehrkasse and Scolinos that McNulty felt good after testifying, and believed the matter was about over.

"He's hearing good reports from the committee. In particular, Sen. [Charles E.] Schumer's counsel told him that the issue has basically run its course, that they need to get a little more information from us … but that will be it."

The LA Times also focuses on the many emails from one of the fired prosecutors we haven't heard very much about, Margaret Chiara. Chiara, apparently, got wind that she would be fired in early November, and immediately contacted McNulty with the hope of keeping steady work. And after it was said publicly that she was being asked to step aside for "performance reasons, she wrote McNulty asking him to "reconsider" that rationale, adding "It is in our mutual interest to retract this erroneous explanation."

Apparently Chiara thought she was being forced out for other reasons. As The New York Times reports, Chiara also wrote in the emails that "she was being removed to make way for a member of Congress who was expected to lose his seat in the November election."

The Times also flags an exchange that displays the wooden comedy of assistant AG Bill Mercer:

After a colleague said in a July 8 e-mail message that he was “sad” about something, Bill Mercer, a top Justice Department official, jokingly suggested some reasons.

“That Carol Lam can’t meet a deadline,” he wrote, “or that you’ll need to interact with her in the coming weeks or that she won’t just say, ‘O.K. You got me. You’re right, I’ve ignored national priorities and obvious local needs. Shoot, my production is more hideous than I realized.’ ”

Apparently, Lam was something of a punching bag for Mercer and his buddies. Yet somehow that disdain didn't work it's way into the department's official evaluations of Lam's performance.

Stay tuned as we dive in to last night's comment thread to see what TPM readers have dug up. And did I mention that there are some 2000 more pages to be put online today?

U.S. Attorneys

TPM Needs YOU to Comb Through Thousands of Pages

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 12:51AM

Josh and I were just discussing how in the world we are ever going to make our way through 3,000 pages when it hit us: we don't have to. Our readers can help.

So here's what we're going to do. This comment thread will be our HQ for sorting through tonight's document dump.

And to make it efficient and comprehensible, we'll have a system. As you can see on the House Judiciary Committee's website, they've begun reproducing 50-page pdfs of the documents with a simple numbering system, 3-19-2007 DOJ-Released Documents 1-1, then 1-2, then 1-3, etc. So pick a pdf, any pdf and give it a look. If you find something interesting (or damning), then tell us about it in the comment thread below.

Please begin your comment with the pdf number and please provide the page number of the pdf.

So, for instance, a comment might read:

1-3

Hey, there's an email here on page 27 from Kyle Sampson where he says, "I'm thinking that we should make up bogus justifications for the firing of all eight U.S. attorneys in order to cover up our true, political motivations. Judge says it's a great idea, so does Karl. What do you think, Mr. President?"

If you want to be a trailblazer and read through a virgin pdf, then you should be able to see which pdfs haven't been looked at by scrolling through the comment thread. Have at it!

U.S. Attorneys

3000 Pages of Purge

Paul Kiel | March 20, 2007, 12:20AM

This evening, as you probably know by now, the Justice Department turned over 3,000 pages of documents to Congress. And hard working staffers are working the scanners to pump out pdfs at an impressive rate. You can see the result here.

We'll get started early in the morning on those documents (and in the meantime, please let us know what you find).

Also, just for contrast, here are two statements out about the release tongiht. One from the Justice Department:

"Taking a virtually unprecedented step, the Justice Department released 3,000 pages of documents today on the dismissal of the eight U.S. Attorneys and has offered to make Department officials available voluntarily for "on the record" interviews and hearings. The Attorney General wants the Congress and the American people to understand both the reasons for the Department's decisions and its efforts to inform Congress about this matter. The Department did not remove the U.S. Attorneys for improper reasons, such as to prevent or retaliate for a particular prosecution in a public corruption matter. Because the American public must have confidence that such considerations did not factor into the decisions here, the Justice Department is being transparent and forthcoming with the Congress."

And from House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), who's marvelling at the DoJ's ability to withhold some of the most important information while drowning Congress in documents:

"While I appreciate the Department's willingness to make these voluminous documents regarding the U.S. Attorney firings available to us for review, I am disappointed that they are denying other important information to Congress without any real authority to do so. This investigation has uncovered serious charges of misleading congress, obstructing justice, and abuse of power. I hope we can resolve the outstanding issues over redactions, but if necessary, we are prepared to press ahead to get to the bottom of this growing scandal, using subpoenas if necessary."

U.S. Attorneys

U.S. News: Email Shows Gonzales "Unhappy" with Deputy Testimony

Paul Kiel | March 19, 2007, 7:21PM

U.S. News gives a taste of what's to come:

...one day after Justice Department Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified on Capitol Hill about the reasons why eight U.S. attorneys were fired summarily, a Justice Department spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse -- on travel abroad with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- sent an E-mail to McNulty* saying Gonzales was unhappy with McNulty's testimony regarding why U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins of Arkansas had been let go.

That email, U.S News reports, is "causing the most concern" at the Justice Department as they ready to turn over thousands more.

Now, why would Gonzales have been upset at McNulty? McNulty had testified about Cummins that "there was a change made there that was not connected to, as was said, the performance of the incumbent, but more related to the opportunity to provide a fresh start with a new person in that position."

So, in other words, McNulty publicly admitted that Cummins was pushed out for no other reason than to give Karl Rove's deputy a shot (which was, by the way, the truth). And that made Gonzales upset. And it looks like there might be more in that email.

Update: An update to the post adds some detail: "In the E-mail to McNulty, Roehrkasse said the attorney general disagreed with his characterization of Cummins's firing, because Gonzales believed that it was at least in part performance related." Right, "in part" performance related, just like all the other firings? Too bad they couldn't keep their stories straight.

*Late Update: The Justice Department has responded to the story with a statement to U.S. News:

The attorney general was "upset," Roehrkasse said, because he believed that "Bud Cummins' removal involved performance considerations and it was that aspect of the DAG's testimony that the Attorney General was questing."

And apparently the email is not sent from Gonzales' spokesman to McNulty, but rather to Kyle Sampson and another DoJ spokesperson.

Note: A Justice Department official also laments to U.S. News amidst the chaos of collecting hundreds and hundreds of documents: "You have no idea ... how bad it is here." I think that's another way of saying that you shouldn't hold your breath for the timely delivery of those documents tonight.

U.S. Attorneys

Politico: White House on Gonzales Replacement Hunt

Paul Kiel | March 19, 2007, 6:29PM

Uh-oh. From The Politico:

Republican officials operating at the behest of the White House have begun seeking a possible successor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose support among GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill has collapsed, according to party sources familiar with the discussions.

Among the names floated Monday by administration officials are Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House anti-terrorism coordinator Frances Townsend. Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson is a White House prospect. So is former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, but sources were unsure if he would want the job.

Republican sources also disclosed that it is now a virtual certainty that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, whose incomplete and inaccurate congressional testimony about the prosecutors helped precipitate the crisis, will also resign shortly. Officials were debating whether Gonzales and McNulty should depart at the same time or whether McNulty should go a day or two after Gonzales.

U.S. Attorneys

The Document Dump To End All Document Dumps

Paul Kiel | March 19, 2007, 5:23PM

Some 2000 pages are coming between 6:00 and 7:00 tonight from the Department of Justice, we hear.

U.S. Attorneys

Rove's Talking Point

Paul Kiel | March 19, 2007, 4:58PM

The House and Senate judiciary committees want to hear from Karl Rove, and it looks like there's going to be a fight before they do. But Rove has already spoken twice on the U.S. attorney firings, and on both occasions, he auditioned a talking point that provides an excellent case for firing Carol Lam -- the only problem with it being that it's not true.

On March 8th, Rove said that Lam had been fired because "[she] refused to file immigration cases… at the direction of the Attorney General, she was asked to file, and she said I don’t want to make that a priority in my office."

One week later, he said that Lam had made a "principled decision... that she would not commit resources to prosecute immigration offenses. She made a decision that that was not going to be a priority of her office. The United States Department of Justice asked her to make it so, she did not."

Now, no one else, either from the Justice Department or the White House, has made a similar assertion. And that's because, as Lam testified repeatedly under oath before Congress, she was never asked (let alone "directed") to change her office's handling of immigration cases.

But that's not all. As recounted numerous times on this blog, the Justice Department wrote a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) vouching for Lam's handling of immigration cases just three months before she was fired. The letter stated that Lam had committed "fully half of its Assistant U.S. Attorneys to prosecute criminal immigration cases," and noted that the number of alien smuggling cases filed in her office had been "rising sharply." Three months later, she was fired.

In other words, Rove's assertion is not only a lie, but a damned lie.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Salon: Document Dump Gives "Misleading Rationale" to U.S. Attorney Firings

Paul Kiel | March 19, 2007, 3:21PM

As I wrote before, every justification given for the Justice Department's firing of the U.S. attorneys is eventually proven not just to be bogus, but spectacularly bogus.

The cases of Nevada's Daniel Bogden and Arizona's Paul Charlton are no different. As Salon reports, among last week's trove of documents from the Justice Department was one email that showed officials fretting that Bogden and Chartlon were "unwilling to take good cases" presented to them by the obscenity task force.

Except, of course, not only were those cases not "good," but both Charlton and Bogden ended up taking them on, Salon's Mark Follman reports.

Nevertheless, the email appears to have been included in last week's release in order to "shore up [the Justice Departments'] explanation for the firings," as Salon puts it.

But as the piece makes clear, this email might in and of itself have been a conscious "shoring up" of the firing. Daniel Bogden and Paul Charlton, after all, didn't make an appearance on Kyle Sampson's hit list until September of 2006. Was it a coincidence that just one week after Sampson included Bogden and Charlton as among those "we should now consider pushing out" in a September 13th email, DoJ officials started complaining in writing about the two of them? Maybe, maybe not. But with this story, suspicion has become the rule.

U.S. Attorneys

Pelosi: "We Need a New Attorney General.''

Paul Kiel | March 19, 2007, 2:48PM

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) weighs in.

U.S. Attorneys

"The Phone Calls Would Have Been Flying"

Paul Kiel | March 19, 2007, 1:58PM

Yesterday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) revealed that U.S. Attorney Carol Lam had notified the Justice Department on May 10, 2006, that she intended to execute search warrants on CIA executive director Dusty Foggo. The next day, Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson wrote in an email that "the real problem we have right now" is with Lam, adding that they should have a replacement ready by November.

U.S. News gives a little more context for Sampson's urgency:

In politically sensitive cases, the U.S. attorney's office notifies senior Justice Department leadership of developments in the case by sending what's known as an urgent report.

In this case, the U.S. attorney in San Diego sent an urgent report to Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty at 10:16 a.m. on May 10, notifying them of the imminent search....

"The phone calls would have been flying," says a former Justice official who has worked closely with the CIA. "The CIA would be jumping up and down and putting pressure to stop it or slow it down."

Many intelligence sources say the concern would not have been over Foggo personally–because he was generally "despised"–but that the CIA would have had an institutional interest in keeping itself out of any scandal.

"There would have been a two-pronged attack," says the former Justice official, "to protect the agency and to get rid of Lam." Even though Foggo had quit the agency, he still had many friends there who viewed themselves as being at risk.

"It's second nature to the CIA," says the former official. "Somebody's causing trouble. Get rid of them."

U.S. Attorneys

Fight over Rove Testimony "Murky"

Paul Kiel | March 19, 2007, 11:25AM

There are a couple good articles out from The New York Times and Roll Call (sub. req.) this morning on the potential upcoming battle between the administration and Congress.

The central conflict is simple: The administration seems determined to avoid Karl Rove and other White House aides from testifying under oath, particularly public testimony; and leading Democrats are determined to get it.

But where the conflict goes is not simple: in fact, there seems to be no real precedent for the conflict -- while many of President Clinton's aides testified before Congress, that was done voluntarily, and as the Times reports, "each administration, in effect, writes its own rules."

So if the White House says no, and the congressional committees go ahead, as they've warned they will do, to issue subpoenas for Karl Rove's testimony, it's not clear what happens next.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Snow on Gonzales: "We Hope He Stays"

Paul Kiel | March 19, 2007, 11:17AM

From this morning's press gaggle with Tony Snow.

Q: Does the White House feel, at this point, that it knows everything it needs to know about Gonzales to decide whether he should remain in office? Or are you still fact-gathering?

SNOW: The president's said he's got confidence in Al Gonzales. This is not fact-gathering on whether to allow him to maintain his employment. We hope he stays.

Q: He will remain in office for the rest of the administration?

SNOW: Well, we hope so.

U.S. Attorneys

The Timeline Grows Longer

Paul Kiel | March 19, 2007, 11:14AM

This is just an update to say that we're continuing to fine tune and add to our stunning TPM Canned U.S. Attorney Timeline, and that suggestions and corrections are still welcome.

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 19, 2007, 8:47AM

It's becoming one of the central rules of the U.S. attorney purge scandal: whatever "performance related" complaint the administration claims as the justification for a U.S. attorney's firing, it's actually an area of performance for which that U.S. attorney was lauded.

In this instance, the White House has said that U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico was removed in part due to his handling of voter fraud complaints. That's backed up by the numerous instances of powerful New Mexico Republicans (including Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM)) complaining to Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and President Bush about Iglesias' decision not to prosecute certain cases of voter fraud.

What does this mean? It means that Iglesias must have been lauded by the Justice Department for his handling of voter fraud cases. And not just lauded -- but cited as an example for U.S. attorneys across the country. From The Washington Post:

One of the U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration after Republican complaints that he neglected to prosecute voter fraud had been heralded for his expertise in that area by the Justice Department, which twice selected him to train other federal prosecutors to pursue election crimes.

David C. Iglesias, who was dismissed as U.S. attorney for New Mexico in December, was one of two chief federal prosecutors invited to teach at a "voting integrity symposium" in October 2005. The symposium was sponsored by Justice's public integrity and civil rights sections and was attended by more than 100 prosecutors from around the country, according to an account by Iglesias that a department spokesman confirmed.

Iglesias, a Republican, said in an interview that he and the U.S. attorney from Milwaukee, Steven M. Biskupic, were chosen as trainers because they were the only ones identified as having created task forces to examine allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 elections. An agenda lists them as the panelists for a session on such task forces at the two-day seminar, which featured a luncheon speech by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

According to Iglesias, the agency invited him back as a trainer last summer, just months before a Justice official telephoned to fire him. He said he could not attend the second time because of his obligations as an officer in the Navy Reserve.

There are, of course, other instances of this rule.

Justice Department official William Moschella told Congress that U.S. Attorney John McKay of Seattle was fired because of he'd been too aggressively pushing his office's regional law enforcement information-sharing program. But McKay pointed out during the hearing that the DoJ had actually made his system the DoJ's pilot project and chosen McKay to lead the U.S. attorneys' work on the issue.

Similarly, San Diego's Carol Lam was supposedly fired because of her office's failure to prosecute immigration cases. But it turns out that the Justice Department vouched for Lam's handling of such cases just three months before she was fired, citing, for instance, the fact that half of her staff was devoted to prosecuting such crimes.

One of the more remarkable aspects of this story, indeed, is the fact that the Justice Department chose a small group of the most distinguished U.S. attorneys in the country and then tried to portray them as incompetent. As you can see, it's been a losing effort. And in every case where the cover story has been blown, it's revealed political motivations for the firing.

Note: The whole voter fraud thing is actually the second line floated as the reason for Iglesias' firing. The first (what might be called the cover story's cover story) was that there had been a failure of leadership in his office. Iglesias, Moschella announced to the Congress, had often "delegated to his first assistant the running of the office." What Moschella did not mention is that Iglesias is a Navy Reserve officer, which means that he's required to serve 40 days during the year -- something, of course, that the Justice Department knew full well when they gave him the job.

U.S. Attorneys

Leahy: "I Am Sick and Tired of Getting Half-Truths"

Paul Kiel | March 18, 2007, 9:52PM

Buckle your seatbelts:

The Democratic senator leading the inquiry into the dismissal of federal prosecutors insisted today that Karl Rove and other top aides to President Bush must testify publicly and under oath, setting up a confrontation between Congress and the White House, which has said it is unlikely to agree to such a demand.

Some Republicans have suggested that Mr. Rove, as well as Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and William Kelley, the deputy White House counsel, testify privately, if only to tamp down the political uproar.

But Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, seemed to rule out such a move today, saying that his committee would vote Thursday to issue subpoenas in the inquiry, which centers on whether the White House allowed politics to interfere with law enforcement.

“I do not believe in this, ‘we’ll have a private briefing for you where we’ll tell you everything,’ and they don’t,” Mr. Leahy said on the ABC News program “This Week.” adding: “I want testimony under oath. I am sick and tired of getting half-truths on this.”

U.S. Attorneys

U.S. Attorney Purge Scandal: The Week Ahead

Paul Kiel | March 18, 2007, 10:29AM

I think they call this running the gauntlet. Get ready, Alberto.

From the AP:

On Monday, the Justice Department plans to turn over to Congress more documents that could provide more details of the role agency officials -- including Gonzales -- and top White House officials played in planning the prosecutors' dismissals.

On Tuesday, the White House is expected to announce whether it will let former White House counsel Harriet Miers, political strategist Karl Rove and other presidential advisers testify before Congress -- and whether it will release more documents to lawmakers, including additional e-mails and other items. That decision was to be made on Friday, but the White House asked for more time.

On Thursday, lawmakers are scheduled to quiz Gonzales about his agency's budget request, but likely will ask questions about the scandal, too.

Also on Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a vote on whether to authorize subpoenas for Miers; her deputy, William K. Kelley; and Rove, who said the controversy is being fueled by "superheated political rhetoric."...

And if Gonzales doesn't have enough on his plate, two congressional panels are holding hearings on the FBI's misuse of the USA Patriot Act to secretly pry out personal information about Americans.

U.S. Attorneys

DoJ Officials Point to Sampson, Sampson Points Back

Paul Kiel | March 18, 2007, 10:07AM

From Newsweek:

...a pair of senior Justice officials gave accounts to lawmakers that were, at best, incomplete. At a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, William Moschella, a top aide to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, vigorously defended the firings of the U.S. attorneys as a purely managerial move that had originated within the Justice Department. He said nothing about any nudging from the White House. McNulty had earlier given similar testimony, saying the attorneys had been let go for "job performance" reasons, an assertion that infuriated the fired prosecutors. But the two Justice officials have told colleagues that when they saw the e-mail accounts showing the attorney-purge idea had originated in the White House, they were surprised and appalled. "I felt sick," Moschella told NEWSWEEK. "I basically saw my professional life flash before my eyes." Moschella and McNulty blamed [Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle] Sampson. The attorney general's chief of staff had sat in as they prepped for their testimony and "never said a word," according to a Justice Department official who wished to remain anonymous discussing a private meeting.

Sampson's lawyer, of course, released a statement late Friday that significantly dispersed the blame. According to him, "a number of other senior officials at the Department, including others who were involved in preparing the Department's testimony to Congress" knew about the White House involvement. They didn't bring it up, says Sampson, because "no one focused on it or deemed it important at the time."

But that certainly doesn't sound like McNulty and Moschella's view of things. Fortunately, all three men are scheduled to make appearances before the House and Senate judicial committees, so they'll have plenty of chances to lay blame.

U.S. Attorneys

Gonzales Apologizes to USAs

Paul Kiel | March 17, 2007, 9:37AM

The apology, of course, was to the 93 sitting U.S. attorneys, not the eight who deserve it. From McClatchy:

Gonzales apologized to the prosecutors not for the firings but for their execution, including for inaccurate public statements about poor job performance, according to people familiar with the afternoon conference call.

I wonder if those "inaccurate public statements" he's referring to include statements to Congress?

U.S. Attorneys

NPR: Gonzales Wanted Fallback Gig for Sampson

Paul Kiel | March 17, 2007, 9:28AM

Apparently Alberto Gonzales thought this whole thing would just blow over.

NPR has learned that the Attorney General’s chief of staff [Kyle Sampson] resigned from his position this week, the Justice Department took steps to establish him as an attorney elsewhere in the building....he only resigned from the department on Tuesday, when the scandal surrounding eight fired U.S. Attorneys continued to grow.

U.S. Attorneys

Sampson: I Failed to Organize "Political Response"

Paul Kiel | March 17, 2007, 9:11AM

Boy, has Kyle Sampson learned his lesson, or what? He hasn't resigned because of his role in a scheme to fire prosecutors for political reasons, oh no: he resigned because he didn't succeed in organizing "a more effective political response" to the charges of impropriety. No wonder people thought he'd be the next Karl Rove.

His lawyer, Bradford Berenson put out the following statement last night:

"Kyle did not resign because he had misled anyone at the Justice Department or withheld information concerning the replacement of the U.S. Attorneys. He resigned because, as Chief of Staff, he felt he had let the Attorney General down in failing to appreciate the need for and organize a more effective political response to the unfounded accusations of impropriety in the replacement process. The fact that the White House and Justice Department had been discussing this subject for several years was well-known to a number of other senior officials at the Department, including others who were involved in preparing the Department's testimony to Congress. If this background was not called to Mr. McNulty or Mr. Moschella's attention, it was not because any of these individuals deliberately withheld it from them but rather because no one focused on it or deemed it important at the time. The focus of preparation efforts was on why the U.S. Attorneys had been replaced, not how."

Alberto Gonzales has publicly blamed Sampson for his "mistake" of not sharing "information that he had" with those testifying before Congress.

But according to Sampson, everybody knew. The officials who were about to testify just didn't ask around -- because, he says, they were focused on the "why," not the "how." I think I'd need another statement from Sampson, though, before I could understand how the White House's involvement isn't part of the answer to the question: "Why did the Justice Department fire eight U.S. attorneys?"

Or maybe it's more that they just didn't "deem it important" at the time.

Funny thing, though. They didn't deem it important when preparing for testimony, but that didn't stop Justice Department official William Moschella from telling the House Judiciary subcommittee under oath that the White House was not consulted on the firings until the end of the process. I guess he just assumed?

Looks like Sampson doesn't like playing the fall guy.

Update: A revised statement drops the idea that DoJ officials didn't "deem" the White House role "important," and whereas before Sampson was regretting his inability to concoct an "effective politcal response" to the charges of impropriety, the word "political" has disappeared. After all, it's politics that got the DoJ into this mess.

As TPM Reader HR puts it: "Did someone go over his original release with a sharp blue pencil?"

U.S. Attorneys

White House to Dems: No Documents for You This Week

Paul Kiel | March 16, 2007, 4:56PM

From a release just out from House Judicary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI):

"The White House Counsel's office advised us this afternoon that the White House would not be providing documents to the Committee, or providing the White House's position with respect to the Committee securing the testimony of White House officials today. This is contrary to earlier expectations that the Committee would receive these answers and documents today and is, therefore, very disappointing. The Counsel's office has assured me that they will continue to work in good faith to get answers to those questions by early next week.

Despite those assurances and my continued hope that the White House will resolve these questions in a cooperative fashion, the Committee must take steps to ensure that we are not being stonewalled or slow walked on this matter. I will schedule a vote to issue subpoenas next week for the documents and officials we need to talk to. Allegations that our criminal justice system has been undermined by partisan politics and that the Congress was deceived about these activities are among the most serious this Congress will consider and we expect immediate answers."

From Subcommittee Chair Linda Sanchez (D-CA):

"The White House is playing a dangerous game of chicken. The House Judiciary Committee has been operating in good faith to get to the bottom of this growing scandal, and Chairman Conyers has shown particular restraint in working towards voluntary cooperation."

A vote will be scheduled next week on issuing subpoenas to Karl Rove, Rove's deputy Scott Jennings, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, Deputy Counsel William Kelley, and possibly others.

Update: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says, “It is disappointing that the White House is not coming forward with their plan to bring witnesses to testify. We hope that this delay is not a signal they will not cooperate.”

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

Snow: Loyalty to Bush Means "To Do Our Jobs"

Paul Kiel | March 16, 2007, 3:40PM

From today's press briefing:

Q: Tony, you had said that politics and loyalty didn't play a part in this.

Snow: Yes, and let me... you know, there's been a lot of conversation about loyalty. So let me -- I don't want to -- we'll just begin with a caveat: I do not know precisely what Kyle Sampson had in mind when he used the term.

But let me tell you how the term applies in this White House, which is that certainly we all serve at the pleasure of the president. We're loyal to the president in that sense. But the president's charge to each one of us is to do our jobs -- to do our jobs, to perform the public trust.

That also means to follow the principles and the priorities of the administration.

When it comes to the administration of justice, the president lays down broad guidelines, when it comes to U.S. attorneys, broad prosecutorial guidelines. Those guidelines may shift from district to district. There are 93 around that country that have different priorities.

But if somebody has difficulty, or somebody decides, for reasons of conscience or whatever, that they disagree with the key priority, whether it be like something like the death penalty or pornography statutes or whatever, that's certainly a suitable basis for review.

But, again, the most important principle here is people do serve at the pleasure of the president.

It seems that Snow's polishing up his riff on loyalty, first auditioned during this morning's gaggle.

Update: More below....

Read more »

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.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Snow: "It's Performance"

Paul Kiel | March 16, 2007, 2:02PM

See Tony spin the email by Kyle Sampson released yesterday. Sampson wrote in the email, to refresh your memory that "80-85 percent [of the United States attorneys], I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc."

From this morning's press gaggle:

QUESTION: Tony, you addressed this yesterday, the question about loyalty and how much that factors in ... into the role U.S. attorneys play. You know, these emails are coming out, and this other one about their Bushies, et cetera. What is the role of loyalty in how U.S. attorneys perform?

SNOW: Again, if you want to take a look ... let's first go back to that particular memo, because in the sentence before it says, "This is an operational matter. We'd like to replace 15 to 20 percent of the current U.S. attorneys, the underperforming ones." No mention of political loyalty; it's performance. So I think ...

QUESTION: But the next line says ...

QUESTION: Excuse me ...

SNOW: Then it says, "This is a rough guess. We might want to consider doing performance evaluations after Judge comes on board. The vast majority of U.S. attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, loyal Bushies," et cetera. I mean, I don't see in there that there is political loyalty tests. It's a characterization.

QUESTION: Oh, come on. That seems to define a good job as political loyalty ... the loyal Bushies.

SNOW: No, I don't think so. It talked about underperforming, and then it talks about the history of these things. If you take a look ... what you're trying to do is cherry-pick your phrase. But the fact is ...

QUESTION: You've never done that, have you?

SNOW: What I'm trying to do is accentuate the key phrases.

QUESTION: And we appreciate it.

SNOW: But I don't want to start serving as the witness, the “what Kyle Sampson intended to mean” with that memo. So I'm -afraid ... I'm going to let him ... but the President's view is, you need U.S. attorneys ... the job of a U.S. attorney is to uphold law. And you have people who are going to be effective in that and who are going to serve the public interest.

Snow refused to say whether certain White House officials will testify to Congress, saying that's up to White House Counsel Fred Fielding.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Senate Committee Requests Testimony of Rove Aide

Paul Kiel | March 16, 2007, 1:32PM

The list of White House officials that Congress wants to hear from continues to lengthen.

Last night, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Karl Rove's deputy Scott Jennings, the Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Political Affairs, asking him to appear before the committee "for interviews, depositions, or hearing testimony." The emails show Jennings right in the thick of the efforts to get Rove's former aide Scott Jennings installed as the U.S. attorney -- and to avoid the unnecessary hurdle of senate confirmation. The committee's already asked to hear from Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and deputy White House counsel William Kelley.

The committee also sent a letter asking to hear from Justice Department official William Moschella. Moschella, McClatchy reported earlier this week, claims responsibility for having pushed a measure slipped into the Patriot Act Reauthorization in late 2005 that made it possible for the attorney general to appoint interim U.S. attorneys for indefinite terms without Senate confirmation. Moschella claims that he advocated the change "without the knowledge or coordination of his
superiors at the Justice Department or anyone at the White House."

Yesterday, the Senate committee authorized issuing subpoenas for Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff who quit this week, Michael Elston, top aide to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, Associate Attorney General Bill Mercer, Monica Goodling, Gonzales' senior counsel and White House liaison, and Mike Battle, the departing director of the office that oversees all 93 U.S. attorneys.

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.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Behold! TPM's U.S. Attorney Scandal Timeline

Paul Kiel | March 16, 2007, 10:22AM

You can see it right here.

As with all our timelines, it's a work in progress, so suggestions and corrections are welcome -- send an email to talk(at)talkingpointsmemo.com with the subject line "timeline."

I've put a permanent link to the timeline on the right sidebar for those who want to refer back to it in the future.

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 16, 2007, 9:24AM

Now that the morning papers have taken a shot interpreting the email released late yesterday, let's take another look.

Shortly after the email's release, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters that the email does not show that the idea of firing certain or all U.S. attorneys began with Karl Rove. And, admittedly, the email backs her up. Of course, it certainly doesn't show that Rove didn't come up with the scheme, either.

The January 9th, 2005 email (subject line: "Re: Question from Karl Rove"), in which Justice Department official Kyle Sampson brainstorms on what to do about the U.S. attorneys, begins with "Judge and I discussed briefly a couple of weeks ago." He then goes on to say, “As an operational matter we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current U.S. attorneys — underperforming ones," the "we" there being Sampson and Alberto Gonzales (who is called "Judge" because he was once a a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas).

That puts Sampson and Gonzales discussing the idea way back in December, 2004. (A DoJ spokesperson said in a statement yesterday that Gonzales "has no recollection" of that discussion.)

Perino stuck to the line yesterday that the whole idea of firings all 93 U.S. attorneys started with White House counsel Harriet Miers. Perino says that "Karl Rove has a recollection of hearing it from Harriet, and thinking it was a bad idea. There is nothing in this e-mail that changes that.... [It] does not contradict nor is it inconsistent with what we have said."

Now, Miers didn't even take over as White House counsel until early February, 2005. But Perino said that in the months between her being named to the spot (November, 2004) and actually starting work, "she would have been thinking about transition issues." But Perino admits that it's "not clear when the idea first originates, but the bottom line is, the idea is never pursued."

But let's step back here for a moment.

Whether the idea of firing all the sitting U.S. attorneys was originally Miers' or Rove's brainchild or not is mostly a red herring at this point. Whatever the original seed of the purge, it clearly became an opportunity for the administration to push out federal prosecutors who were not "loyal Bushies." That's the idea that really matters. And Rove was involved in that effort from its first steps.

U.S. Attorneys

Email: Most USAs Are "Loyal Bushies"

Paul Kiel | March 15, 2007, 6:53PM

As reported earlier on ABC News, here is the email that shows that Karl Rove was involved in the whole U.S. attorney purge scheme from the beginning of 2005.* It was released this evening by the Justice Department.

In the email, which has the subject line "Re: Question from Karl Rove," Kyle Sampson, who was then at the Justice Department, discusses with then-deputy White House Counsel David Leitch the idea of replacing "15-20 percent of the current U.S. Attorneys," because "80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc."

"[I]f Karl thinks there would be policitical will to do it, then so do I," Sampson concludes.

Sampson's email was in response to Leitch's relaying of Rove's query about how the administration would handle the U.S. Attorneys. As paraphrased by Colin Newman, a legal aide in the White House counsel's office, Rove asked "how we planned to proceed regarding US Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc."

Update: The Justice Department has also released a statement from DoJ spokesperson Tasia Scolinos:

"The Attorney General has no recollection of any plan or discussion to replace U.S. Attorneys while he was still White House Counsel. The period of time referred to in the email was during the weeks he was preparing for his confirmation hearing, January 6th, 2005, and his focus was on that. Of course, discussions of changes in Presidential appointees would have been appropriate and normal White House exchanges in the days and months after the election as the White House was considering different personnel changes Administration wide."

Update: Of course, the email ought to be considered in light of the fact that it was written just before Gonzales' confirmation hearings to be the attorney general, and that Sampson frames the solution in terms of how Gonzales would deal with it. Sampson writes that "we might want to consider doing performance evaluations after Judge comes on board," referring to Gonzales becoming the AG.

Update: To answer those reader queries about whether Gonzales is the "Judge" Sampson refers to in the email -- Gonzales was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas before moving to D.C. to become Bush's White House counsel.

*Update: This first sentence originally read, "...here is the email that shows that the whole U.S. attorney purge scheme originated with Karl Rove," which overstated what the email shows.

U.S. Attorneys

ABC: Rove Suggested Firing All U.S. Attorneys

Paul Kiel | March 15, 2007, 5:08PM

From ABC:

New unreleased e-mails from top administration officials show the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was raised by White House adviser Karl Rove in early January 2005, indicating Rove was more involved in the plan than previously acknowledged by the White House....

White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters Tuesday that Miers had suggesting firing all 93 and that it was "her idea only." Snow said Miers' idea was quickly rejected by the Department of Justice.

However, Miers was Bush's staff secretary at that time in January 2005. She did not become White House counsel for another month, after Gonzales left to become attorney general.

The latest e-mails show that Gonzales and Rove both were involved in the discussion, and neither rejected it out of hand.

U.S. Attorneys

Rove: We Left Prosecutors Working on "Important Investigations"

Paul Kiel | March 15, 2007, 4:40PM

Karl Rove broached the topic of U.S. Attorneys again today. And, as before, it was a battery of flat-out lies, half truths and distortions. Long after Alberto Gonzales backed off his line that the firings are an "overblown personnel matter," Rove's still flogging the same line that people are just "playing politics" with this.

But I want to focus in on one statement in particular. Depending on how you read it, it's either flagrantly tone deaf or a middle finger to those chasing this story:

When we came in in 2001, we reviewed all 93 U.S. Attorneys and over the course of time, replaced virtually all of them with appointees by the president… not all: several appointees were involved in high profile cases, important investigations, and as a result, even though they were appointees of the previous administration, we left them in office for, in some instances, years.

San Diego's Carol Lam was, of course, in the middle of one of the highest profile, important investigations that a United States attorney has undertaken in recent memory when she was fired last December. The suspicion around her firing is what has driven the scandal from the beginning.

But just to show that Lam isn't far from Rove's mind, he goes on to repeat his lie that Lam was ordered to make immigration cases a priority in her office and refused.

U.S. Attorneys

Ousted U.S.A.: We Need A Special Prosecutor

Paul Kiel | March 15, 2007, 4:05PM

The former U.S. Attorney for Seattle John McKay, speaking on Seattle's KUOW earlier today, called for an investigation of the Justice Department's handling of the firings.

McKay said that at very least, there should be an investigation by the DoJ's Inspector General, but if that was opposed, a special prosecutor should be appointed:

I think that means the Inspector General of the Justice Department conducting an investigation, separate from the management of the department because it appears that they were involved at the highest level – including the Attorney General. The Inspector General should report, and if that isn’t done appropriately, there should be a special prosecutor.

McKay said that he wasn't looking to get his job back, but that he thought it was "important for the American public in restoring their confidence in the Justice Department to disavow what now looks like a political process, absolutely unacceptable political process."

U.S. Attorneys

Snow: "How Would You Define 'Political Decision-Making'?

Paul Kiel | March 15, 2007, 3:23PM

Tony Snow fielded more questions on the U.S. Attorney firings during the White House press briefing this afternoon.

He seemed to get caught on one question in particular:

Q The President said, "I've heard those allegations about political decision-making; it's just not true." How can he say that when he hasn't seen all the emails, emails continue to come out, and of those that have already come out, some of them clearly seem to show that at some level, at least, there was political decision-making?

MR. SNOW: I'm not -- how would you define "political decision-making"?

Q Well, decision-making that involves politics.

Q How would you define it, Tony?

MR. SNOW: Well, it's a loaded term. I mean, I think what the President -- what the President is saying is that there is no -- that in evaluating U.S. attorneys, this is based on performance. And the important thing to do -- and furthermore, the Department of Justice made recommendations that the President has accepted. Also keep in mind, the President has the authority to remove people and put other folks in the job. That is at his discretion. That's presidential power.

Q But is he saying that he was so in the loop, then, that he definitely knew there was nothing political, or was he, in fact, removed, as you indicated this morning?

MR. SNOW: No, I think -- again, what the President has -- the Department of Justice has made recommendations, they've been approved. And it's pretty clear that these things are based on performance and not on sort of attempts to do political retaliation, if you will.

Yeah, "pretty clear."

Update: There was also this:

Q Do you think the White House made any mistakes in this whole matter of the discussions over the firings? And particular, I'm wondering if Attorney General Gonzales was making statements to members of Congress, beginning in January, that later proved to be not exactly in line with the facts, weren't people in the White House aware of that?

MR. SNOW: I'm not going to get into extensive sort of fact witnessing....

U.S. Attorneys

U.S. Attorney Bill Coming up Tuesday

Paul Kiel | March 15, 2007, 3:12PM

From The Hill:

The full Senate will vote next Tuesday on whether to reverse its actions from last year and bring interim U.S. attorney appointments back to the federal courts, according to a deal announced Thursday morning by party leaders.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) has said that he won't object to bringing up the bill, since he'll have the opportunity to offer an amendment.

U.S. Attorneys

CREW: White House Breaking Records Law?

Paul Kiel | March 15, 2007, 2:24PM

A number of readers have pointed out that Karl Rove's deputy at the White House, Scott Jennings, used an outside domain, gwb43.com, for his emails. The domain, it turns out, is owned by the Republican National Committee.

Now Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has sent a letter to House government reform committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) requesting an investigation of whether the White House has been violating the Presidential Records Act -- in an attempt to keep certain correspondence away from prying eyes.

Jennings use of the RNC's email "raises serious questions about whether the White House was trying to deliberately evade its responsibilities under the PRA, which directs the president to take all necessary steps to maintain presidential records to provide a full accounting of all activities during his tenure," says CREW.

And there's evidence that Jennings' use of an outside domain was a pattern in Rove's office. CREW points out that Karl Rove's former assistant Susan Ralston also frequently used outside domains to communicate to her old boss, Jack Abramoff.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that House Democrats are also planning on investigating the White House's use of outside domains for correspondence. Namely:

Democratic congressional aides said they will investigate whether using the private address for government business violated laws against using taxpayer resources for political work or signaled that White House officials considered the firing of U.S. attorneys to be primarily a political issue. Jennings did not return a call to his office seeking a comment.

An RNC spokeswoman told the Post that "As a matter of course, the RNC provides server space and equipment to certain White House personnel in order to assist them with their political efforts."

But the question here is whether there is any line between "political efforts" and official duties in the Bush White House.

U.S. Attorneys

Snow: "There Are A Lot of Things Going on" at The DoJ

Paul Kiel | March 15, 2007, 12:22PM

It was a rather brutal press gaggle for Tony Snow this morning. Some highlights:

Q: The attorney general said mistakes were made in the Patriot Act, mistakes were made in the prosecutors, so how many mistakes...

SNOW: There are a lot of things going on at the Department of Justice, and the president has confidence in his attorney general....

Q: Anybody calling Senator Sununu? What's your direct response to him?

SNOW: We're disappointed.

My personal highlight is Snow dismissing the false testimony given to Congress by Justice Department officials as "testimony on the Hill where people weren't fully briefed on email trails and so on.."

Much more below the fold....

Update: Another highlight:

Q: Tony, in the email traffic, loyalty came down as a criteria for employment as a US attorney. Does the president believe that loyalty to him and his administration is an important criteria?

SNOW: No, the criteria -- and I don't want to be a fact witness. I think you have to go back and take a look at the emails. I'm not sure that the characterization is accurate, but you're going to have to ask the person who wrote the email --- and that would be Kyle Sampson -- what he meant by it.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Senate Panel OKs Subpoenas for DoJ Officials, Waits on White House

Paul Kiel | March 15, 2007, 11:13AM

From the AP:

The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday cleared the way for subpoenas compelling five Justice Department officials and six of the federal prosecutors they fired to tell the story of a purge of U.S. attorneys that has prompted demands for the ouster of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The voice vote to authorize the panel to issue subpoenas amounts to insurance against the possibility that Gonzales could retract his permission to let the aides testify voluntarily, or impose strict conditions.

The committee also postponed for a week a vote on whether to authorize subpoenas for
President Bush's top aides who were involved in the eight firings, including political adviser Karl Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and deputy White House Counsel William K. Kelley.

Update: Why did the committee hold off on subpoenas to the White House? Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says "It is regrettable that members of the minority blocked subpoenas for some of the White House players. They should be joining in our efforts to get to the bottom of this.”

Update: And here's Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT):

“We have asked for Administration officials and now former officials to cooperate with the Committee, and I hope that they will. If they cooperate, we will not need to issue subpoenas. But we did not start to get the truth from the Department or the Administration until we put subpoena authorizations on the Committee’s agenda... Through the Committee’s oversight work so far, we now know some of the answers to many questions we have been asking, and the answers are not good. ”

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.

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 15, 2007, 8:58AM

So what's next? Culled from the papers this morning, here's a roundup of where the attorney purge scandal is headed these next couple of days.

Alberto Gonzales, in an increasingly desperate attempt to keep his job, has said that he'll meet with members of Congress sometime this week to explain himself. It's unclear when or where that will be.

Meanwhile, both the House and Senate judiciary committees are pressing forward with their investigations.

A small group of lawmakers from both the House and Senate met with White House counsel Fred Fielding yesterday concerning their request for documents and to interview White House officials, including Karl Rove. Fielding, apparently, told them he'll get back to them Friday after speaking with the president. At issue, of course, is whether the White House will assert executive privilege. That would mean war.

According to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who was at the meeting, Fielding "said that he wanted to make this work because he had a reputation, his own reputation, to uphold.”

But though the committees have gone out of their way to be amicable, that doesn't mean they'll be sitting on their hands waiting for an answer from the White House.

As Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) put it: “Frankly, I don’t care whether Fielding says he’s going to allow people or not. We’ll subpoena the people we want.... If they want to defy the subpoena, then you get into a stonewall situation I suspect they don’t want to have.”

And so this morning, the Senate committee will vote on whether to issue subpoenas to Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, and William Kelley, a former top aide to Miers.

We'll know tomorrow, it seems, whether they'll have to use them.

U.S. Attorneys

GOPer: "Congress Was Lied To"

Paul Kiel | March 15, 2007, 8:33AM

I don't think this counts as an outright call for resignation -- put it in the growing number of Republican "I'm on my last nerve" statements -- but at least it's straightforward:

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa said Wednesday he was "outraged" that executive branch officials recently gave a congressional hearing misleading and inaccurate testimony based on information that both the Department of Justice and the White House knew to be untrue.

"We can soft-pedal it a lot of ways, but Congress was lied to," Issa, R-Vista, said in a Wednesday phone interview from his Washington office....

He said that if Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had any role in false information being given to Congress, "he should not be able to continue in his job."

U.S. Attorneys

The Justice Department Needs to Learn to Share

Paul Kiel | March 14, 2007, 6:24PM

Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson was supposedly fired because he's not a good communicator -- namely, he failed to tell others at the Justice Department that he had been consulting the White House for nearly two years about the firing of U.S. attorneys before it happened. Because Sampson didn't spread the word, the story goes, Justice Department officials gave false information to Congress. But it's apparent that Sampson wasn't the only one with knowledge of his contacts with the White House.

As Gonzales put it yesterday, "the mistake that occurred here was that information that [Sampson] had was not shared with individuals within the department who was [sic] then going to be providing testimony and information to the Congress."

Setting aside for the moment the implication that Sampson lied to the officials who then gave false information to Congress, let's look at one of those instances of false information.

In late February, Richard Hertling, the acting Assistant Attorney General, wrote a letter to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in which he claimed that the "Department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint [Karl Rove's former aide Timothy] Griffin."

Sampson, meanwhile, wrote in an email in December that getting Tim Griffin appointed was "important to Harriet, Karl, etc." And emails from last summer show that Rove's deputy was intimately involved in getting Griffin installed as the U.S. attorney for Arkansas.

So maybe Hertling didn't ask Sampson (the man at the department supposedly in charge of the purge) or Sampson lied to him.

But there's somebody else who knew: Monica Goodling, the Justice Department's liaison to the White House.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Schumer's Five Questions

Paul Kiel | March 14, 2007, 4:30PM

I can think of about a hundred more, but it's a good start.

Today, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sent a letter to President Bush, posing five questions about the administration's mass firings of federal prosecutors:

1. In an email to the White House, Mr. Sampson refers to a “problem” with Carol Lam. What was this “problem” and was Lam’s firing motivated by her investigation into former Congressmen Randy Cunningham and Representative Jerry Lewis?

a. Gonzales’ chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, contacted William Kelley, Deputy Counsel to the President, on replacing Carol Lam, stating, “[t]he real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires.”

b. Mr. Sampson’s email was sent the same day that the Los Angeles Times had broken the news that Ms. Lam’s investigation of former Congressman Randy Cunningham (R-CA) had expanded to include Representative Jerry Lewis (R-CA).

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Depends on What You Mean by "Weak"

Paul Kiel | March 14, 2007, 4:04PM

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey has been a kind of side character in the purge scandal. Comey, who left the Justice Department in 2005, may best be known as the guy who appointed Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate the Plame affair.

It seems pretty apparent that if he were still in charge, things would have been different.

U.S. News reports that Comey, when he was still with the department (he left in August of 2005), produced his own list of "weak U.S. attorneys" who, in his opinion, were underperforming.

Only, it was, well, different:

...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."

As we pointed out before, Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson had Ryan on his list as a "strong" U.S. attorney. In other words, not only was he not to be fired, he was to be commended.

What accounts for the discrepancy? Maybe it had something to do wtih the criteria. A "strong" U.S. attorney to Sampson, remember, was one who had "exhibited loyalty to the President and Attorney General."

Comey also had a particularly strong difference of opinion on New Mexico's David Iglesias, whom the Justice Department insists was fired for "performance related" concerns. He told The Washington Post last month that Iglesias "was one of our finest and someone I had a lot of confidence in as deputy attorney general."

Update: And it seems especially worth pointing out that San Diego's Carol Lam didn't make Comey's list at all.

U.S. Attorneys

Bush on the Purge: "I'm Frankly Not Happy"

Paul Kiel | March 14, 2007, 1:42PM

Bush commented this afternoon on his administration's mass firing of federal prosecutors:

Update: This clip only comprises one half of Bush's remarks today -- we'll have the rest up shortly.

Update: Here it is:

Update: Transcript below.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Lam Was on DoJ Hit List before Cunningham Case

Paul Kiel | March 14, 2007, 12:20PM

In March of 2005, Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff sent White House counsel Harriet Miers a list rating U.S. attorneys.

Certain prosecutors were rated “strong U.S. Attorneys who have produced, managed well, and exhibited loyalty to the President and Attorney General," others had not "distinguished themselves either positively or negatively, and others Sampson “recommend[ed] removing" -- those were “weak U.S. Attorneys who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration initiatives.”

Carol Lam was one of the prosecutors Sampson recommended removing.

This was, of course, a full three months before the Duke Cunningham scandal came to light. The San Diego Union-Tribune broke the story on June 12, 2005.* So does that mean that Lam really was removed for other reasons?

Well, Sampson also wrote this list a number of months before Republicans started raising complaints about Lam's handling of border cases. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who led the charge against Lam, began publicly raising concerns in the summer of 2005.*

And while the list makes clear that Lam, one way or another, got on Sampson's hit list, it's very unclear whether that was because of some deficiency in performance.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Senate Committee Requests White House Interviews

Paul Kiel | March 14, 2007, 11:54AM

The Senate Judiciary Committee sent five letters late yesterday asking White House Counsel Harriet Miers, her deputy White House counsel William Kelley and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove to cooperate with the committee’s investigation into the mass firings of US attorneys.

"We would like to work out a process for you to make yourself available to the Committee for interviews, depositions, or hearing testimony, on a voluntary basis, and to produce documents in your possession, control, or custody related to our investigation," the letters, signed by Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-PA), read. "We fully expect that we will be able to devise a convenient arrangement."

In a White House briefing yesterday, White House counselor Dan Bartlett said, "I find it highly unlikely that a member of the White House staff would testify publicly to these matters, but that doesn't mean we won't find other ways to try to share that information."

The House Judiciary Committee has also requested to speak with Kelley, Rove, and Miers.

The committee also sent letters to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House Counsel Fred Fielding requesting documents relating to the investigation.

U.S. Attorneys

Mike Allen on Message: Pick and Stick

Paul Kiel | March 14, 2007, 10:57AM

I knew there was a moral to this story.

Here's the Politico's Mike Allen on MSNBC last night discussing the Justice Department's various (many false) explanations for why the administration fired a group of federal prosecutors.

"The problem is," Allen said, "you have to pick something you can say that you can stick to."

I think that's his way of saying that you should tell the truth?

U.S. Attorneys

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 14, 2007, 8:53AM

Yesterday, White House counselor Dan Bartlett got out in front of the cameras to say that President Bush had "all the confidence in the world" in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

But, as The New York Times reports, there are murmur in high places:

[Gonzales'] appearance underscored what two Republicans close to the Bush administration described as a growing rift between the White House and the attorney general....

The two Republicans, who spoke anonymously so they could share private conversations with senior White House officials, said top aides to Mr. Bush, including Fred F. Fielding, the new White House counsel, were concerned that the controversy had so damaged Mr. Gonzales’s credibility that he would be unable to advance the White House agenda on national security matters, including terrorism prosecutions.

“I really think there’s a serious estrangement between the White House and Alberto now,” one of the Republicans said....

....inside the White House, aides to the president, including Mr. Rove and Joshua B. Bolten, the chief of staff, were said to be increasingly concerned that the controversy could damage Mr. Bush.

“They’re taking it seriously,” said the other of the two Republicans who spoke about the White House’s relationship with Mr. Gonzales. “I think Rove and Bolten believe there is the potential for erosion of the president’s credibility on this issue.”

As the Times and other papers note, no Republicans have yet called for Gonzales' resignation, although a number of high-profile figures, like Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), who heads up the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have said that they're on their last nerve.

U.S. Attorneys

Rove Deputy Worked to Get Former Aide Spot

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 5:15PM

Emails in August of 2006 show that Karl Rove's deputy was intimately involved in getting Tim Griffin, who himself used to be an aide to Rove, installed as the federal prosecutor in eastern Arkansas.

An email from Scott Jennings, Rove's deputy as the Deputy Political Director at the White House, shows that Jennings was in close contact with Grfffin, even working out the logistics of getting Griffin appointed. The email also shows that then-U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins cooperated in ushering Griffin in.

"Tim said he got a call from Bud offering this idea," Jennings wrote to Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson in late August, "that Tim come on board as a special [assistant U.S. attorney] while Bud finalizes his private sector plans. That would alleviate pressure/implication that Tim forced Bud out. Any thoughts on that?"

"I think it's a great idea," Sampson responded.

The Justice Department made Griffin a special assistant USA in Arkansas the next month. Finally, in December, Griffin was made the U.S. attorney.

The Justice Department told Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) last month that Rove had "no role" in Griffin's appointment.

U.S. Attorneys

Ensign: Still Angry

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 4:18PM

In a press conference this afternoon, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) continued to express exasperation at the Justice Department's firing of his nominee, U.S. Attorney for Nevada, Daniel Bogden.

He said that the attorney general "completely mishandled" the replacement of the prosecutors. But should he resign? Well...

QUESTION: Should the attorney general step down?

ENSIGN: Mistakes were made and changes need to be made in processes. Those changes are being made. And I believe that if we can come out of this with a better system that America will be better off for that.

And so the attorney general is taking steps. They have admitted the mistake to me that they made as far as the process was concerned. And as long as they are taking those steps and as long as folks follow through with what they said, I think that I will be satisfied.

QUESTION: It sounds as if you believe that the deputy attorney general (OFF-MIKE) in January either accidentally or intentionally mislead.

ENSIGN: The deputy attorney general -- the conversations that I had -- he was either ill-informed of the whole process or intentionally misled, one of the two....

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) do you continue to have confidence in Attorney General Gonzales' ability to be in charge over this?

ENSIGN: I want to see how the attorney general leads the Justice Department in this time of crisis. He is presented with a very difficult challenge now.

I want to see if he's wiling to make the changes that are necessary at the Department of Justice because things have been handled poorly up to this point.

U.S. Attorneys

DoJ Claimed "No Role" in Rove Aide's Hiring

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 3:01PM

Now that Alberto Gonzales has admitted that the Justice Department didn't give accurate information to Congress, it's worth reviewing what they said. Here's an example.

In late February, Richard Hertling, the acting Assitant Attorney General, wrote a letter to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in which he claimed that the "Department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint [Karl Rove's former aide Timothy] Griffin."

Unfortunately, for the Justice Department, however, in an email outlining the media strategy for defending Griffin's appointment, Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson wrote that getting Tim Griffin appointed was "important to Harriet, Karl, etc." You can read the email here.

Update: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had a pretty complete rundown of the false statements made by Justice Department officials to Congress and the press. Transcript below...

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Gonzales Staffer Was "Ready Replacement" for Rove

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 2:52PM

Some background on Kyle Sampson, the now former chief of staff to Alberto Gonzales whom you'd never heard of before today.

From Al Kamen's "In The Loop" column on October 31, 2005, when the Valerie Plame scandal was raging:

Waiting in the Wings

Speaking of Karl Rove , there had been much concern last week that he also might have to resign as a result of Fitzgerald's probe. The loss of Karl's familiar presence -- he's the last of the original "Iron Triangle" of Bush's Texas advisers still in the White House -- would have unsettled many younger aides.

Fortunately, there's a ready replacement: D. Kyle Sampson , chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and formerly in the White House counsel's office. Maybe not exactly the same as Karl but . . .

Ed. Note: Thanks to TPM Reader MV.

Update: A little more background on Sampson, who graduated from BYU in 1993 and went on to University of Chicago Law School, from the LA Times this morning:

Sampson, a former counsel to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) on the Senate Judiciary Committee, worked as deputy White House counsel for two years under Gonzales starting in 2001.

He joined the Justice Department in 2003 as a counselor to Ashcroft, and stayed on when Gonzales became attorney general. He became chief of staff in September 2005.

Later Update: As some have pointed out in comments, The New York Times ran a generally flattering profile of Sampson today.

Latest Update: We've just added the pictures to help a TPM Reader make her point: "just try to tell me that they weren't separated at birth."

U.S. Attorneys

Gonzales: I'm "Dismayed"

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 2:44PM

We just watched Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' press conference here. The gist: Gonzales said that he accepts responsibility for the "mistakes" made at the Justice Department... but argued that he is not "aware" of "all decisions" at the Justice Department.

He said that his chief of staff Kyle Sampson, now resigned, headed up the process for replacing the U.S. attorneys, and that Gonzales himself was "not involved in seeing any memos" or "any discussion of what was going on."

He professed to be "dismayed" that Justice Department officials had given false information to Congress, but blamed the problem on information not being "adquately shared within the Justice Department."

But no worry --- he'll get to the bottom of it all. Like any CEO would, he said, he'll make every effort to "assess accountability."

We'll put up a clip from the conference soon.

Update: An earlier version of this post incorrectly read, "was 'involved in seeing any memos" or "any discussion of what was going on.'"

Update: Some video:

Update: And a full transcript is below.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

CREW Calls for Special Prosecutor

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 1:52PM

From CREW:

CREW wants the immediate appointment of a Special Prosecutor to investigate potential criminal violations related to the recent dismissals of eight U.S. Attorneys. Recent revelations indicate that a top-ranking Department of Justice official knew that statements made by top Department officials were not true. Clearly, the Department of Justice cannot investigate itself and prosecute the misconduct of DOJ officials.

U.S. Attorneys

Gonzales Was Reference for Ousted Prosecutor

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 1:27PM

My, my. Less than a month before a Justice Department official told Congress that U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesisas was fired for performance concerns, the Attorney General's chief of staff told Iglesias that he could use Gonzales as a reference.

On January 10, Iglesias wrote to Kyle Sampson and asked if he could use Gonzales as a reference, since "I'll be resigning in the next month or so and am looking for a job."

Sampson responded later that day: "You can list the AG as a reference -- not a problem. Good luck!"

Read the email exchange here.

U.S. Attorneys

Doc Lists Attorneys "in The Process of Being Pushed Out"

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 1:07PM

See it for yourself, the September 13, 2006 email from Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, to Justice Department liaison to White House counsel Harriet Miers.

Fifteen minutes earlier, Sampson had sent the same email to the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, Monica Goodling, asking "Any corrections?" before sending it over.

In the email, Sampson outlines the "USAs We Now Should Consider Pushing Out." They were: Arizona's Paul Charlton, San Diego's Carol Lam, Western Michigan's Margaret Chiara, Nevada's Daniel Bogden, and Seattle's John McKay. All five were eventually fired. Arkansas' Bud Cummins had his own heading, "USA in the Process of Being Pushed Out."

In the summary portion of the email, Sampson lays out his recommendation to use a legal loophole to install replacements without Senate confirmation.

"I am only in favor of executing on a plan to push some USAs out if we really are ready and willing to put in the time necessary to select candidates and get them appointed -- It will be counterproductive to DOJ operations if we push USAs out and then don't have replacements ready to roll immediately. In addition, I strongly recommend that as a matter of administration, we utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make USA appointments.... we can give far less deference to home state senators and thereby get 1.) our preferred person appointed and 2.) do it far faster and more efficiently at less political costs to the White House."

Sampson added, intrigiuingly, that he had "one follow up item I would want to do over the phone."

U.S. Attorneys

What Rove Knew

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 12:23PM

One point that needs to be made about the flurry of revelations this morning.

The version of events reported by The Washington Post and New York Times has a rather minimal role for Karl Rove. An "associate" of Rove told the Times that he only "learned in November that the prosecutors were being replaced."

But that doesn't square with the facts. Bud Cummins, the former U.S. Attorney for Eastern Arkansas, was fired in June last year. And in September, Timothy Griffin, Rove's former aide, started work as a special assistant to Cummins.

That clearly was no coincidence.

That same month, Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson put together a short list of candidates to be fired. Cummins, he wrote in the email, was "in the process of being pushed out." At the same time, he advocated using a loophole in the law to install Griffin and the administration's other picks through 2008 without Senate confirmation.

And at whose urging was Griffin put in? In one of the emails to be released today, Sampson wrote that getting Griffin appointed was "important to Harriet, Karl, etc."

So it was "important" to Rove that Griffin be made a U.S. attorney and steps were taken in September to make sure that Griffin was indeed installed... but Rove didn't know anything about it until November?

U.S. Attorneys

Gonzales to Hold Press Conference

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 12:16PM

Just over the transom... as calls for his resignation get louder, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will be holding a press conference at the Department of Justice at 2:00 PM today.

U.S. Attorneys

Schumer: Gonzales Staffer "Will Not Become The Next Scooter Libby"

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 12:08PM

This morning, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) held a press conference to express their anger at the recent revelations from the Justice Department and White House.

In it, Schumer said that the resignation of Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson "does not take heat off the attorney general. In fact, it raises the temperature. Kyle Sampson will not become the next Scooter Libby, the next fall guy."

We've got the full transcript of the conference below...

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Conyers, Sanchez to Hold Presser at Noon

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 11:37AM

From the Justice Department to Congress to you.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA) will be holding a press conference at noon to address the next steps in their US Attorney investigation... and release the Department of Justice documents from today's Times and Post stories. We'll let you know as soon as they're available.

U.S. Attorneys

Dems React to White House Involvment in Purge

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 10:06AM

Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) will be holding a press conference at 10:45 today to discuss the latest revelations.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), meanwhile, is none too happy:

“The White House and the Attorney General have dodged Congress’s questions and ducked accountability as if they still were dealing with a rubberstamp Congress. They are discovering that those days are gone.

“I am outraged that the Attorney General was less than forthcoming with the Senate while under oath before the Judiciary Committee. It is deeply disturbing that this plan appears to have originated from high-ranking officials at the White House and executed in secret with a complicit Department of Justice.

“This is not how justice is served, nor is it how our system of checks and balances is designed to work. It is an abuse of power committed in secret to steer certain outcomes in our justice system, and then to dust over the tracks. The President of the United States and the Attorney General are responsible for setting the moral standard for this Administration. Apparently this matter does not bother them but it does bother me, and we will summon whoever we need in our hearings to get to the bottom of this.”

U.S. Attorneys

Appointing Former Aide Was "Important to Karl"

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 9:31AM

This deserves its own post:

The e-mails show that Rove was interested in the appointment of a former aide, Tim Griffin, as an Arkansas prosecutor. [Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle] Sampson wrote in one that "getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc."

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 13, 2007, 8:14AM

OK, there's a lot to sift through in the two stories out from The Washington Post and New York Times today, but let's just focus on the tick-tock of events outlined in the two stories.

So here's the storyline (and please save your expressions of disbelief until the end):

The idea to replace U.S. attorneys was first floated by White House counsel Harriet Miers in February 2005. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "rejected that idea as impractical and disruptive." And Karl Rove "vaguely recalls telling Miers that he also thought firing all 93 was ill-advised."

So in March 2005, a counselor to Gonzales, Kyle Sampson (who went on to become Gonzales' chief of staff in September 2005) sent an e-mail to Miers that ranked all 93 U.S. attorneys. Here's how the Post describes the breakdown:

Strong performers "exhibited loyalty" to the administration; low performers were "weak U.S. attorneys who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration initiatives, etc." A third group merited no opinion.

The Post doesn't mention it, but in December 2005, the administration, via Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter's (R-PA) chief counsel, slipped a provision into the Patriot Act reauthorization bill that made it possible to replace U.S. Attorneys permanently without Senate confirmation.

In January 2006, "Sampson sent to the White House the first list of seven candidates for dismissal, including four who were fired at year's end: [Michigan's Margaret] Chiara, [Arkansas' Bud] Cummins, [San Diego's Carol] Lam and [San Francisco's Kevin] Ryan. The list also recommended Griffin and other replacements, most of whom were edited from documents viewed by The Post."

In March, the Patriot reauthorization bill finally passed Congress and was signed into law.

In June, U.S. Attorney for Arkansas' Eastern District Bud Cummins gets a call asking him to resign.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Schumer: Let's Hear from Karl

Paul Kiel | March 12, 2007, 1:15PM

In light of recent revelations, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) thinks the Senate Judiciary Committee ought to hear from Karl Rove. And today, he asked the committee to call on Rove to testify.

He explained in a statement:

“The more we learn, the more it seems that people at high levels in the White House have been involved in the U.S. Attorney purge... Recent disclosures reveal that Rove talked to the NM State Party Chair Allen Weh before any public announcement of the firing was made and that Rove talked about Mr. Igleisas to the Attorney General and the White House Counsel. While the White House states not incorrectly that someone in Karl Rove’s position might get complaints about U.S. Attorneys, it is almost unheard of for a U.S. Attorney to be fired shortly after such discussions occur, when that US Attorney had received highly favorable reviews and ratings.”

The House Judiciary Committee has also declared a desire to hear from Rove.

U.S. Attorneys

GOP Sen. to Block Attorney Bill?

Paul Kiel | March 12, 2007, 11:08AM

Last Thursday, the administration abruptly dropped its opposition to a bill that would require Senate confirmation for U.S. attorney replacements. But Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) "still intends to object," Roll Call reports (sub. req.).

Just how disruptive that objection will be is up to Kyl. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) intends to bring the legislation up for a vote "as quickly as possible," his spokesman tells Roll Call. By the rules of the Senate, which give individual senators considerable power to stymie legislation, Kyl could gum up the works with his objection, or he could simply sound his disapproval and let the bill come up for a vote.

Kyl has already blocked the bill, authored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), once. Republicans blocked it a second time when Feinstein tried to attach it as an amendment to another bill.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Gonzales: "What Else Do You Want Us To Do?"

Paul Kiel | March 11, 2007, 1:51PM

From The Washington Post:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales met privately with top members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday to offer an olive branch, but he did not seem too happy about it.

Gonzales had agreed to let Congress limit his powers and interview Justice Department officials as part of an escalating battle over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. He knew that another scandal on FBI abuses was about to break and that some GOP lawmakers were hinting that he was in over his head.

"What else do you want us to do?" the normally taciturn Gonzales asked in exasperation, according to several officials with knowledge of the meeting.

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

Dem Rep: Hastings Should "Absolutely" Be Investigated

Paul Kiel | March 10, 2007, 12:03PM

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), speaking on a Washington NPR affiliate, KUOW, said yesterday that he "absolutely" supports an ethics investigation of Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), the ranking member of the House ethics committee. "I think that whole situation is just incredibly troubling," he said, "the line was clearly crossed."

Smith was referring, of course, to Hastings' former chief of staff Ed Cassidy's call to then-U.S. Attorney John McKay shortly after the 2004 election. McKay testifed last Tuesday that he was "concerned and dismayed" by the call, during which Cassidy asked him whether his office was investigating allegations of Democratic voter fraud in the gubernatorial election, which the Democrat had very narrowly won.

But as we pointed out earlier this week, it's a relatively meaningless gesture for a member of the House to express support for an ethics investigation unless he or she actually follows through and files a complaint -- refers the complaint against Hastings from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Will Smith do that?

U.S. Attorneys

Senate Committee to Interview DoJ Officials

Paul Kiel | March 10, 2007, 11:23AM

From The Washington Post:

[Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales gave in to Democratic demands that he allow five of his top aides to be interviewed by staff members from the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of its investigation into the motives behind the dismissals. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said yesterday that those interviews will begin within two weeks.

The House Judiciary Committee also wants to hear from those same officials -- it's still unclear when or in what form that will happen, though.

The Post also has a good behind the scenes look at what Gonzales' week has been like:

Sen. John Ensign (Nev.) has emerged as perhaps Gonzales's toughest GOP critic in Congress. He remains furious that his state's U.S. attorney, Daniel Bogden, was dismissed for no apparent reason other than a desire, expressed in congressional testimony by a Justice aide, for "new blood."

Ensign summoned Gonzales to his Senate office on Thursday to discuss the matter, and Gonzales also dispatched Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty to talk with Ensign, according to aides.

U.S. Attorneys

Gonzales: Things "Should Have Been Done Better"

Paul Kiel | March 9, 2007, 5:03PM

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales took questions following his speech before the International Association of Privacy Professionals today, and a couple touched on the prosecutor purge issue. Clearly, the venom is gone:

QUESTION: Eric Lipton from the New York Times. A number of Republican senators expressed strong dissatisfaction with the way that the dismissal of the prosecutors was handled. Some even suggested that may it be appropriate that he won't be around to practice that long as Attorney General. Could you just reiterate, I mean, was that mismanaged? Was it your fault? And is there any consideration of you actually leaving as Attorney General?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Well, hopefully one day I will leave and go back to Texas. That's my sincere hope. But listen. We are working with the Congress to provide information about what happened here. I've already indicated that there were things that were done in connection with these decisions that could have been and should have been done better. I want to reassure the American people that we in no way have made decisions to politicize these offices.

These offices are very, very important, the work of these offices to the work of the Department of Justice. And so we will continue to work with the Congress and provide information as they request it....

QUESTION: You just said on the U.S. Attorneys that there were things here that could have been and should have been done better. Specifically, what could have been and should have been done better by who, and secondly, you fired the U.S. Attorneys for performance-related problems; should somebody be fired for the performance-related problems that were revealed in the IG report [on the FBI's use of National Security Letters]?

ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: Look. I'm not comfortable with where we're at today on this issue, and obviously it's something that we're looking at internally about how we got to where we are today because it's not good for the Department if there's any kind of question regarding the professionalism of our prosecutors, and so it's something that we're looking at.

One thing that we could have done and should have done, obviously, is in speaking with these U.S. Attorneys to make sure they understood the reasons why the decision was made, to make sure they understood at the time they were being asked to leave that these are the reasons why. I think that would have been -- in hindsight, I think that would have made better sense.

U.S. Attorneys

House Purged Prosecutor Probe Moves to White House

Paul Kiel | March 9, 2007, 3:20PM

...And on to the White House.

The House Judiciary Committee requested a host of documents from the White House today related to the administration's firing of a group of U.S. attorneys. The committee is also seeking to interview at least one current official in the White House's counsel's office, William Kelley, Deputy Counsel to the President, and former White House counsel Harriet Miers. (Former USA for Seattle John McKay has told reporters that, in a meeting with Kelley and Miers, he was asked about accusations that he had "mishandled" an investigation of Democratic voter fraud in the 2004 Washington gubernatorial election.)

The committee sought the documents in a letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding signed by Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA). By next Friday, March 16th, the committee wants all records of communications within the White House regarding the firings, all records of communications with members of Congress concerning the fired attorneys, the names of any members of Congress who were advance notice of the firings, and the names of anyone in the White House who was involved in the firings.

Update: You can see the letter to Miers here (pdf) and the one to Fielding here (pdf).

U.S. Attorneys

U.S. Attorney Politicization Study Now Online

Paul Kiel | March 9, 2007, 2:31PM

There have been a number of reader questions about the study highlighted in Paul Krugman's column today that shows the politicization of federal investigations during the Bush administration -- namely that federal investigations have targeted Democrats far more than Republicans.

The study, which we first reported a month ago, is now online in its full glory at ePluribus Media.

And because I know many readers are interested, here's a breakdown provided to me by the study's authors of the prosecutions by the offices of seven of the eight ousted prosecutors (click to enlarge):

U.S. Attorneys

Reid: DoJ Was Set to Use Loophole

Paul Kiel | March 9, 2007, 1:53PM

One of the central issues of prosecutor purge scandal is whether the adminstration was planning to install party loyalists in place of the fired United States attorneys -- a scheme made possible by a law change slipped into the PATRIOT Act reauthorization bill last year.

There is a host of evidence that that's in fact what the administration had intended to do, and though it seems to have gone largely unnoticed, the plainest proof of this was offered yesterday by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). Speaking to The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Reid "said he understood the [Justice Department] planned to take advantage of a loophole and fill its new vacancy in Nevada without submitting its choice for customary Senate review and confirmation." He then is quoted saying: "That's what they told [former USA for Nevada Daniel] Bogden."

Really? Who's "they?" And when was Bogden told this? When I asked, a spokesman for Reid's office declined to elaborate, calling Reid's conversation with Bogden a private conversation.

Bogden has already testified to the House about a conversation he had with acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer, who told him that he was being bumped to give someone else a chance to "build their resumes." Perhaps Mercer also told him that the administration planned to circumvent Senate confirmation? It's not clear.

The Review-Journal goes on to cite a "legal source familiar with the appointment process" who told them that "it seemed clear that the administration was preparing to 'parachute in' a new U.S. attorney in Nevada, possibly from outside the state, under the Patriot Act umbrella."

But Bogden's case isn't the only one where there are indications that the administration was preparing to "parachute in" a replacement.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

LA Times: Border Politics May Have Cost U.S. Attorney Her Job

Paul Kiel | March 9, 2007, 11:27AM

The Los Angeles Times makes the case that Carol Lam was fired because she "ignored immigration issues," as the administration has argued.

By contrast, here's the Justice Deparment making the case for Carol Lam's handling of broder prosecutions three months before she was fired. Somehow, the letter doesn't merit a mention in the Times' piece.

U.S. Attorneys

AP: Administration "Beats Abrupt Retreat" on Purge

Paul Kiel | March 9, 2007, 11:18AM

From the AP:

Slapped even by GOP allies, the Bush administration is beating an abrupt retreat on eight federal prosecutors it fired and then publicly pilloried....

The Justice Department is shifting from offense to accommodation.

"In hindsight, we should have provided the U.S. attorneys with specific reasons that led to their dismissal that would have helped to avoid the rampant misinformation and wild speculation that currently exits," Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Friday. "We will continue to work with Congress to reach an accommodation on providing additional information."

It was a striking reversal for an administration noted for standing its ground even in the face of overwhelming opposition.

Gone were the department's biting assertions that the prosecutors were a bunch of "disgruntled employees grandstanding before Congress."

And the department no longer tried to shrug off the uproar as "an overblown personnel matter," as Gonzales had written in an opinion piece published Thursday in USA Today.

Agency officials also ceased describing majority Democrats as lawmakers who would "would rather play politics" than deal with facts.

U.S. Attorneys

House Dems Push for More DoJ Testimony, Evidence

Paul Kiel | March 8, 2007, 6:23PM

In a letter sent to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sánchez (D-CA) pushed for the Justice Department to make six Justice Department officials available for questioning about the department's purge of eight U.S. attorneys.

"We ask that you make available to us several officials at the Department for follow-up questioning next week and that you provide us with certain critical documents and information," they write. You can read it in full here.

In a statement, Conyers said that this week's hearing "provided an important first look into what may be a much larger and wide-ranging problem at the Department of Justice and in the Administration as a whole."

Conyers and Sanchez want to talk to the same group sought by the Senate Judiciary Committee, namely:

-- Mike Elston, we know, made the now infamous not-at-all-threatening phone call to former USA Bud Cummins.

-- Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson and the Justice Department's White House liaison Monica Goodling were involved in generating the list of prosecutors to fire.

-- Acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer told two of the fired prosecutors that they were being replaced in order to free up the spot for someone else.

-- Michael Battle, who will be stepping down at the end of next week, actually made the calls firing the prosecutors.

-- and Paul McNulty, the Deputy Attorney General who has already testified before the Senate about the firings.

So we're just getting started.

U.S. Attorneys

Breaking: Admin Will Not Oppose U.S. Attorney Law Change

Paul Kiel | March 8, 2007, 5:54PM

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on the meeting senators from the Judiciary Committee had with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this afternoon:

“While we didn’t get any better explanation for these unprecedented firings, two important developments came from this meeting. First, the Attorney General told us the Administration would not oppose our legislation requiring Senate confirmation for all U.S. Attorneys. Second, in one form or another, each of the five Department of Justice witnesses will be made available to us for questioning. The details and venue are still being worked out, but we are hopeful they will cooperate."

And from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who authored the bill:

“The Administration has withdrawn their objection to my legislation, and I welcome that. It is a step in the right direction.

My concerns have been that the firing of people with strong performance reviews all at one time – a number of whom were involved in corruption cases – sends an adverse signal to the rest of the U.S. Attorneys as well as to the general public.

They may be hired by the President, but they serve the people, and they should not be subjected to political pressure.

We have to pass this legislation, and we have to get it in place. We must ensure that these appointments are carefully scrutinized and confirmed by the Senate – now and in the future.”

U.S. Attorneys

Dem: Rove "Needs To Try Harder"

Paul Kiel | March 8, 2007, 5:49PM

Reaction from Rep. Linda Sanchez, the Chair of the House Judiciary's Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, to Karl Rove's comments today:

Judging from his confusing and blatantly false distortions, Karl Rove is apparently trying to prove that he knew nothing about why these U.S. Attorneys were fired. For instance, his statement that Carol Lam "refused to file immigration cases" - when her office actually had the second highest number of immigration prosecutions in the country - demonstrates almost complete ignorance on the issue.

Unfortunately, he needs to try harder. I would love to hear Mr. Rove's explanation for why U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins was fired to make room for one of Mr. Rove's former aides.

I am working with House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers to cut through the multiple excuses and get to the truth of what happened. Our hearing earlier this week raised significant concerns about who is making the decision to fire federal prosecutors and why they are doing it. Today, we sent a letter to the Justice Department demanding additional information, including relevant documents and interviews with key officials.

I'll have details on that letter shortly.

U.S. Attorneys

Specter: "One Day There Will Be A New Attorney General"

Paul Kiel | March 8, 2007, 3:28PM

From The Washington Post:

Senior Senate Republicans today delivered scathing criticism of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales for his handling of the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, joining Democrats in charging that the prosecutors were dismissed without adequate explanation.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested that Gonzales's status as the nation's leading law enforcement officer might not last through the remainder of President Bush's term, pointedly disputing the attorney general's public rationale for the mass firings.

"One day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later," Specter said at a committee hearing where a new round of subpoenas to the Justice Department was considered.

After the meeting, Specter declined to elaborate on that remark, but told reporters that most of the blame for the ongoing controversy rests with the attorney general. "It's snowballing, mostly with the help of the Department of Justice," he said.

Earlier, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) said, "I can't even tell you how upset I am at the Justice Department."

U.S. Attorneys

Rove: Prosecutor Purge Is "Normal and Ordinary"

Paul Kiel | March 8, 2007, 3:15PM

The Arkansas Times' blog has video of Karl Rove speaking today on the topic of the prosecutor purge. I've typed up a transcript of the remarks, but I'll leave it to readers in comments to point out the many distortions (and some plain lies) in Rove's comments.

He made the remarks during a Q&A session after giving a speech at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock.

Look, by law and by Constitution (sic), these attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and traditionally are given a four year term. And Clinton, when he came in, replaced all 93 U.S. attorneys. When we came in, we ultimately replace most all 93 U.S. attorneys – there are some still left from the Clinton era in place. We have appointed a total of I think128 U.S. attorneys -- that is to say the original 93, plus replaced some, some have served 4 years, some served less, most have served more. Clinton did 123. I mean, this is normal and ordinary.

What happened in this instance, was there were seven done all at once, and people wanted to play politics with it. And it’s served at the disadvantage at the people who…. Look, some of these were removed for cause. Some of them were policy disagreements. One United States attorney refused to file cases… of death penalty case… refused to ask for the death penalty, contrary to policy.

Another United States attorney was doing an otherwise excellent job in the San Diego district. [She] refused to file immigration cases… at the direction of the Attorney General, she was asked to file, and she said I don’t want to make that a priority in my office. Others are (u/i) with performance issues.

But this is the right of any president to appoint people to these offices. They serve at the pleasure of the president. And my view this is… unfortunately a very big attempt by some in the Congress to make a political stink about it. And the question is did they have the same reaction if they were in Congress in the 90’s, or did they have the same reaction if they were in the 80’s. Because every president comes in, appoints United States attorneys and then makes changes over the course of their time.

When asked about whether the administration would nominate replacements for the eight fired attorneys:

…The old mechanism said that if the Congress didn’t act, that in essence a judge would appoint the United States Attorney – we believe that presents some Constitutional challenges and really is not the way that the executive branch ought to be run. But yes, our intention is, for all of seven of these vacancies, to submit a nomination to the United States Congress for their review and confirmation.

Well, I'll take a crack at least one of the distortions. Former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam testified under oath Tuesday that she was never asked by the Justice Department to change her office's handling of border cases. In fact, the Justice Department communicated their satisfaction with Lam's performance on immigration prosecutions in a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) just three months before she was fired.

Update: The Times blog notes "A more observant attendee spotted interim U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin in the audience. He was sitting in the second row, next to the center aisle." Griffin, of course, is a former aide of Rove's.

Update: Here's a reaction from one of those members of Congress making "a political stink," Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA), to Rove's remarks.

Update: And here's a reaction from Clinton’s former chief of staff John Podesta.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Watchdog Files Ethics Complaint against Hastings, Staffer

Paul Kiel | March 8, 2007, 1:52PM

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed its third ethics complaint of the prosecutor purge scandal. And this one's a doozy -- it's against Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA), the ranking member of the ethics committee, and his former chief of staff Ed Cassidy.

CREW is calling for Hastings to "step down from his position on the committee pending an investigation into his conduct.”

The complaint, of course, involves former U.S. Attorney John McKay's testimony that Ed Cassidy (who currently works for Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH)) called him about whether his office was investigating charges of voter fraud in the 2004 gubernatorial election. You can see McKay's testimony here.

From CREW's press release:

Mr. Cassidy’s call to Mr. McKay -- at Rep. Hastings’ behest -- violates chapter 7 of the House ethics manual, which prohibits members from contacting executive or agency officials regarding the merits of matters under their formal consideration. House rules also state that if a member wants to affect the outcome of a matter in litigation, the member can file a brief with the court, make a floor statement, or insert a statement into the Congressional Record. Directly calling officials to influence an on-going enforcement matter is not an option.

Moreover, the rules state that a member may not claim he or she was merely requesting “background information” or a “status report” because the House has recognized that such requests “may in effect be an indirect or subtle effort to influence the substantive outcome of the proceedings.”

As I noted before, CREW's complaint does not automatically trigger an investigation. But it certainly puts the issue squarely before the Dem leadership -- should Hastings remain on the ethics committee?

U.S. Attorneys

Subpoenas on Hold, Senators to Meet with Gonzales

Paul Kiel | March 8, 2007, 1:38PM

During this morning's business meeting, the Senate Judiciary Committee opted to delay issuing subpoenas to five Justice Department officials. Instead, Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and other members of the committee will meet with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales late this afternoon.

Yesterday, Leahy sent Gonzales a letter (read it here) seeking to "work out a process" for the DoJ to "make these witnesses available for interviews, depositions, or hearing testimony, on a voluntary basis." To ensure that Gonzales didn't dally, the committee prepared to authorize the issuance of subpoenas this morning. But apparently Leahy was satisfied with Gonzales' response, since he's postponed the vote on subpoenas until next week.

We'll have to wait until after that meeting to see what happens.

U.S. Attorneys

House Members to Hit Wilson with Ethics Complaint?

Paul Kiel | March 8, 2007, 12:06PM

Earlier this week, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington wrote a letter to the House ethics committee, requesting that they investigate whether Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) broke ethics rules by calling U.S. Attorney David Iglesias and questioning him about his office's investigation of a prominent state Democrat.

But there's a funny thing about the ethics committee in the House. Unlike in the Senate, a complaint does not automatically trigger a preliminary investigation. For that to happen, a member of the House has to file a referral. And, because of an ongoing ethics truce between the parties, that is exceedingly rare.

Take, for instance, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's (D-MD) remarks to Roll Call about Wilson (sub. req.). “I believe the House [ethics committee] ought to take it under consideration,” he said, but...

“Am I going to file a complaint? The answer is no. It has been my consistent position that the ethics committee has a responsibility ... when issues are raised in the public sphere ... I would hope they would do that.”

In other words, he's not going to do anything about it but "hope."

But now The Los Angeles Times reports, "Congressional sources say that fellow lawmakers may file a complaint with the House Ethics Committee."

Who will that brave soul be?

CREW's Naomi Seligman Steiner isn't holding her breath. "I’ll believe it when I see it," she told me.

U.S. Attorneys

GOP Sen: "I Can't Even Tell You How Upset I Am"

Paul Kiel | March 8, 2007, 11:29AM

I've stopped counting how many toes the Justice Department stepped on when they purged eight prosecutors last December.

But one set of toes belongs to Sen. John Ensign (R-NV). Not only did the Justice Department go over Ensign's head to fire Nevada's U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden, but they apparently "misled" him as to why they were doing it.

From The Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Ensign was particularly irate over the firing of Bogden, an independent who Ensign picked in 2001 to oversee federal crime prosecutions in Nevada. Bogden, a prosecutor in the Northern Nevada office of the U.S. attorney, was nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate in October 2001.

In December, the Justice Department fired Bogden over Ensign's objections. Ensign said last month he was told the dismissal was for "performance reasons."

Justice officials initially told Congress that was the reason. But Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General William Moschella told a House subcommittee "no particular deficiencies" in Bogden's performance existed....

Ensign said Wednesday he was decidedly unhappy.

"What the Justice Department testified yesterday is inconsistent with what they told me," Ensign said. "I can't even tell you how upset I am at the Justice Department."

Asked whether he believed he was misled, Ensign said, "I was not told the same thing that I was at the hearing, let me put it that way."

Ensign said he pressed the topic at a meeting with White House officials Wednesday morning. He added he would be "making further inquiries."

"I am not pleased with the Justice Department at this point," he said. "I told the White House this morning if I could renominate (Bogden) I would."

The Review-Journal goes on to quote a "legal source" saying "it seemed clear that the administration was preparing to 'parachute in' a new U.S. attorney in Nevada [after Bogden's firing], possibly from outside the state, under the Patriot Act umbrella."

And so it continues....

Update: I missed this in my first reading of the piece, but Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is quoted as saying that someone from the Department of Justice actually told Bogden that they were planning of taking advantage of the Patriot Act provision to avoid Senate confirmation for their choice.

U.S. Attorneys

Dem Senators to Gonzales: Purge Was "Clumsy"

Paul Kiel | March 8, 2007, 10:57AM

In a letter sent to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this morning, Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) charged that the evidence available regarding the administration's purge of eight U.S. Attorneys showed that "the intent was to replace some of these U.S. Attorneys with others who might be more politically-connected."

They continued:

We have come to believe that this was a clumsy effort to force these U.S. Attorneys out for reasons that have little or nothing to do with their performance as prosecutors....

While the President has the right to fire U.S. Attorneys, we do not believe the American people are best served if the President chooses to fire U.S. Attorneys for political reasons – whether to put in place young ideologues or because he is displeased with the cases the U.S. Attorney is pursuing.

We strongly believe that if a President chooses to fire U.S. Attorneys for any reason, but especially for political reasons, he should explain and justify his decision.

Both senators urged Gonzales to support legislation that would undo last year's change to the law and again ensure that U.S. Attorneys undergo Senate confirmation.

The full letter is below.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Senate to Vote on Subpoenas for DoJ Officials

Paul Kiel | March 7, 2007, 5:45PM

The prosecutor purge story continues to move forward.

When the Senate Judiciary Committee meets tomorrow, they will vote on whether to issue subpoenas to several Justice Department officials.

Those officials are: Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty's chief of staff Mike Elston, Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson, acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer, outgoing Director of the Executive Office of the United States Attorney Michael Battle, and the Justice Department's White House liaison, Monica Goodling.

In a statement Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said, “Now that it’s clear that there was a concerted effort to purge an impressive crop of U.S. Attorneys, the next step is to identify and question those responsible for hatching this scheme to use U.S. Attorneys as pawns in a political chess game.”

Update: To be clear, the committee will first be requesting the officials' voluntary testimony. The vote is to authorize subpoenas if they don't accept.

Update: So let's go through the list and why the committee wants to hear from them.

-- Mike Elston, we know, made the now infamous not-at-all-threatening phone call to former USA Bud Cummins.

-- Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson and the Justice Department's White House liaison Monica Goodling were involved in generating the list of prosecutors to fire.

-- Acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer told two of the fired prosecutors that they were being replaced in order to free up the spot for someone else.

-- And Michael Battle, who will be stepping down at the end of next week, actually made the calls firing the prosecutors.

U.S. Attorneys

Domenici Lawyers Up

Paul Kiel | March 7, 2007, 4:00PM

What a small world. Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) has nabbed Lee Blalack, best known as Duke Cunningham's lawyer, to represent him in the Senate ethics investigation, The Washington Post reports.

And they note the obvious irony:

Blalack, a partner in O'Melveny & Myers LLP's Washington office, is an experienced defense lawyer. As attorney for Cunningham, who is serving a sentence of more than eight years, Blalack dealt with one of the federal prosecutors who was later ousted, Carol S. Lam of San Diego.

U.S. Attorneys

Washington Republicans Chased Ousted Prosecutor

Paul Kiel | March 7, 2007, 1:40PM

When former United States attorney John McKay made a bid in 2006 to be a federal judge, he didn't get the job. Why? Well, part of the vetting process, it seems, involved quizzing him about why he didn't pursue allegations of voter fraud by Democrats in the 2004 gubernatorial election.

The Seattle Times has more on who in the White House asked McKay about that:

He said Tuesday that during interviews with Harriet Miers, former White House counsel, and William Kelley, deputy counsel, he was asked to explain "criticism that I mishandled the 2004 governor's election."

Since McClatchy reported that Miers wasn't the one who popped the question to McKay, it seems that William Kelley was.

So who complained to the White House?

McKay told The Seattle Times that reporters "should ask Congressman [Doc] Hastings (R-WA) if he contacted the White House in connection with my application to be district judge or contacted the justice department."

Well, they did, and Hastings' chief of staff denied it up and down: "Neither I nor any member of my staff — past or present — ever contacted anyone at the White House or the Department of Justice about whether John McKay should be removed as U.S. attorney or whether he was qualified to be a federal judge."

Read more »

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."

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

White House Officials Quizzed Prosecutor on Dem Investigation

Paul Kiel | March 7, 2007, 10:10AM

Josh flagged this last night, but McClatchy has a fuller account of former USA John McKay's remarks:

In an interview, McKay said his handling of the 2004 Washington governor's race came back to haunt him when he was interviewed about a federal judgeship by then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers and others in her office.

McKay said he was asked in the late summer or early fall of 2006 to explain the criticism of how he'd "mishandled" the governor's race investigation. McKay didn't reveal who asked the question, but he said it wasn't Miers.

McKay didn't get the nomination.

As McKay testified yesterday, he didn't pursue an investigation of alleged voter fraud by Democrats because there was "no evidence."

U.S. Attorneys

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 7, 2007, 9:36AM

Yet another tutorial in how not to do damage control.

Yesterday, former U.S. Attorney for Seattle John McKay testified that he'd been contacted by Rep. Doc Hastings' (R-WA) chief of staff a few weeks after the November 2004 gubernatorial election, in which the Democrat had won by a scant couple hundred votes after multiple recounts. Republicans had alleged voter fraud. McKay testified that Cassidy called him on "behalf of the Congressman" to inquire about the status of any investigation into the alleged fraud.

McKay, immediately on guard, responded (sub. req.) with public accounts of the investigation's status, and then before Cassidy pressed further, told Cassidy that he was "certain" that Cassidy was not asking him to "reveal information" about the status of a probe or “lobby me on one.” Cassidy, McKay testified, agreed that no, sir, he was not doing that, and then the call ended.

So what does Cassidy, who now works for Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), have to say about it? Here's his statement:

“My conversation with John McKay was a routine effort to determine whether allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 gubernatorial election were, or were not, being investigated by federal authorities... As the top aide to the chairman of the House Ethics Committee, I understood the permissible limits on any such conversation. Mr. McKay understood and respected those boundaries as well. I am pleased that Mr. McKay recalls both our agreement to respect these boundaries and my subsequent decision to end the conversation promptly.”

"Routine effort?" That makes it sound as if Cassidy makes it a habit to call up federal prosecutors and ask whether their office is investigating Democrats, doesn't it? As CREW has detailed in their requests for investigations of Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM), it's against the rules of both houses for members to inquire about the status of a particular investigation. Why? It's obvious: because that's an indirect way of applying pressure to a prosecutor to get a move on.

Maybe that's why Rep. Hastings took the opposite tack in his statement:

“Ed Cassidy’s call and the conversation that took place were entirely appropriate... It was a simple inquiry and nothing more — and it was the only call to any federal official from my office on this subject either during or after the recount ordeal.”

So either it was "routine" or it was the "only" call anybody from Hastings' office ever made like this. Which is it?

U.S. Attorneys

DoJ Vouched for Ousted Prosecutor

Paul Kiel | March 6, 2007, 6:53PM

Earlier, we noted that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) had referenced a letter she'd received from the Justice Department essentially vouching for U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's approach in prosecuting border cases.

You can read the letter here. It's dated August 23, 2006. Little more than three months later, Lam was fired -- according to the administration, because of her office's poor performance prosecuting border cases.

U.S. Attorneys

Domenici: "I Still Do Not Know What He Is Talking About"

Paul Kiel | March 6, 2007, 6:43PM

A new statement out from Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM):

In his testimony today, Mr. Iglesias confirmed that our conversation was brief and that my words did not threaten him, nor did I direct him to take any course of action. While I recall, as I stated previously, that I asked Mr. Iglesias about timing of the investigation, neither I nor those who overheard my side of the brief conversation recall my mentioning the November election to him.

When I was first asked, in response to a chorus of questions, about whether I pressured or threatened Mr. Iglesias, I responded that I did not know what he was talking about. Today he testified that he “felt violated.” I still do not know what he is talking about. In his own testimony, Mr. Iglesias confirmed that nothing I actually said was threatening or directive. I did not pressure him. I asked him a timing question. He responded. I concluded the conversation.

You can watch Iglesias' testimony about Domenici's call here.

U.S. Attorneys

Purged Prosecutors: Now, The House

Paul Kiel | March 6, 2007, 2:15PM

The House Judiciary's hearing just got started. You can listen to it on the House Judiciary's website.

As with the Senate hearing, I'll be posting rolling updates. The witness list is here. Most anticipated is the testimony of William E. Moschella, Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General United States Department of Justice, and two other U.S. attorneys, Daniel Bogden of Nevada and Paul K. Charlton of Arizona.

Updates below the fold...

Read more »

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

DoJ to Feinstein: Lam Is A-OK

Paul Kiel | March 6, 2007, 1:19PM

During her opening statement during this morning's hearing, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) revealed that the Justice Department had written to her last year and assured her that Carol Lam was doing a fine job prosecuting border cases -- even though they've said that the reason for Lam's firing was her poor performance on border cases.

From Feinstein's statement:

The Department has used the fact that I wrote a letter on June 15 to the Attorney General concerning the San Diego region, and in that I asked some questions: What are the guidelines for the U.S. Attorney Southern District of California? How do these guidelines differ from other border sections nationwide? I asked about immigration cases.

Here is the response that I got under cover of August 23, in a letter signed by Will Moschella. And I ask that both these letters be added to the record.

“That office [referring to Mrs. Lam’s office], is presently committing fully half of its Assistant U.S. Attorneys to prosecute criminal immigration cases. Prosecutions for alien smuggling in the Southern District under USC sections 1234 are rising sharply in Fiscal Year 2006. As of March 2006, the halfway point in the fiscal year, there were 342 alien smuggling cases filed in that jurisdiction. This compares favorable with the 484 alien smuggling prosecutions brought there during the entirety of Fiscal Year 2005.”

The letter goes on to essentially say that Mrs. Lam is cooperating; that they have reviewed it and the Department is satisfied.

Update: You can read the letter here.

U.S. Attorneys

McKay Testifies about Call from Hastings' Staffer

Paul Kiel | March 6, 2007, 12:24PM

More from today's hearing, where John McKay revealed that Rep. Doc Hastings' (R-WA) then chief of staff called Seattle U.S. Attorney John McKay to inquire about whether the feds were investigating allegations of voter fraud in the 2004 Washington governor's race:

U.S. Attorneys

Iglesias Testifies about Conversations with Domenici and Wilson

Paul Kiel | March 6, 2007, 11:59AM

From this morning:

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

Watchdog Requests Ethics Investigation of Wilson

Paul Kiel | March 6, 2007, 10:44AM

Following the group's ethics complaint against Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), CREW has sent a letter to the House ethics committee requesting an ethics investigation of Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM). Wilson admitted calling USA David Iglesias to question him about an ongoing investigation of a state Democrat yesterday.

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.

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 6, 2007, 9:54AM

Ah, the lessons learned.

So. As we ready ourselves for the congressional hearings today, during which an already raging scandal will get a full airing, we hear from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who tells The Wall Street Journal what all this has taught him: "We could have rolled out the decisions more smoothly."

Put this together with the "acknowledgment" by White House officials that "the administration mishandled the firings by not explaining more clearly to lawmakers that a large group was being terminated at once -- which is unusual -- and that the reason was the policy performance review," and it's clear that this scandal is nothing more than a PR failure, at least in the administration's view.

But let's gauge the PR failure moving into today's hearings. Today, in just one morning of reporting, we find out from McClatchy that a Justice Department official threatened the U.S. attorneys that if they continued to talk about the circumstances of their firing, "previously undisclosed details about the reasons they were fired might be released"; The Washington Post reports that Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) has finally admitted that she called U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to question him about his office's investigation of a state Democrat -- though she risibly argues that she was trying to help Iglesias, not pressure him; The New York Times reports that another U.S. attorney says that he was run out of office for pursuing a corruption investigation of Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich (R); and the senior Justice official who, apparently reluctantly, made the actual calls to fire seven of the prosecutors, has resigned in the midst of the scandal, though he says his resignation is unrelated.

Yes, I'd say the decisions could have been rolled out more smoothly.

U.S. Attorneys

Dems to DoJ Official: Don't Forget...

Paul Kiel | March 5, 2007, 6:37PM

The House Judiciary Committee sent the following letter today to Justice Department official William Moschella, who will be appearing before the committee tomorrow....

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Domenici's Accusation By The Numbers

Paul Kiel | March 5, 2007, 5:33PM

Yesterday, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) announced, by way of explanation, that he'd become frustrated with New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias' "inability" to "move more quickly on cases." That frustration, he explained in a statement, had led him to call Justice Department officials and seek a replacement.

But the statistics kept by the Federal Judiciary don't reflect an inability for Iglesias' office to move more quickly on cases -- in fact, quite the opposite. In 2001, when Iglesias took over, the data (pdf) shows a median of 4.6 months for a criminal case in the New Mexico office to move from filing to disposition (dismissal, guilty plea, or trial). In 2005, that time had dwindled to 3.7 months.

And that's a time when Iglesias' office was increasingly snowed under by more cases. His office opened 1,548 criminal cases in 2001; in 2005, the office opened 2,915.

So Iglesias' office was opening more cases and handling them faster than his predecessor. Maybe that's why he received a positive performance evaluation?

But that still wasn't good enough for Domenici, apparently.

Ed. Note: Thanks to TPM Reader KW for the tip.

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...

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Fox: Official Resigned "About a Month Ago"

Paul Kiel | March 5, 2007, 2:19PM

The original report from Fox News on Michael Battle's resignation is now up on their website.

In it, Jonathan Hunt reports that Battle is resigning and that he "made that decision and sent out an internal email about a month ago." Hunt reported that the email had been confirmed to Fox "from three separate sources," but that the resignation had not been "publicly announced by the Department of Justice." The AP is reporting that Battle will leave his post March 16th.

Battle, a former U.S. attorney himself, was the DoJ official who actually made the calls to fire six federal prosecutors back in early December. Hunt reports that one fired prosecutor told him "Mr. Battle seemed unhappy about having to make those calls."

The Washington Post has reported that "Battle was apologetic but offered little in the way of explanations during the calls, telling some that the order had come from 'on high.'" He told one prosecutor, according to Salon, "It's hard not to think you did something wrong when you get a call like this, but that's not always the case."

A Justice Department spokesman told the AP that Battle "was not involved in the actual decision-making" behind the firings.

U.S. Attorneys

DoJ Official Resigned over Purged Prosecutor Flap?

Paul Kiel | March 5, 2007, 1:42PM

About an hour ago, we heard that Michael Battle, the Director of the Executive Office of the United States Attorney, had resigned from his post, and that the resignation had been reported on Fox News.

Since then, we've been madly trying to confirm that. I called Mr. Battle himself, who refused to confirm or deny the report, referring me on to the Department of Justice's public affairs office, whose number it took him some time to dig up.

The public affairs office, however, seems to have been caught unawares by Mr. Battle's resignation (if indeed he has resigned). I've been informed that a statement from the department is forthcoming. We'll bring it to you as soon as we have it.

Update: The AP reports:

The department also said that Michael Battle — a senior Justice official who directed the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys and who had personally informed the ousted U.S. attorneys of their removal — would leave his post March 16.

Battle, who has held his post since June 2005, notified U.S. attorneys of his decision in January and had informed the department last summer that he wished to pursue opportunities in the private sector, the department said. Battle was not involved in the actual decision-making that led to the prosecutors' ouster, the department said.

"His departure is not connected to the U.S. attorney controversy whatsoever," Roehrkasse said.

Read more »

U.S. Attorneys

Watchdog Files Ethics Complaint against Domenici

Paul Kiel | March 5, 2007, 12:20PM

Well, there you go.

On Friday, Naomi Seligman Steiner of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told us that the group would file an ethics complaint against Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) if U.S. Attorney David Iglesias named him as one of the two lawmakers who contacted him last October to pressure him about his office's investigation of a state Democrat.

Since Domenici has done everyone the favor of admitting that he made the call, CREW has gone ahead and filed the complaint (pdf).

U.S. Attorneys

Ousted Prosecutors to Testify before House And Senate Tomorrow

Paul Kiel | March 5, 2007, 12:09PM

It looks like tomorrow will be something of an ousted prosecutor marathon on Capitol Hill.

Four of the fired prosecutors will be testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow morning before heading over to the House to testify in the afternoon.

(Update: In anticipation of tomorrow's hearing, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) put out the following statement: "The plot continues to thicken. No one believes anymore these U.S. Attorneys were fired for any good reason and we will start to uncover the real truth at our hearing on Tuesday.")

Last Friday, the Senate committee, following on the heels of the House's issuance of subpoenas to the four, sent out letters to six of the eight ousted prosecutors, requesting their testimony and informing them that the commmittee would consider issuing subpoenas if they did not accept. That strategy seems to have worked.

The four prosecutors who were already subpoenaed by the House (San Diego's Carol Lam, Seattle's John McKay, New Mexico's David Iglesias and Arkansas' Bud Cummins) have accepted the invitation and will be testifying at 10 AM tomorrow, according to a spokesperson for Sen. Schumer. Those same prosecutors will be testifying before the House at 2 PM.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will consider issuing subpoenas to the other two prosecutors (Nevada's Daniel Bogden and Arizona's Paul Charlton) on Thursday.

Update: Well, it looks like we'll be hearing from all six prosecutors tomorrow. The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a meeting tomorrow morning to vote on issuing subpoenas to both Bogden and Charlton. Assuming that the vote goes as it did last week, the two will testify along with the others tomorrow afternoon.

U.S. Attorneys

In Arkansas, Search on for Griffin Replacement

Paul Kiel | March 5, 2007, 11:36AM

Last month, Tim Griffin, the former aide to Karl Rove who was installed as the United States Attorney for Arkansas' Eastern District in December, announced that he would not be seeking Senate confirmation for the job. Submitting his name to the Senate, he said, would " be like volunteering to stand in front of a firing squad in the middle of a three-ring circus.”

But as a number of sharp-eyed readers pointed out, Griffin doesn't need Senate confirmation to remain in his position until the end of President Bush's term -- thanks to a change in the law slipped into the PATRIOT Act reauthorization bill last year.

Nevertheless, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports that Rep. John Boozman (R-AR), who's in charge of nominating Griffin's replacement, is working on it -- although it doesn't sound like there's much urgency:

Boozman’s press secretary, Ryan James, said Thursday that the congressman and his staff “are having conversations, and they’re going through names now. They’re just looking at possibilities. They haven’t come up with a list they would give to the White House, but the process is under way.” James described the discussion sessions as “a series of mini-meetings.” He said Boozman “hasn’t indicated, as such, a certain time line,” for developing an initial or final list, but noted that Boozman has a good relationship with both Pryor and Lincoln, and talks with each of them regularly.

U.S. Attorneys

Domenici: "I Regret Making That Call and I Apologize"

Paul Kiel | March 4, 2007, 10:31AM

A statement just out from Sen. Pete Domenici's (R-NM) office:

I take this opportunity to comment directly on media statements by former U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico, David Iglesias.

Since my knowledge of his remarks stems only from a variety of media accounts, I have hesitated to respond. Nevertheless, in light of substantial public interest, I have decided to comment.

I called Mr. Iglesias late last year. My call had been preceded by months of extensive media reports about acknowledged investigations into courthouse construction, including public comments from the FBI that it had completed its work months earlier, and a growing number of inquiries from constituents. I asked Mr. Iglesias if he could tell me what was going on in that investigation and give me an idea of what timeframe we were looking at. It was a very brief conversation, which concluded when I was told that the courthouse investigation would be continuing for a lengthy period.

In retrospect, I regret making that call and I apologize. However, at no time in that conversation or any other conversation with Mr. Iglesias did I ever tell him what course of action I thought he should take on any legal matter. I have never pressured him nor threatened him in any way.

I was pleased to recommend to the President of the United States in early 2001 that he nominate Mr. Iglesias as U.S. Attorney for New Mexico. I knew from many discussions with federal law enforcement and judicial officials that the caseload had become extremely heavy within our state.

During the course of the last six years, that already heavy caseload in our state has been swamped by unresolved new federal cases, especially in the areas of immigration and illegal drugs. I have asked, and my staff has asked, on many occasions whether the federal prosecutors and federal judiciary within our state had enough resources. I have been repeatedly told that we needed more resources. As a result I have introduced a variety of legislative measures, including new courthouse construction monies, to help alleviate the situation.

My conversations with Mr. Iglesias over the years have been almost exclusively about this resource problem and complaints by constituents. He consistently told me that he needed more help, as have many other New Mexicans within the legal community.

My frustration with the U.S. Attorney’s office mounted as we tried to get more resources for it, but public accounts indicated an inability within the office to move more quickly on cases. Indeed, in 2004 and 2005 my staff and I expressed my frustration with the U.S. Attorney’s office to the Justice Department and asked the Department to see if the New Mexico U.S. Attorney’s office needed more help, including perhaps an infusion of professionals from other districts.

This ongoing dialogue and experience led me, several months before my call with Mr. Iglesias, to conclude and recommend to the Department of Justice that New Mexico needed a new United States Attorney.

U.S. Attorneys

WaPo: It's All A Big Misunderstanding

Paul Kiel | March 3, 2007, 10:02AM

I won't repeat Josh's analysis of The Washington Post's story this morning, in which the administration gives a half-embarrassed, and yet totally innocent, explanation for the prosecutor purge imbroglio.

Let me just flag this little telling excerpt instead:

On the job less than a year, [deputy attorney general Paul] McNulty consulted his predecessor as deputy attorney general, James B. Comey, about some of the prosecutors before approving the list, officials said. Comey, who did not return a telephone call seeking comment yesterday, praised Iglesias earlier this week as one of the department's best prosecutors.

Comey told the Post earlier in the week, "David Iglesias was one of our finest and someone I had a lot of confidence in as deputy attorney general." I guess McNulty didn't ask Comey about him?

Note: Dahlia Lithwick at Slate has a good rundown of the possible motives behind the purge.

Oversight Committee

Gonzales to Dems: Shoo, Fly

Paul Kiel | March 3, 2007, 10:02AM

From Bob Novak's column today:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has indicated he is too busy to answer letters from Democratic congressional leaders about his firing seven U.S. attorneys involved in probes of public corruption, though a lower-level Justice Department official rejected their proposals.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, House Democratic Caucus chairman, had written Gonzales two letters suggesting that he name Carol Lam, fired as U.S. attorney in San Diego, as an outside counsel to continue her pursuit of the Duke Cunningham case. Asked by Melissa Charbonneau of the Christian Broadcasting Network about this column’s report that Gonzales did not respond, Gonzales said: “I think that the American people lose if I spend all my time worrying about congressional requests for information, if I spend all my time responding to subpoenas.”

Richard A. Hertling, the acting Justice Department lobbyist, responded Wednesday, 22 days after Emanuel’s letter. He contended “the Justice Department would not ever seek the resignation of a U.S. attorney if doing so would jeopardize a public corruption case” and rejected naming Lam as a special prosecutor.

U.S. Attorneys

Watchdog: If Iglesias Names Names, We'll Follow Through

Paul Kiel | March 2, 2007, 6:04PM

On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias is expected to name Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) as the two lawmakers who called him in mid-October to pressure him about his office's investigation of a state Democrat.

As Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) told The Washington Post and ethics expert Stanley Brand told McClatchy, Wilson's and Domenici's calls (as described by Iglesias) likely broke House and Senate ethics rules. But the question is whether the ethics committees would actually follow through with an investigation.

Well, Naomi Seligman Steiner of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Congress told me that if Iglesias named Wilson and Domenici, then CREW would "certainly" draft an ethics complaint against Domenici in the Senate and ask the House ethics committee to investigate Wilson.

Given the inert tendencies of the ethics committees in both houses, however, only a large amount of public pressure is likely to push them to investigate (e.g. ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL)).

U.S. Attorneys

Senate Committee Requests Testimony from Ousted Prosecutors

Paul Kiel | March 2, 2007, 5:42PM

Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-PA) wrote to six of the firied U.S. attorneys this afternoon, requesting their testimony before the committee Tuesday morning.

"If you refuse to appear and insist upon receiving a subpoena," the letters read, "the Committee will proceed to authorize its issuance."

The committee has scheduled a hearing on the U.S attorney firings for 10 AM Tuesday; it's unclear, however, whether the four U.S. attorneys already subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee to testify Tuesday afternoon would accept the Senate committee's request. If they did not, the committee would vote Thursday on whether to issue the subpoenas.

In addition to the four former U.S. attorneys subpoenaed by the House (San Diego's Carol Lam, Seattle's John McKay, New Mexico's David Iglesias and Arkansas' Bud Cummins), the Senate also sent letters to Nevada's Daniel Bogden and Arizona's Paul Charlton. All six attorneys reportedly received positive performance reviews from the Justice Department sometime before being fired.

U.S. Attorneys

Did Calif. Prosecutor See The Purge Coming?

Paul Kiel | March 2, 2007, 12:41PM

Laura Rozen raises a good point. Three of California's four United States attorneys resigned in two months. Two of them we know were actually asked to step down on December 7th: San Diego's Carol Lam and San Francisco's Kevin Ryan.

But the other, Los Angeles' Debra Wong Yang, stepped down November 10th, just after the election. On January 1st, she left for the heavy-hitting law firm that just happened to be representing Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), who is being investigated by her office.

As Laura notes, "it's no secret that the decision to retire and a decision informed by knowledge one is going to be dismissed are sometimes the same thing.... Will Congress want to hear from her as well?"

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 2, 2007, 9:12AM

McClatchy Newspapers filled in the blanks last night, citing "two people with knowledge of the incident" that Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) were the two lawmakers who called in mid-October to pressure New Mexico's U.S. Attorney David Iglesias about his office's investigation of a state Democrat.

Iglesias himself has all but named Wilson and Domenici (he said in a TV interview that he was "not surprised" that Wilson and Domenici had refused to comment) and given his detailed description of the calls to NPR yesterday, we already have a pretty good idea of what he'll be telling the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

There were two calls. Here's how McClatchy describes the first, from Rep. Wilson:

Wilson was curt after Iglesias was "non-responsive" to her questions about whether an indictment would be unsealed, said the two individuals, who asked not to be identified because they feared possible political repercussions. Rumors had spread throughout the New Mexico legal community that an indictment of at least one Democrat was sealed.

And here's Iglesias' own description of that call:

The first call was in mid-October. The caller was asking –- this was not a staff member, an actual member of Congress -- the person was asking about “I want to know if there are any sealed indictments.” And I said, “Sealed indictments? We only do that for juvenile cases or national security cases. It’s fairly unusual.” Instantly red flags went up. I didn’t want to talk about it. Federal prosecutors can’t talk about indictments in general until they’re made public. So I was evasive, I shucked and jived like Walter Payton used to for the Chicago Bears, and the call was ended rather abruptly....

A little bit later, Sen. Domenici followed up, according to McClatchy:

Domenici, who wasn't up for re-election, called about a week and a half later and was more persistent than Wilson, the people said. When Iglesias said an indictment wouldn't be handed down until at least December, the line went dead.

Iglesias' description:

Approximately a week and a half later I got a second call from another member of Congress wanting to know about when the corruption matters were going to filed. Again, red lights went on. It was a very unpleasant phone call, because I know that members of Congress should not be making phone calls about pending matters, pending investigations, indictment dates, things of that nature.

And Iglesias is not the only one who seems like he might drop a bomb on Tuesday. As Josh pointed out, the former U.S. Attorney from Arkansas' Eastern District Bud Cummins gave a rather pointed "no comment" to the AP when the reporter asked if officials from the Justice Department or White House had urged him not to testify before Congress.

Or as Cummins told The Washington Post, "If [the committee] would like to hear one of the few facts I have, I'm happy to tell them."

So what do the other U.S. attorneys who will testify, Seattle's U.S. Attorney John McKay and San Diego's Carol Lam, have in store for the committee? That's not clear.

McKay is sure to get questions about persistent rumors in the Seattle legal community that he was pushed out "to appease Washington state Republicans angry over the 2004 governor's race." As The Seattle Times reported, "Some believe McKay's dismissal was retribution for his failure to convene a federal grand jury to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the race." McKay, who reportedly got one of the most glowing performance reviews from the Justice Department, has already said that he was given no reason for his dismissal.

But the one prosecutor people are most eager to hear from -- Lam, who headed up the Duke Cunningham investigation -- has been utterly silent (except for those indictments two days before she stepped down, you know). The top FBI official in San Diego has already said, "I guarantee politics is involved." Will Lam say the same?

U.S. Attorneys

Ousted Prosecutor to NPR: "Red Flags Went Up"

Paul Kiel | March 1, 2007, 6:59PM

U.S. Attorney David Iglesias for New Mexico was interviewed by NPR this afternoon and provided more detail about his accusations that two lawmakers called him in mid-October to pressure him about his office's investigation of a state Democrat. I've provided a transcript of an excerpt below. You can listen to the entire interview here.

The first call was in mid-October. The caller was asking –- this was not a staff member, an actual member of Congress -- the person was asking about “I want to know if there are any sealed indictments.” And I said, “Sealed indictments? We only do that for juvenile cases or national security cases. It’s fairly unusual.” Instantly red flags went up. I didn’t want to talk about it. Federal prosecutors can’t talk about indictments in general until they’re made public. So I was evasive, I shucked and jived like Walter Payton used to for the Chicago Bears, and the call was ended rather abruptly....

Approximately a week and a half later I got a second call from another member of Congress wanting to know about when the corruption matters were going to filed. Again, red lights went on. It was a very unpleasant phone call, because I know that members of Congress should not be making phone calls about pending matters, pending investigations, indictment dates, things of that nature.

NPR's Melissa Block asked why Iglesias refused to go ahead and name the lawmakers.

Because frankly, I’m afraid of retaliation. I live in a very small state with a very small legal community. And I’m frankly afraid if I go public right now, that there could be retaliation in terms of me being blacklisted, blackballed… you pick your adjective.

When Block noted that New Mexico doesn't have a very big delegation, and that every member of the delegation with the exception of Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) have denied making the calls (Domenici and Wilson said "no comment" to NPR), Iglesias responded, "Right."

"Anything you want to add to that?" Block asked.

"I’ll be adding much more on Tuesday afternoon at two o’clock," he responded, referring to the upcoming House Judiciary Committee hearing.

Update: Iglesias also spoke to KRQE in Albuquerque. The video doesn't seem to be available online yet, but Joe Monahan tells me that Iglesias said, regarding who called him, "I will be fully truthful on Tuesday afternoon relative to all five members contacting me or not contacting me."

He was also asked whether he had proof of the calls and replied that he did not have a recording, but said, "I am reviewing possible documents that I may be taking to the House for their review."

U.S. Attorneys

Wilson, Domenici: No Comment

Paul Kiel | March 1, 2007, 5:22PM

It seems we've been upgraded from no answer at all to a "no comment" from both Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM).

The Associated Press finally cornered them today. The result:

David Iglesias said in published reports this week that he believes he was forced out of office as U.S. attorney after resisting pressure from two members of Congress to push an ongoing investigation of a kickback scheme that might have helped Republicans in the 2006 elections.

He reportedly said the lawmakers pressed him for details and appeared eager to see an indictment just before the elections.

Iglesias, a Republican, has not named the lawmakers who contacted him. All but Domenici and Wilson said Wednesday that it wasn't them.

In a brief interview Thursday, Domenici also denied the accusation. "I don't have any comment," he told The Associated Press. "I have no idea what he's talking about."

Wilson tersely referred questions to Iglesias' government supervisors.

"You should contact the Department of Justice on that personnel matter," she said.

I have to disagree with the AP's characterization of Domenici's "I have no idea what he's talking about" as a denial (for what an actual denial looks like, see Rep. Steve Pearce's (R-NM) response yesterday).

U.S. Attorneys

BREAKING: House Committee to Subpoena Ousted Prosecutors

Paul Kiel | March 1, 2007, 4:42PM

The House Judiciary Committee will be issuing subpoenas to four of the fired prosecutors this afternoon, according to a committee spokesperson.

The U.S. attorneys who will receive a subpoena are California's Southern District's Carol Lam, New Mexico's David Iglesias, Arkansas' Eastern District's H.E. "Bud" Cummins, and Washington's Western District's John McKay. They will testify next Tuesday before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law.

More soon.

Update: The hearing will be Tuesday of next week, not Thursday as I originally reported.

Update: It seems worth pointing out that these are the first subpoenas to be issued in the 110th Congress.

U.S. Attorneys

Paper: Pressure Calls Came from New Mexicans

Paul Kiel | March 1, 2007, 11:45AM

Well, our list of suspects just got a whole lot shorter.

Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias told McClatchy Newspapers (and The Washington Post) that two members of Congress had called him in mid-October to pressure him about an ongoing corruption investigation of a state Democrat. He refused to identify the lawmakers in any way, because he feared retaliation.

But in comments to the Albuquerque Journal, he was a whole lot more specific. He told the paper that "two members of the New Mexico delegation" had contacted him.

Now, there are only two members of the New Mexico delegation that we haven't heard from: Rep. Heather Wilson (R) and Sen. Pete Domenici (R). And it's not just us. The pair have ducked calls from everyone (a partial list: McClatchy, The Washington Post, the Albuquerque Journal and Albuquerque Tribune). Back in October, Wilson was fighting for her political life in one of the closest races in the country. Domenici, as the state's sole Republican senator, is the White House's state contact for the U.S. attorney in the state -- he would have been originally responsible for Iglesias' nomination and the nomination of his successor.

The ball is in their court. We put in another call to their offices this morning.