Everyone here reads TPM, right? I don't actually need to say anything about the Washington Post blockbuster pointing out that several administration officials have been lying to congress about the sacked US Attorneys.
« The Summer of War | Main | Climate Scientist »
Attorneys
13 Mar 2007 11:33 am
Comments (39)
Nothing will happen. Sadly, this will have no repercussions. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't expect anything to come of this beyond a few bad headlines until FOX News discovers that Barack Obama once purchased a water gun.
I say this not to cast doubt, but to get clearer picture: What, exactly, are the lies we're talking about here?
I'm shocked, SHOCKED! that the White House was the origin of the politically-motivated firings. Who would have imagined? The WaPo? A month late, and 8 U.S. Attorneys short. Credit goes to TPM.
DJ Moonbat: this is a very, very big deal.
The other shoe to drop is the atty in San Diego. If one memo suggests that her negative job performance (which led to her dismissal) was related to her aggressive prosections of GOP lawmakers, IMHO, all hell is going to break loose. Really. It is easy to understand for everyone: prosecutor fired for attempting to put GOP legislators in jail for corruption.
It also may be obstruction of justice if the memo suggests that she was fired for precisely that.
And given that the Dems. are driving the train, we haven't heard the end of this (and GOP senators are more likely to join in the chorus for fear of seeming like toadies in the run up to 08').
DJ Moonbat: this is a very, very big deal.
Yes, I get that. But what are the actual factual misstatements that have people like Schumer tossing around accusations of obstruction? Again, I ask not to cast doubt (God knows, the Bush administration has been known to lie once or twice), but because I just don't know.
tip of the iceberg ,nd I am sure others know a lot more than I do, but I think some of it is Gonzalez's testimony to the Senate, where he denied political reasons for firings.
Here's a start - from the NY Times:
"February 7, 2007
A U.S. Attorney Was Removed Without Cause, Official Says
By DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 — A top Justice Department official said on Tuesday that one of several United States attorneys forced from their jobs last year was dismissed without a specific cause in order to give the job to a lawyer with close political ties to the White House.
But the official, Paul J. McNulty, the deputy attorney general, testified at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that none of the forced resignations last year was politically motivated. He said most of the incumbents had been urged to leave because of poor performance."
McNulty was one of those at Justice who Domineci called complaining about Inglesias.
Matt, we don't all read TPM. I'm on a strictly high-fiber, low-fat blog diet.
The latest revelations clarify a point that had been bothering me: How was it that the administration didn't seem to anticipate that sacking 8 USA's simultaneously with a shifting set of justifications wouldn't raise some red flags in Congress or the media?
The answer now seems to be: They were originally considering sacking *all 93* US Attorneys. By the time they trimmed it down to 8, that didn't seem like that many... :-)
Obstruction of justice is, I think, something entirely different from the issue of lying to Congress. They're talking about submarining investigations of GOP lawmakers like Jerry Lewis by firing the prosecutor.
So, ignoring the lies, here's the misconduct I see, and inferences we can draw:
1) Firing USAs because they were too successful in prosecuting Republicans;
2) Inference: Some USAs were probably successfully discouraged from bringing strong suits against Republicans;
3) Firing USAs because they refused to prosecute Democrats;
4) Inference: Some USAs were probably encouraged to bring cases against Democrats which were not strong enough or important enough to bring without political pressure;
5) Firing USAs for not prosecuting bogus voting fraud charges;
6) Inference: Some USAs were probably bringing cases against voting registration activists who are innocent.
This type of conduct should shock the conscience of Republicans and Democrats alike, but it won't. The political media has only just now gained interest (is this the first real front page story? So it's as important as Edwards selling his house). They will lose interest as soon as possible. And it is fundamentally a political battle about political individuals well-being, so it will not resonate with the public much.
This scandal should taint the administration among the politically engaged, but I doubt it will have the broad impact we might like, even though it strongly suggests innocent people are being prosecuted right now for political reasons.
DjMoonbat: This story has been exploding for the last several days. There's more and more hard, detailed evidence that the DA firings were politically motivated, and also that other DAs frequently initiated politcally-motivated, mertless prosecutions for voting fraud. There were many lies to the press and some lies to Congress, including by Gonzales, I think. There have also been several documented improper attempts to indluence DAs.
I've had my heart broken approximately 10 million times when I've told myself that THIS time, the BushCo propensity for atrocities would catch up with them.
Since the president can fire U.S. Attorneys for anything, I'm not going to pin my hopes too much on nailing them for politically-motivated firings. And since one man's politically motivated firing is another man's dissatisfaction over insufficient enthusiasm for prosecuting voter fraud, I'll be pretty surprised if the charge of lying to Congress sticks, too. I'd loooove to be proved wrong, though.
The Washington Post blockbuster might have been a bit too explosive for editors. The last line of the article as quoted by Kevin Drum is no longer there on www.washingtonpost.com
Drum quotes
"There is some risk that we'll lose the authority, but if we don't ever exercise it then what's the point of having it?" Sampson wrote to a White House aide. "(I'm not 100 percent sure that Tim was the guy on which to test drive this authority, but know that getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl etc.)".
I see
"There is some risk that we'll lose the authority, but if we don't ever exercise it then what's the point of having it?" Sampson wrote to a White House aide.".
Maybe a copy editor was outraged by Mr Sampson's eccentric punctuation.
Marshall is a force of nature.
He seems to believe that Gonzalez' resignation is in the bag. We'll see...
DJ Moonbat --
I've only been partly following the story, but there are a few layers here. The first layer is the factual misstatements coming from the White House. When people first started crying foul about the unprecedented sacking of eight USAs in one whack, Alberto Gonzalez dismissed it as an "overblown personnel matter" -- in an editorial in the USA Today, no less. Various people made statements to congress along the same lines, and swore up and down that the White House had nothing to do with the firings. That has now been shown to be demonstrably false. Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and possibly Bush himself were all over this.
The obstruction of justice angle, on the other hand, has less to do with the White House than with state Republican officials, who apparently made inappropriate "inquiries" into several cases that bore directly on tightly contested elections.
And then there's the Patriot Act angle, which, while not illegal, casts an additional pall of sleaze over the entire proceedings. It looks increasingly clear that the Administration slipped a provision into supposedly anti-terrorist legislation that allows them to place cronies into US attorney slots without senate oversight. I know, shocker.
So, I was just discussing this with some Republicans I know, and (not surprisingly) they responded with the tried and true "Clinton did it!", referencing him sacking a bunch of attorneys in 1993. Anyone remember this, and whether it's a relevant comparison?
My immediate thought is that there's a difference between a clean sweep when you take office as opposed to specific political firings in the middle of terms for people not investigating your political opponents like you'd asked them to. But I'm curious what people here thought.
Various people made statements to congress along the same lines, and swore up and down that the White House had nothing to do with the firings.
Ah, see, there's the actual misrepresentation I was looking for. There were specific denials of WH involvement? Sweet, let the sacking of Gonzo begin.
And since one man's politically motivated firing is another man's dissatisfaction over insufficient enthusiasm for prosecuting voter fraud
but the argument tilted in favor of the "politically motivated" when it became known that the firings were directed not by anybody at the US Dept of Justice, but by Karl Rove and the White House political office. And that the complaints about "prosecuting voter fraud" came mainly (maybe exclusively) from state GOP chairmen, involving cases of little or no merit, and timed to do effect the most damage in locally close politcal races.
It's extremely difficult to ignore the "political movitvation" aspects of this considering the parties who clamored for the replacements, the dubious nature of the cases that they complained about, and the clumsy Administration attempts to cover it up.
How crazy is Harriet Miers? Jesus. When Karl Rove tells you not to go overboard...
But of course they nominated her for the Supreme Court.
How crazy is Harriet Miers?
Well, she once said she thought Bush was the smartest man she'd met. Kinda says it all.
By itself, the press will not make too much stink here, a few reports and several editorials.
Democratic leaders can make something of it. One angle is political persecution of voter registration activists and protecting GOP frauds. The second is mysterious provenance of the clause that allowws the President to nominate the attorneys w/o input of Congress and judges. The third is the use of the clause that has zero to do with national security. The public was ready to accept the craziest provisions in the name of national security, but now the paranoia is largely gone and immitations of Putins's behavior may turn up to be unpopular.
Marshall is a moderate who picks his fights carefully, and he has good record on Social Security. I would love to see some scalps.
Here's where things get interesting. While this IMO is pretty far down on the list of bad things done by the Bush Administration (I mean it's real bad, but there is lots of competition), (1) the president's fingerprints are on it to a greater degree than some other scandals/mistakes, (2) unlike so much that's happened w/r/t the war, Congress has clean hands, (4) it's the kind of thing that, especially as more evidence comes out, Republican congressmen are going to have a tough time defending, and (4) it fits more comfortably in the realm of impeachable offenses than do previous misdeeds.
But there still are barriers to impeachment, the biggest one of which is a monster named Cheney.
several administration officials have been lying to congress
Will somebody please use this as an excuse to put Cheney and Bush under oath? Clinton was impeached 'cause he lied under oath. The reason why Cheney and Bush have escaped committing such a crime is that they've been able to weasle out of being under oath. Put 'em under oath and ask the right questions -- one should be able to catch those two mendacious scamps in a lie.
The reason why Cheney and Bush have escaped committing such a crime is that they've been able to weasle out of being under oath. Put 'em under oath and ask the right questions -- one should be able to catch those two mendacious scamps in a lie.
Or even worse, for them, the truth.
There is now an intrade contract on the Gonzales resignation.
You guys should invest in that market. Don't just speculate put your money where your mouths are.
Also you may want to ask intrade to create - a Gonzales impeached contract if it looks like he's going to dig in his heels.
to pick up on somecallmetim's original comment, i was among those who feared that a democratic victory in congress would put the dems in a position where their fingerprints would be all over the sure-to-get-worse economy and iraq, and that seemed too high a price to pay for the power of the subpoena.
i was wrong.
the bracing power of congressional oversight is why this story may well have legs: that, and the fact that there appears to be an actual paper trail.
Doug T, just to pick up on the point: firing all the US attorneys when a new administration takes office is no different than "firing" the previous administration's cabinet. Clinton did it in 1993, Bush did it in 2001, and i'd be willing to bet that reagan did it in '81, carter in '77, nixon on '69 and so on.
Even firing attorneys for cause is perfectly legitimate.
What is not legitimate is firing attorneys because they were insufficiently loyal to a political agenda. and of course it's not legitimate to compare that kind of firing to a typical change-of-administration change out of personnel.
and especially, of course, it's a felony to lie to congress about it....
What is not legitimate is firing attorneys because they were insufficiently loyal to a political agenda.
Well, it's kind of weird. Legally, the administration can fire these guys for anything; but that's not quite the same as "legitimate" in this case, is it? The could've just come clean, and been in the clear legally. But it would have sounded really, really bad; so they lied. Arguably, it's the same thing that happened in the Plame incident.
And they are called conservatives because . . . ? The only answer to deconstructionist poisin is that we have traditions of not abusing power and institutions that work to prevent such abuse. We don't start wars, we don't torture folks, we follow the rule of law, we obey the precept of eparation of powers, prosecutors exercise their charging discretion without regard for political considerations . . . etc.
These "conservatives" have no respect for the institutions of government.
I trace it back to the God thing. We're on God's side, so we don't need your stinking traditions.
I propose that in future we should insist on an irony test for all presidential candidates. What would they conserve?
dj moonbat, i think there's something important to remember about these firings: they were intended to take advantage of the Patriot Act loophole of not requiring senate confirmation of the replacements.
they were intended to take advantage of the Patriot Act loophole of not requiring senate confirmation of the replacements.
I think it's the other way around: the PATRIOT Act loophole was inserted intentionally to permit the complete politicization of the Justice department. They weren't just exploiting it after the fact; the whole reason they wanted that power was for just this kind of thing (well, except that they wanted to fire all the U.S. Attorneys at once, presumably to fill the slots entirely from the ranks of the Federalist Society).
US Attorneys can be fired for anything, in a sense, but there are things it's not proper to ask them to do, and you can't fire them for not doing those things. The US Attorneys are not the President's house legal staff; they have institutional responsibilities.
Betcha it turns out that Miers wasn't in fact proposing firing all 93 US Attorneys. What is more likely is that she was proposing that they, as is sometimes? done with the cabinet, be asked to submit resignations so that the administration could decide which ones it wanted to keep. This dance step would avoid the unpleasantness of "firing" anyone. You just accept the resignations of the politically suspect. So much nicer.
And, by the way, this allows you set up a permanent institutional political leash over your US Attorneys who will hence forth know that they are out of job after the first term if they don't tow the mark.
Okay, so Mr. Gonzales isn't resigning yet. Alas, this is gearing up to be another "Fire Rumsfeld" moment for Dems. But the Cossacks work for the Czar ((C) J. Bradford DeLong). More to the point, given Senate Democrats' fecklessness in opposing this administration's nominees (they needed Republican cover to block Bolton), is there really any point in removing Gonzales merely so that, e.g., David "The King-President May Torture Whom He Wishes" Addington can take his place? Shining a light on this sordid mess, and pushing back against the corruption of the DoJ, is great, but be wary of defining victory as the head of the current Attorney General on a pike.
mds - I think the sentiment here is that congressional hearings would be nice. And if Bush or Cheney have to testify- even better. I would hope nobody has Gonzalez as their primary target here. He's just following orders.
I would hope nobody has Gonzalez as their primary target here. He's just following orders.
He's the highest-ranking official who might plausibly lose his/her job over this. There's no way impeachment gets ramped up over this.
Perhaps battering BushCo's slim remaining credibility is actually the "primary target," but really, forcing Abu to resign would help to achieve that, too.
Hats off to Marshall. Just saw him on Countdown. Awesome job on and off the screen!!
Comments closed March 27, 2007.
| 
Heads in the Sand
If this is a blockbuster, it's because we have a Dem Congress. We've heard as bad about the Admin before, in the past.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | March 13, 2007 11:39 AM