US Attorneys Firings May have Violated the Law
Attorney Adam Cohen explains in a New York Times op-ed:
It is true…that United States attorneys serve “at the pleasure of the president.” But if the attorneys were fired to interfere with a valid prosecution, or to punish them for not misusing their offices, that may well have been illegal. Some crimes that a special prosecutor might one day look at:
3. Witness Tampering. …it is illegal to intimidate Congressional witnesses. Michael Elston, Mr. McNulty’s chief of staff, contacted one of the fired attorneys, H. E. Cummins, and suggested that if Cummins kept speaking out, there would be retaliation. Mr. Cummins took the call as a threat, and sent an e-mail message to other fired prosecutors warning them of it. Several of them told Congress that if Mr. Elston had placed a similar call to one of their witnesses in a criminal case, they would have opened an investigation of it.
4. Firing the Attorneys. United States attorneys can be fired whenever a president wants, but not to corruptly obstruct, influence, or impede an official proceeding. The day the news broke that Carol Lam (US attorney in San Diego), who had already put one Republican congressman in jail, was investigating a second one, Mr. Sampson wrote an e-mail message referring to the “real problem we have right now with Carol Lam.”
1. Misrepresentations to Congress. It is illegal to lie to Congress, and also to “impede” it in getting information. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty indicated to Congress that the White House’s involvement in firing the United States attorneys was minimal, something that Justice Department e-mail messages suggest to be untrue. Alberto Gonzales made his own dubious assertion to Congress: “I would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney position for political reasons.”
2. Calling the Prosecutors. …Sarbanes-Oxley applies to anyone who corruptly “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so,” including U.S. attorney investigations. If members of Congress (i.e. Senator Pete Domenici) try to get a United States attorney to indict people he wasn’t certain he wanted to indict, or try to affect the timing of an indictment, they may be violating the law.
FYI
White House Seeking Gonzales Replacements
Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff could replace Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, GOP officials say.
more
Left Hook lest you forget Clinton had all 93 US attorneys ousted per Janet Reno and some were investigating Dems.Thats the killer of politics when one side does it its okay but when the other side does it people call foul..
Mike
That is what is wrong today. If Clinton fired AG’s in the middle of investigation it was wrong bottom line. If Bush did it is wrong. We have to demand both Parties to have ethics bottom line!
Mike,
Once again get off the tin foil. Clinton fired the attorneys at the beginning of his term just like Reagan did. What Bush did was to protect his own a**.
Wrong Caroline Clinton was also under the gun for his wheeling dealing in Arkansas. I agree with you John wrong is wrong but ethics in politics thats an oxymoron.
Mike,
Wrong again. All that imaginary whitewater stuff happened after the attorneys were fired. Newt Gingrich fired the origninal Whitewater investigator and hired Ken Starr. You should get your facts straight.
Oh, and in case the neocons lied to you about whitewater too-the final and third Whitewater prosecutor (Ray) cleared them of any wrongdoing. The neocons played you guys for chumps with that one too!
I’m glad to see you got your copy of the talking points, but the incoming President has generally replaced every US attorney when taking office.
Do either of you (Mike – John) deny this to be true?
I assume you answer “yes”, because it’s the truth. Now, did Clinton sack a handful of US Attorneys in the middle of his second term?
The answer is NO.
Lam in SanDiego convicted Duke Cunningham, and the day after she announced to the Justice Department that she’d be approving search warrants on Wilkes and Foggo, the Justice Department sent an email to the White House saying that it was time to get rid of her.
That is cut and dry right there. You cannot get around the obvious intent to obstruct justice here, and using Clinton/Bush or any other President who has historically replaced all US Attorneys upon taking office to obscure the facts in this instance is dishonest.
We’re ALL intelligent people here, all political junkies, all capable of seeing this for what it is. When Mike and John bring up Clinton firing 93 US Attorneys, JUST LIKE BUSH DID WHEN HE TOOK OFFICE, and using it as a reason to ignore what has happened here…
It causes me to lose faith in humanity to be honest. Lest we GET REAL for a couple days and stop treating politics like it was the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry…it’s about time for everyone to stop acting like children and call this what it is.
For a Republican it can be painful, but if I were in your shoes, I’d do what Andrew Sullivan and MANY OTHER conservatives have done and TELL THE TRUTH…pledge to do better in the future.
ModERATion – - – Ugh – - – John, your filter is picking up on words that shouldn’t be flagged. So annoying. This is a wordpress blog, so it’s not difficult to adjust what the spam filter looks for.
Al, its the Right Wing Conspiracy theory at work!!!!
So true! I’ve got right-wingers at my site that get through with anything and everything, but at least 1/10 of my comments here get caught up. Actually…a right-winger who did get caught up in moderation at deadissue once jokingly accused me of just that…
Anyways…John hasn’t deleted anything from me that I know of…except whatever I wrote while drunk that I can’t find anywhere on the site…
WHERE ARE MY MAIL ORDER HERB PEOPLE? heh
It is true that Bill Clinton replaced all 93 federal district attorneys, and one might have expected that after 12 years of Republican’t rule. Reagan did it too, after four years of the Carter Administration.
Perhaps Bush feels it is time to clean up after the Dubious Administration.
David,
Bush can’t get down to business as a pawn of the Democratic Party unless he undoes the Dubious Administration.
How about firing Rove for under performance?
Approval rating hovering around 30. 6 out of 10 Americans have no confidence in the Iraq diaster policy.
Lost control of the House and Senate … lost GOP control of governorships…
Rove is such bad news for Dubious.
Fire Him
Mad Dog – If Bush fired Rove at this point, he’d have an ironclad discrimination lawsuit to file…
You can’t fire someone for being gay in this country. If he was going to pull that off, he’d have had to do it once Jeff Gannon was identified correctly.
At this point, Bush is attached to turd-blossom, for better or worse.
FYI
Internal documents detail U.S. attorney firings
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Internal Justice Department documents show seemingly conflicting views within the Justice Department over some of the U.S. attorney firings and stiff resistance from at least a few of the prosecutors who were dismissed.
The first batch of the 3,000 pages released Monday night to Congress shed light on the highly controversial process that led to the firings and the tangled, shifting explanations for the dismissals, which have created a political firestorm on Capitol Hill.
Justice Department officials insist the documents back up their continuing assertion that performance issues, not politics, were the driving force behind the dismissals.
“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,” said Tasica Scolinos, the Department’s director of public affairs.
The first available wave of the newly disclosed documents do not show any further involvement in the dismissals by White House operatives. However, they do show a blizzard of e-mail traffic among Justice Department officials with varying degrees of concern about the repercussions of the unusual firings of eight U.S. attorneys.
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty last month told the senators that of the fired U.S. attorneys only Bud Cummins, the U.S. attorney in Arkansas, had not been dismissed for his performance but because the administration wanted a politically connected individual who had ties to Karl Rove to take over the post.
The new documents show that an aide traveling with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in South America in February at the time of the McNulty testimony messaged the Justice Department that Gonzales was upset with McNulty’s testimony about Cummins.
The Justice Department official who sent the e-mail, Deputy Public Affairs Director Brian Roehrkasse, issued a statement Monday night acknowledging “the Attorney General was upset because he believed Bud Cummins’ removal involved performance considerations, and it was that aspect of (McNulty’s) testimony the Attorney General was questioning.”
Justice Department officials Monday night said the difference stemmed from the fact that Gonzales had not been thoroughly briefed, but the officials declined to say whether Gonzales and McNulty continue to have differing views, or whether the Justice Department has yet reached a conclusion on whether Cummins’ dismissal resulted from politics or performance.
In the Justice Department statement released Monday night, Scolinos called the “virtually unprecedented step” of producing thousands of pages of sensitive internal documents an effort by officials to be “transparent and forthcoming to Congress.”
But in the first reaction from Capitol Hill, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Michigan, made clear he was not satisfied.
“While I appreciate the [Justice] 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,” Conyers said.
“This investigation has uncovered serious charges of misleading Congress, obstructing justice and abuse of power,” he said. “We are prepared to press ahead to get to the bottom of this growing scandal, using subpoenas if necessary.” (Watch GOP Sen. Arlen Specter criticize Gonzales )
The documents reveal that one of the fired U.S. attorneys, Margaret Chiara of Grand Rapids, Michigan, was clearly upset with her firing and asked that any reference to poor performance be dropped.
“I respectfully request that you reconsider the rationale of poor performance as the basis for my dismissal,” Chiara said. “It is in our mutual interest to retract this erroneous explanation while there is still time.”
In a series of e-mails, Chiara then asked if the Justice Department could find another job for her and McNulty inquired whether that might be possible.
Her term ended last week, and she has not been hired.
Other e-mails released Monday night show clear conflicts between top Justice Department officials and U.S. Attorneys Carol Lam in San Diego, California, and John McKay in Seattle, Washington.
Supporters of both Lam and McKay have been staunch defenders of their professional performance and suggested political interference was a factor in their dismissals.
The e-mails, however, show internal dissatisfaction with Lam for her priorities and prosecution records, and with McKay for his handling of a terrorism information sharing program.
Mad Dog
Without Rove and Cheney Bush would be like a scared schoolboy.
Cheney Bush
led by the “faggot” Rove
Why didn’t Anne Coulter out Rove?
Coulter can’t “out” someone who might “out” her back!
FYI
It was bad enough to fire people for political reasons, but to lie about job performance of the the people is just wrong!
New E-Mail Gives Details on Attorney Dismissals
WASHINGTON, March 19 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales was “extremely upset” that his deputy told Congress last month that a federal prosecutor had been fired for no reason, according to e-mail released Monday by the Justice Department.
Mr. Gonzales believed that the prosecutor, H. E. Cummins III, the United States attorney for Arkansas, was dismissed for performance reasons, the e-mail suggested. But his deputy, Paul J. McNulty, testified that Mr. Cummins had been replaced to create a vacancy for J. Timothy Griffin, a political ally of the White House political adviser Karl Rove.
Little Bushie appears to be holding tight to Gonzalez. GOP massacre ahead.
FYI
GOP Braces For Testimony Fight, Likely Gonzales Exit
The White House and top GOP officials are bracing for a lengthy battle over executive privilege and the likely resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in the escalating fight over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, several key Republicans said Tuesday.
With Democrats demanding public testimony of top White House aides, including Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and the White House insisting on private interviews only, the GOP officials said the controversy over the fired prosecutors is likely to intensify and prompt Gonzales to step aside.
President Bush on Tuesday called Gonzales, offering a public show of support. And White House press secretary Tony Snow said that news reports about a search for a replacement were “flat false.”
But people involved in the process to sound out potential replacements for Gonzales said they had not talked to Snow. A GOP loyalist close to the White House said the process went on ice after Bush made his call to Gonzales. “They were reaching out,” the operative said. “Now, we’re in lockdown. We’re just waiting. They’ve reached out to everyone they need to reach out to and are waiting to get a ‘yes’ from someone.”
The operative assumption, the GOP source said, is that Gonzales will go but that he will do so on his own schedule. The first stage in finding a replacement is gauging who is available among the well-established lawyers under consideration, most of whom have previously been confirmed by the Senate. “I think it is going to come down to who is willing to take the job,” said the source.
Meanwhile, support for Gonzales on Capitol Hill continued to wane. A member of the House Republican leadership, speaking on the condition of anonymity at a luncheon with 13 reporters, spoke scathingly of the “drip, drip, drip” produced by the furor over the attorneys.
“I can’t imagine that he’s going to be around a whole lot longer,” said the House Republican leader. “It seems like a leak about developing a short list of replacements, combined with a direct call from the president, are sort of the two indications that your days are numbered. I just don’t see him lasting through this current maelstrom.
“There’s already Republicans on the Hill calling for him to quit and there’s certainly not a deep well of support on the Hill for him,” the leader said. About the administration’s dealings with Congress, the leader said, “They’re never really reached out.”
Bush’s call essentially leaves it up to Gonzales whether to try to hang on to his office at a time when Democratic lawmakers are gunning for him and many Republicans have given up on him.
A Republican source said Tuesday that Bush is “unmoved,” and that Gonzales will not be pushed out or fired. Bush telephoned him from the Oval Office at 7:15 a.m., and aides said he “reaffirmed his strong support and backing” for his longtime friend and aide.