The Daily Background
| The US Attorney Scandal in 15 steps for Dummies
by Arlen Parsa
When it was first reported that several US Attorneys (prosecutors) had been fired with no explanation and with almost all positive job reviews, reporters for several news organizations decided to look into it. When they did so, nobody suspected that the White House might have been involved, firing prosecutors for political reasons. Weeks later, what nobody suspected is shaping up to be accepted common knowledge.
Thanks to some serious old fashioned investigative journalism, here’s what we now know:
1. In February 2005, Harriet Miers (at that time White House Counsel) suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ Chief of Staff D. Kyle Sampson (at DoJ) that they fire all 93 US attorneys. The reasons for Miers’ suggestion are still not entirely clear. (Some in the White House now say that the attorneys were unwilling to investigate voter fraud, but this claim seems somewhat dubious, at least to me.)
2. Sampson presented the idea to his boss, Attorney General Gonzales. Gonzales said something like “dude, we totally can’t fire them all, somebody would like, notice that shit going down,” and Sampson and Miers went back to the drawing board in their quest to fire prosecutors.
3. Sampson comes up with the idea that a “limited number of U.S. attorneys could be targeted for removal and replacement, mitigating the shock to the system that would result from an across the board firing.” In other words, let’s keep firing these people (no matter how well or badly they’ve actually been doing their jobs) for the same mysterious reason, but let’s make it look like it’s for other reasons specific to them.
4. Gonzales says something like “Okay, this is totally much sneakier man, let’s do it!”
5. Operation Fire US Attorneys For No Good Reason begins, and they start looking for excuses.
6. They hit a snag in their plan. Sampson writes in a memo: “I am only in favor of executing on a plan to push some USAs out if we really are ready and willing to put in the time necessary to select candidates and get them appointed… It will be counterproductive to DOJ operations if we push USAs out and then don’t have replacements ready to roll immediately… I strongly recommend that as a matter of administration, we utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make USA appointments.” In other words, “Let’s fire these guys, but then let’s immediately appoint replacements without doing the normal Senate confirmation process that we’re supposed to do.”
7. They decide to follow Sampson’s suggestion and go back to looking for excuses.
8. New Mexico Republican Party Chair Allen Weh told Karl Rove that he was pissed at David Iglesias, a US Attorney in his state for not following up on voter-fraud allegations (whether this accusation is true or not is suspect). Weh asked Rove to get him fired. Iglesias had been pressured by two Republican members of Congress (Senator Pete Domenici and Representative Heather Wilson) to hurry up a local corruption probe of New Mexico Democrats in order to have indictments “by November” 2006– in other words so it could be used as a political issue in the election.
9. Rove apparently talks to Sampson, Gonzales and Miers and gives them the excuse they need to fire Iglesias, who is himself a Republican. The DoJ fires Iglesias. Rove’s role, the White House has now admitted, was to serve “as a conduit for complaints about federal prosecutors as House investigators declared their intention to question him about any role he may have played in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.”
10. After Iglesias is fired, they get excited and start shooting fish in a barrel. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. One of Miers staff members made a note that Domenici was “is happy as a clam” about the firing of Iglesias. Sampson writes that “Domenici is going to send over [more] names tomorrow (not even waiting for Iglesias’s body to cool).”
11. The White House hand picks replacements for the fired US Attorneys, including one of Karl Rove’s former aides.
12. Journalists notice the firings, which have no apparent purpose and are almost all directed towards prosecutors with good job records and start investigating. The scandal breaks and more connections are made.
13. A bill gets written to formally require the White House to get Senate confirmation for all US Attorneys they appoint (which had been a normal procedure before the Bush White House deviated). The White House initially objects, but after some outcry, they drop their objections. Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona objects and may still block the bill.
14. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), the New York Times, (D-DE), and others call for the Attorney General to resign. Arlen Specter (R-PA) strongly hints that he’d like Gonzales to step down.
15. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) decides he wants to hear testimony from Miers (who left the White House in January), and the aide of hers who wrote one of the memos quoted above. Schumer calls for Rove to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. That’s where we are today.
16/ You must ignore the fact that clinton fired every single one of the US Attorneys (prosecutors) he got in 1993 in exactly the same way as these 8. Not one democrat complained.
There’s a huge difference. Clinton didn’t pressure prosecutors to investigate the opposite party for political reasons and pressure them to indict members of the opposite party right before elections and then fire them when they refused to be used for political reasons.
Further, your spin has already been debunked both by members of the Clinton Administration, as well as members of the Bush Administration, specifically Alberto Gonzales’ Chief of Staff D. Kyle Sampson (who resigned yesterday), who admitted that the two incidents were not comparable, and that the Attorney General’s office had been lying and withholding information from Congress. More info here.
This is bogus. Of the eight, two were replaced because they were not putting the effort into going after voter fraud that was deemed appropriate; one was replaced for refusing to pursue death penalty cases; and was replaced for refusing to pursue immigration cases. I don’t know about the other four. All eight were replaced at the expiration of their four-year terms dictacted by law. Clinton fired all 93 IN THE MIDDLE of their four year terms, and was the only president ever to do so before or since. He fired none of them for substantive reasons, but all of them for political reasons.
Erik, you have some reading to do. You got almost all of the history completely wrong.