Keep an eye on this...

Wonder what the U.S Attorneys scandal is all about? Here's an example.

New York Times:

House leaders are beginning an investigation this week of the prosecution of Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama who was imprisoned in June on federal corruption charges. The case could become the centerpiece of a Democratic effort to show that the Justice Department engaged in political prosecutions.

Republicans strongly deny the suggestion, and as Mr. Siegelman enters the fourth month of his 88-month sentence, the case is becoming a bitter flash point between Democratic officials and the Bush administration.

Jill Simpson, an Alabama lawyer who signed an affidavit saying she overheard a Republican political operative connect the prosecution of Mr. Siegelman to Karl Rove, will be questioned under oath this week by investigators for the House Judiciary Committee. The chairman of that committee, Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, has asked the Justice Department to turn over its documents in the case.

The department has refused his request, saying in a letter last week to the committee that “we want to avoid any perception that the conduct of our criminal investigations and prosecutions is subject to political influence.”

Yes- Soviet style political prosecutions from the Bush Administration.

Stonewalling

Associated Press:

President Bush is expected to claim executive privilege to prevent two more White House aides from testifying before Congress about the firings of federal prosecutors.

Thursday is the deadline for Karl Rove, Bush's top political adviser, to provide testimony and documents related to the firings, under a subpoena from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Also subpoenaed was White House political aide J. Scott Jennings. The Justice Department included both men on e-mails about the firings and the administration's response to the congressional investigation.

White House Counsel Fred Fielding has consistently said that top presidential aides -- present and past -- are immune from subpoenas and has declared the documents sought off-limits under executive privilege.

The Divine Right of Kings.

Abu Gonzales Must Be Removed From Office

Just read this Washington Post analysis of his latest disastrous testimony before Congress. This man is the nation's top law enforcement officer. It is absolutely beyond belief.

Nixonian

AP:

President Bush, moving toward a constitutional showdown with Congress, asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers' demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors.

Bush's attorney told Congress the White House would not turn over subpoenaed documents for former presidential counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor. Congressional panels want the documents for their investigations of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' stewardship of the Justice Department, including complaints of undue political influence.

The Democratic chairmen of the two committees seeking the documents accused Bush of stonewalling and disdain for the law, and said they would press forward with enforcing the subpoenas....

''Increasingly, the president and vice president feel they are above the law,'' said Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. He portrayed the president's actions as ''Nixonian stonewalling.''

Hmmm. How did Congress deal with Nixon?

Long Overdue

The Hill:

House Judiciary Committee Democrats warned yesterday they would pursue a contempt of Congress motion if the White House fails respond to subpoenas for testimony and documents related to the firings of U.S. attorneys last year.

The deadline for a response is Thursday, June 28. If the White House does not comply, it opens the possibility of a constitutional showdown between the two branches. In an ironic twist, the Department of Justice (DoJ) would be called on to enforce the contempt motion.

During yesterday’s testimony by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, panel Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) asked McNulty whether he would enforce such a motion. McNulty responded that he would recuse himself from handling such matters because of an internal DoJ investigation into the U.S. attorneys matter.

Finallly, It Begins!

AP:

The chairmen of two congressional committees issued subpoenas Monday for testimony from former White House counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor on their roles in the firings of eight federal prosecutors.

Democrats probing whether the White House improperly dictated which prosecutors the Justice Department should fire also are subpoenaing the White House for all relevant documents.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont issued Taylor's subpoena for her testimony July 11. His counterpart in the House, Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan, issued a subpoena for Miers' testimony the next day.

Three Bloggers To Read, Today

Digby.

CanYouBeAngryAndStillDream.

Tod Westlake.

More Perjury From Our Chief Law Enforcement Officer

Washington Post:

The Justice Department considered dismissing many more U.S. attorneys than officials have previously acknowledged, with at least 26 prosecutors suggested for termination between February 2005 and December 2006, according to sources familiar with documents withheld from the public.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified last week that the effort was limited to eight U.S. attorneys fired since last June, and other administration officials have said that only a few others were suggested for removal.

In fact, D. Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales's chief of staff, considered more than two dozen U.S. attorneys for termination, according to lists compiled by him and his colleagues, the sources said.

DOJ Tells Senate Judiciary Committee It Doesn't Have Subpoenaed Rove Documents

CNN:

The Justice Department on Wednesday told an angry Senate Judiciary Committee chairman it does not have documents described in a subpoena that demands all materials relating to Karl Rove's possible involvement in the U.S. attorney firings.

Instead, it said, Rove's lawyer must have them. Rove is the chief political adviser for President Bush.

The response from a top Justice Department official came just hours after the chairman, Vermont Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy and the panel's top Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chastised Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in a letter for ignoring the subpoena's Tuesday deadline. (Read full story)

"You ignored the subpoena, did not come forward today, did not produce the documents, and did not even offer an explanation for your noncompliance," the two senators wrote in the letter, sent Tuesday night.

"The committee intends to get to the truth."

The dog ate my homework.

Passing The Buck

It's the Bush-league way!

AP:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday he relied on his resigning deputy more than any other aide to decide which U.S. attorneys should be fired last year.

His comments come a less than a day after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty announced he would resign at the end of the summer — a decision that people familiar with the plans said was hastened by the controversy over the purge of eight prosecutors.

Democratic opponents of the Bush administration say the firings were politically motivated and have called for the resignation of Gonzales, the top U.S. law enforcement official who heads the Justice Department.

The best available evidence, thus far, tends to exonerate McNulty of direct complicity. Typical of the Bush Administration to try to shift blame to a subordinate. The buck always stops somewhere else.

Surprise, Surprise

Murray Waas, of the National Journal:

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.

The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin's appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove's role in supporting Griffin.

In one of the letters that Sampson drafted, dated February 23, 2007, the Justice Department told four Senate Democrats it was not aware of any role played by senior White House adviser Rove in attempting to name Griffin to the U.S. attorney post. A month later, the Justice Department apologized in writing to the Senate Democrats for the earlier letter, saying it had been inaccurate in denying that Rove had played a role.

Let's Hope

Seattle Times:

Two former U.S. attorneys said today they believe ongoing investigations into the dismissals last year of eight federal prosecutors could result in criminal charges against senior Justice Department officials.

John McKay, the former U.S. attorney for Western Washington, and David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney for New Mexico, also said they believe White House political operative Karl Rove and his aides instigated the dismissals and ultimately decided who among the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys should be fired.

Abu Gonzales Caught Lying- Again

Washington Post:

The former Justice Department official who carried out the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year told Congress that several of the prosecutors had no performance problems and that a memo on the firings was distributed at a Nov. 27 meeting attended by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, a Democratic senator said yesterday.

The statements to House and Senate investigators by Michael A. Battle, former director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, represent another potential challenge to the credibility of Gonzales, who has said that he never saw any documents about the firings and that he had "lost confidence" in the prosecutors because of performance problems.

Battle's statements, relayed to reporters yesterday by Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), came as Gonzales prepares for a make-or-break appearance on Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Prepared testimony released yesterday indicates Gonzales will apologize to the fired prosecutors for the way they were treated and will acknowledge that he has been "less than precise" in describing his role in the firings.

Less than precise? Is that what they're calling it, now?

More Lies

New York Times:

A Justice Department e-mail message released on Friday shows that the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales proposed replacement candidates for United States attorneys nearly a year before they were dismissed in December 2006. The department has repeatedly stated that no successors were selected before the dismissals.

The Jan. 9, 2006, e-mail message, written by D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned last month as the top aide to Mr. Gonzales, identified five Bush administration officials, most of them Justice Department employees, whose names were sent to the White House for consideration as possible replacements for prosecutors slated for dismissal.

The e-mail message and several related documents provide the first evidence that Mr. Sampson, the Justice Department official in charge of the dismissals, had focused on who would succeed the ousted prosecutors. Justice officials have repeatedly said that seven of the eight prosecutors were removed without regard to who might succeed them.

These firings were purely political. It was the politicization of Justice. It could not be more clear. This Administration makes Nixon's look like a bunch of amateurs.

And As For Those U.S. Attorneys Who WEREN'T Fired?

John Nichols, of The Nation:

The question of whether any of the 85 U.S. Attorneys who were not fired by the Bush administration may have engaged in political prosecutions blew open Tuesday, when key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee demanded files pertaining to a botched prosecution in Wisconsin.

Committee chair Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, and five other senators have asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for documents dealing with the case of a Wisconsin state employee who was tried in a case that played out during the course of the 2006 gubernatorial race in that state. Republicans used the prosecution as part of a television attack campaign aimed at defeating Democratic Governor James Doyle.

U.S. Attorney Stephen Biskupic obtained an election-season conviction of the state employee, Georgia Thompson, on charges that she steered a state contract to a Doyle donor. But a federal appeals court last week overturned that conviction with a stinging decision that complained about a lack of evidence. One of the appeals court judges said Biskupic's case was "beyond thin."

This scandal is still in the very early stages. Bush was using the Justice Department as a political attack dog. The word "Nixonian" could not be more applicable. Stay tuned.

Bloomberg/LAT Poll: Abu Gonzales Should Go, White House Staff Should Testify!

Bloomberg:

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign, most Americans say, and White House aides should be forced to testify before Congress about their involvement in the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys.

In a new Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll, conducted April 5 to 9, 53 percent of respondents said Gonzales should leave his post. Seventy-four percent said White House staff members who had discussions about the firings with Gonzales's chief of staff should testify under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which the White House has refused to allow.

Also:

In other findings, the poll showed that a strong majority of Americans believe the U.S. is on the wrong track, and President George W. Bush's approval rating was 36 percent, a record low. In addition, a majority of respondents said they disapproved of the performance of the Democratic-led Congress, in part because of continuing divisions over the war in Iraq. The poll of 1,373 adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

I'll say it again: The Democrats cannot be too aggressive in their investigations of this Administration's corruption. The public is with them! Other polls show that even though there is majority disapproval of Congress, that number has dropped significantly since the Democrats took control. It will continue to drop if they continue to fight back against Bush.

House Judiciary Committee Subpoenas Abu Gonzales

New York Times:

The House Judiciary Committee demanded more documents today from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in the panel’s inquiry into the dismissals of eight United States attorneys.

The committee’s chairman, Representative John Conyers, wrote Mr. Gonzales that the documents were being subpoenaed because the Justice Department’s cooperation so far in turning over documents “falls far short of what is needed.”

Mr. Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, said he appreciated Mr. Gonzales’s cooperation in supplying some documents to the committee’s subcommittee on commercial and administrative law. Still, Mr. Conyers said, the department has not responded fully despite weeks of negotiations with the subcommittee.

Why are they not cooperating? What are they hiding?

Abu Gonzales Given One Last Chance To Voluntarily Turn Over Evidence

TPM Muckraker:

One last chance, or the subpoenas come out.

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee along with ranking member Arlen Specter (R-PA) wrote Attorney General Alberto Gonzales yesterday to ask again for certain withheld documents relevant to the U.S. attorney firings. If Gonzales doesn't turn them over by tomorrow, the committee will issue subpoenas for them on Thursday, they write.

They have a link to the actual letter.

Politicizing the Judiciary

TPM Muckraker:

Over the weekend, the Justice Department finally turned over performance evaluations for six of the fired U.S. attorneys to the Senate Judiciary Committee. And as The New York Times reported over the weekend, they were all positive, ranging from “well regarded" to “very competent.”

That's upset already angry Dems on the committee, who threatened action if they found out the prosecutors had been well rated. In a letter sent late yesterday to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote that "these reports only serve to fuel my concerns that the Department of Justice based its decisions to fire competent and successful U.S. Attorneys because of a desire to put young politically-connected lawyers from the outside into these offices."

She attached the reports to her letter and called on Reid and McConnell to bring a bill, sponsored by Feinstein and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), that would force the administration to seek Senate confirmation of U.S. attorneys, or otherwise face having replacements appointed by a federal judge.

Click the link to read Sen. Feinstein's letter.

Sen. Schumer to investigate purge of federal prosecutors

TPM Muckraker has the video, from the Senate floor:

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), speaking on the Senate floor this afternoon, vowed to "get to the bottom" of the administration's December purge of federal prosecutors, and said that if they found that the prosecutors had indeed received positive job evaluations from the Justice Department before being booted, "there will be real trouble."

This is a very disturbing story, as President (sic) Bush used a provision of the Patriot (sic) Act to bypass otherwise required Senate confirmation, while replacing professional prosecutors- many of whom had been investigating Republican lawmakers or federal officials- with political cronies. Keep an eye on this.