Released yesterday: She wanted the memo giving her unprecedented and virtually unchecked hiring and firing authority over non-civil service DoJ employees (the existence of this memo was revealed only last month by Murray Waas of the National Journal). Moreover, she okayed the memo to be sent to her "outside the system". Why would she ask that? Because she knew that … Read More
Goodling Answers Questions
Monica Goodling, a 33-year-old graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University with six months of prosecutorial experience — the woman who helped purge prosecutors who failed to be partisan enough — the woman who refused to hire attorneys because they were "too liberal" (a violation of federal law) — is testifying today. She’s weaseled her way to receiving immunity, so one … Read More
Why The Scandal Matters
N.Y. Times editorial: The Justice Department is no ordinary agency. Its 93 United States attorney offices, scattered across the country, prosecute federal crimes ranging from public corruption to terrorism. These prosecutors have enormous power: they can wiretap people’s homes, seize property and put people in jail for life. They can destroy businesses, and affect the outcomes of elections. It has … Read More
The Attorney Firing Scandal In A Nutshell
Nice summary by Marty Lederman: 1. There is little, if any, reliable evidence of any serious problem of voter fraud in the United States. 2. After the 2000 election, if not before, Karl Rove and other Republican operatives decided that Republican political prospects would be immeasurably improved if they would only repeat, as often as possible, the unsupported claim that … Read More
In Other Words: Obstruction
Murray Waas has a new story out: "The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove’s, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas." TPM has the analysis — the emails … Read More
Attorney Purge Updates
This scandal is getting out of control. hard to keep up: (1) Monica Goodling is now facing a Justice Department investigation for her role in screening career attorneys for party affiliation. The Justice Department has launched an internal investigation into whether Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s former White House liaison illegally took party affiliation into account in hiring career federal … Read More
Secret Order To Politicize DOJ Uncovered
Murray Waas has a fascinating article in the National Review describing a secret order by Alberto Gonzales that delegated unprecedented control over the hiring and firing of senior Justice Department officials–including those who oversee the DOJ criminal division–to Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling. This order bypassed the traditional authority given to the deputy attorney general, the associate attorney general, and … Read More
Goodling’s Got Immunity
Now that she won’t go to jail, will the graduate of Pat Robertson’s Regent University come to Jesus and, you know, tell the truth? By 21-10, the House oversight committee voted to issue a subpoena to Rice to compel her story on the Bush administration’s claim, now discredited, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. Moments earlier in the committee … Read More
Gonzales Resignation Watch
I have little to say about this. By all accounts, he tanked yesterday. His story was a concoction of "mea culpa" combined with "I’m not responsible" combined with "I don’t recall". Bottom line is that Gonzales is either lying about his role in the U.S. Attorney firings, or he is incompetent in that he was "out of the loop" about … Read More
The Dog Ate My Homework
As an attorney who deals with subpoenas and requests for electronic documents on a regular basis, I can tell you that if a private company — especially one that is required by law or court order to retain documents, emails, and other information — told the government that it had "mishandled" its email retention system such that business-related emails were … Read More
What SilentPatriot Says
at Crooks & Liars: LARRY BIRKHEAD IS THE FATHER* My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Can we please, please move on to more pressing matters now? Like, say, the Attorney General of the United States being subpoenaed in a scandal that very well may result in his resignation? Please? * I told eveybody it wasn’t me. Now … Read More
About The Truth
As his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee approaches, it looks like Alberto is in deep doo-doo and his cramming sessions are not paying off: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has virtually wiped his public schedule clean to bone up for his long-awaited April 17 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee—a session widely seen as a crucial test as to whether … Read More
Tangled Web, And All That
One of the humorous side-stories to the U.S. Attorney purge scandal involves the firing of the U.S. Attorney from the state of New Mexico, David Iglesius. As former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson admitted last week, there was no real performance reason to fire Iglesias. In fact, it’s indisputable at this point that Iglesias was actually fired because he … Read More
Sampson Is Screwing Gonzales
I can’t watch it live (here’s a nice rundown from US News), but the updates I get are pretty cool: 11:37 Update: Schumer’s up now for questioning. He wants to know about Gonzales’ statements about the process. Sampson says that there were repeated discussions about the firings, starting in January 2005 through the firings. "I spoke with him every day," … Read More
Too Clever By Half
JMM: If the president’s aides were using RNC emails or emails from other Republican political committees, they can’t have even the vaguest claim to shielding those communications behind executive privilege. Yeah. I don’t see anyway around that. UPDATE: The Carpetbagger raises two other issues regarding the White House staffs use of RNC emails: There’s still the Presidential Records Act to … Read More