Following White House liaison Monica Goodling, chief of staff Kyle Sampson, Acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, and his chief of staff Michael Elston, Brad Schlozman has resigned.
Does he need more time with his family?
....hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
He said, she said, continues...
Goodling said that Kyle Sampson had told her that there was no problem with taking politics into account in hiring immigration judges. And the reason, he said, was that the department's Office of Legal Counsel had said it was OK.[...]
As Marty Lederman puts it, "Something is happening here, but we don't know what it is. Goodling obviously knew that her conduct in this regard was dubious, and testified about it even though no one had raised any question about it previously, so as to ensure that her immunity would extend to this episode, as well. (She was very well-advised by John Dowd.)"
To hear Goodling tell it, she was assured by the attorney general's chief of staff that there was a legal basis for stocking the nation's immigration courts with political loyalists -- when no such legal basis existed. And the Justice Department now disavows this activity all together.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides -- who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys -- extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department.
Those two aides, Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson, both resigned rather quickly when the whole firing issue hit the news stands.
The existence of the order suggests that a broad effort was under way by the White House to place politically and ideologically loyal appointees throughout the Justice Department, not just at the U.S.-attorney level. Department records show that the personnel authority was delegated to the two aides at about the same time they were working with the White House in planning the firings of a dozen U.S. attorneys, eight of whom were, in fact, later dismissed.A senior executive branch official familiar with the delegation of authority said in an interview that -- as was the case with the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the selection of their replacements -- the two aides intended to work closely with White House political aides and the White House counsel's office in deciding which senior Justice Department officials to dismiss and whom to appoint to their posts. "It was an attempt to make the department more responsive to the political side of the White House and to do it in such a way that people would not know it was going on," the official said.
Well, oops.
I think we have Josh Marshall and his alert readers to thank for that not working out.
As was the case with the fired U.S. attorneys, the employees targeted for dismissal would never know that they had been selected by the White House or the Justice Department aides, according to records and interviews.The department's Office of Legal Counsel feared that such an unconditional delegation of authority was unconstitutional, the documents show. As a result, the original delegation was rewritten so that in its final form the order required "any proposed appointments or removals of personnel" be "presented to the Attorney General... for approval, and each appointment or removal shall be made in the name of the Attorney General."
What on earth was Gonzo getting from Dubya to make him prostitute himself so? And then, as Jon Stewart pointed out in his interview with Bill Moyers, to make himself look like a screaming idiot in front of the investigating committee and all the world. (I suppose the possibility exists that he is a screaming idiot.)
"The job of a chief of staff is to work with the White House liaison to hire qualified people," [Deputy White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto] said. "That is fairly standard practice in any large Cabinet department or agency." Fratto added, "The White House has full authority in hiring and firing presidential appointees" and "can choose to delegate that authority. There is no need for written authority to exercise that power."Asked why, if the process is routine, Gonzales issued the confidential order, Fratto responded, "I don't know why anyone would force the need to write such a memo." He referred further inquiries to the Justice Department.
Yeah. Nice try. (Fratto? What happened to haughty Miss Perino?)
It appears now that the first attorney on the Firing Squad's list was Todd Graves of Missouri, and Josh Marshall has some questions about that case:
By his own account, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) has known Graves was fired since March 2006. Meanwhile the Senate Judiciary Committee has been investigating the firings story for three months.Graves's ouster is highly relevant to that investigation. Did Bond not share this information with the Committee? If not, why not? Did committee investigators know conclusively, as Bond did, that Graves was fired. And have they spoken to him since the news broke last night?
If not, the "why not" is that Kit Bond is a Bush Republican. Ask any of your Missouri friends.
Gonzo is scheduled to testify again tomorrow. TPM Muckraker indicates that his plan is to blame it all on Kyle Sampson, and claim that he realizes in hindsight he should have been paying closer attention. Still the good little whore to Big Daddy Dubya.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Sampson said that he was collecting viewpoints from various administration officials about their views on particular US Attorneys but that he couldn't remember specifics and that no one issue was ever determinative. He also said whatever records or notes he kept about the process likely no longer exist.
"I let the attorney general and the department down. . . . I failed to organize a more effective response. . . . It was a failure on my part. . . . I will hold myself responsible. . . . I wish we could do it all over again."The witness fessed up to an expanding list of sins. He admitted that the Justice Department was trying to circumvent the Senate confirmation process. He confessed that he proposed firing Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor in the Valerie Plame leak case. "I regretted it," he explained. "I knew that it was the wrong thing to do."
But the self-sacrificing witness still managed -- inadvertently, perhaps -- to implicate Gonzales and Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove. Sampson, who resigned from the Justice Department earlier this month, admitted that Gonzales "had received a complaint from Karl Rove about U.S. attorneys in three jurisdictions." Asked about the accuracy of Gonzales's claim of non-involvement, Sampson confessed: "I don't think it's entirely accurate what he said."
But then...
"We've just received word that the Republicans have objected, under the Senate rules, to this meeting continuing," Leahy (D-Vt.) announced before angrily bringing down the gavel.Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), in the middle of questioning Sampson, was puzzled. "Does it apply to a Republican, too?" he inquired.
High comedy, that.
The GOP quickly claimed that there had been a misunderstanding, and the show went on, with the "I don't remember" defense in high gear.
It may have been a tactical effort to limit his risk of perjury, but Sampson displayed the recall of a man who recently fell off a ladder.[...]
"I can't pretend to know or remember every fact that may be of relevance," he warned at the start -- and he wasn't kidding. He used the phrase "I don't remember" a memorable 122 times.
He didn't remember if he talked about the proposed firings with the President. He didn't remember if he talked about them with Rove.
After Schumer elicited three consecutive I-don't-remembers, John Cornyn (R-Tex.) objected to the questioning style.Leahy overruled him. "We're trying to find what in heaven's name he does remember," the chairman said.
Not much.
Hey, it worked for Reagan.
Joseph Rich, formerly in the Justice Department's civil rights division would like to take this opportunity to pick a bone or two.
A destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department started long before this incident, however, as those of us who worked in its civil rights division can attest.I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws — particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies — from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.
Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed.[...]
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.
[...]
At the same time, career staff were nearly cut out of the process of hiring lawyers. Control of hiring went to political appointees, so an applicant's fidelity to GOP interests replaced civil rights experience as the most important factor in hiring decisions.
[...]
Outright hostility to career employees who disagreed with the political appointees was evident early on. Seven career managers were removed in the civil rights division. I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored.
Racial factor? Well, considering which way the racial groups tend to vote...
Corporate media pundits speculate as to how this will fly with Latino voters, but most often neglect to mention that Gonzalez was acting as hatchet man for ongoing Republican efforts to disenfranchise Black and Latino voters. More than any other tactic, systemic suppression of the Black and Latino vote is central to preserving a Republican majority in state and national politics.U.S. Attorneys are key to this subversion of voting rights. Under Republican administrations, they are expected to mount spurious investigations of voter registration and get-out-the-vote campaigns in Black and Latino precincts. Failure to do so - a refusal to pursue bogus cases with enthusiasm, energy, and the full weight of the federal government - can be fatal to a Republican U.S. Attorney's career, despite the fact that the GOP has turned up no credible evidence of significant voter fraud in minority communities.
[...]
In New Mexico, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, a Latino and a Republican, was marked for termination because he wasn't aggressive enough in criminalizing Democratic efforts to register voters in mostly Hispanic and Black precincts. In Arkansas, a U.S. Attorney on Gonzalez's hit list was replaced by a political operative whose claim to fame was his contribution to suppressing the Black vote in Florida. However, these and other facts of racial motivations in the scandal are assigned a low profile by Democratic leaders, even as they pretend to mount a full-court press against the Republicans.
From the K-Street Project to the Attorney Purge - it's all about takeover for a permanent GOP. They've slipped now. Will they fall?
Josh Marshall has some questions about one of the attorneys who replaced one of the ousted ones.
Back in 2000, did Patriot Act-appointed US Attorney Tim Griffin really say he makes the bullets in the war against Democrats?
TPM video here.
And remember Dan Dzwilewski? The San Diego FBI bureau chief who said Carol Lam's dismissal was definitely political and who was then warned to shut up?
Well, he just resigned.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
GWB43 is the name of an internet server owned by the Republican National Committee.
The White House has its own internal email system, ending in the .gov suffix, as mandated by the Presidential Records Act. The law requires that public business be conducted on a public server.
Yet documents made public in the course of the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal reveal that key Administration figures used such email addresses ending with "gwb43.com."
Waxman wants 'em. Good luck with that.
Bubble Boy, of course, doesn't even use email.
Let's see...AG Gonzales' First Boy, Kyle Sampson, takes the blame (maybe), and Monica Goodling takes a leave of absence and the 5th Amendment.
Here's a handy Attorney Purge Timeline should you need one.
Corexit: More toxic than the oil
IVAW: Iraq Veterans Against the War
