From The New York Times:

Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said Friday that the department would begin an internal review of the conduct of lawyers involved in the dismissals. The inquiry will be conducted jointly by the inspector general, Glenn Fine, and the Office of Professional Responsibility, a department watchdog unit.

Maybe Gonzales can get Bush to shut this one down too.

Actually, shouldn't this be re-reaffirms? Or is it re-re-reaffirms? I've lost track.

Yesterday I reported that the Justice Department had written Congress that, against the advice of Alberto Gonzales, the president had shut down an internal department investigation into the administration's wireless wiretapping program. Bush's was an unprecedented and arbitrary (and still unexplained) move.

Democrats in the Senate want to know more. So yesterday Sens. Russ Feinfold (D-WI), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Dick Durbin (D-IL) sent a letter following up.

In particular, the senators want to know the stated rationale behind Bush's decision. They also want to see documentation relevant to the stifled investigation. Why?

As they write in the letter: "Given the serious questions that have been raised about the Justice Department's credibility, we continue to believe it is important to review documents supporting the assertions in [the Justice Department's] letter."

In other words: we don't believe anything you say now, so just save your breath and hand over documentation.

Yet another lie.

One central aspect of the U.S. attorneys firing is that the Justice Department (via a staffer for then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA)) was able to slip in a provision to the Patriot Act Reauthorization bill that made it possible for the administration to appoint interim U.S. attorneys for an indefinite period without Senate confirmation. That way, the administration could install who they wanted for the rest of Bush's term -- like, say, Karl Rove's former aide.

Justice Official William Moschella told McClatchy ten days ago that he'd sought the change "without the knowledge or coordination of his superiors at the Justice Department or anyone at the White House." Just a rogue operator.

But look at what's in the emails:

However, Moschella's e-mails suggest that he discussed the need for proposed changes with other Justice Department officials on Nov. 11, 2005, around the time when the bill was being drawn up.

"We support eliminating the court's role" in appointing interim U.S. attorneys, Moschella wrote to officials, including Michael Battle, the director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, "and believe the AG should have that authority alone."

So let's start with what the major papers gleaned from the documents dumped at 7:30 last night. Then I'll return to what people found in the comments.

McClatchy hits all the high points, the main one being, of course, that Alberto Gonzales sat in on a meeting about the firings on November 27 to review the firing plan. The firings occurred ten days later. During his "I take full responsibilty but I didn't know anything about it" press conference earlier this month, Gonzales said "I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on."

The response from a DoJ spokesman is that the meeting doesn't contradict Gonzales: "This meeting concerned the roll-out of the U.S. attorney plan. The information available to us does not indicate that there was discussion at this meeting about which U.S. attorneys should or should not be on the list." Huh. Still seems to me to be a discussion about "what was going on."

There are, of course, other highlights -- an email shows public relations officials from the Justice Department and the White House apparently brainstorming about how to sell the firings to the public.

DoJ's Tasia Scolinos wrote on November 21 to the White House's Catherine Martin, little more than two weeks before the firings: "The one common link here is that three of them are along the southern border so you could make the connection that DOJ is unhappy with the immigration prosecution numbers in those districts."

Other emails between the two show Scolinos optimistic that the purge would go over quietly: "I don't see it as being a national story - especially if it phases in over a few months." Oops.

Her explanation:

Speaking with reporters on Friday evening, Ms. Scolinos said that when she sent that message she had only a fragmentary understanding of the plan to dismiss the prosecutors.

More soon.

After last Friday's document dump, Paul Kiel set up a post and discussion thread for digging through the 3000 pages for key nuggets and findings. And it was a TPM Reader who first flagged the email gap from mid-November through early December. So now we're doing it again. McClatchy News has just posted PDF copies of tonight's document dump. Pick one of the eleven pdfs and label your comment with the document and page number. So 1:13 would be for document one, page thirteen. Let the sleuthing begin.

President Bush shut down an internal Justice Department investigation into the administration's warrantless wiretapping program against the advice of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, according to a letter sent by a senior Justice Department official to Congress yesterday. To Democrats, it's yet another example of why Gonzales should step down.

The investigation, launched in January 2006 by the Department's internal watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) -- an office created in the wake of the Watergate scandal to prevent similar abuses by DoJ officials -- would have examined whether Department officials had properly reviewed the legality of the NSA's Terrorist Surveillance Program, which dates back to 2001.

But the probe was shut down when Bush denied investigators the security clearances necessary for the investigation. Such a denial was unprecedented and arbitrary.

Read more »

Some highlights from the piece just out from McClatchy:

Under President Bush, the Justice Department has backed tougher state voter identification laws and steered U.S. attorneys toward investigating voter fraud _ policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes....

Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division when it was rolling back long-standing voting rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.

Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was research director for the Republican National Committee. He's denied any wrongdoing....

Several former voting rights lawyers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of antagonizing the administration, said the division’s political employees reversed the recommendations of career lawyers in key cases and transferred or drove out most of the unit’s veteran attorneys.

And Rove's preoccupation with the issue:

Last April, while the Justice Department and the White House were planning the firings, Rove gave a speech in Washington to the Republican National Lawyers Association. He ticked off 11 states that he said could be pivotal in 2008. Bush has appointed new U.S. attorneys in nine of them since 2005: Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, Michigan, Nevada and New Mexico. U.S. attorneys in the latter four were among those fired.

Rove thanked the audience for “all that you are doing in those hot spots around the country to ensure that the integrity of the ballot is protected.” He added, “A lot in American politics is up for grabs.”...

One audience member asked Rove whether he’d “thought about using the bully pulpit of the White House to talk about election reform and an election integrity agenda that would put the Democrats back on the defensive.”

“Yes, it’s an interesting idea,” Rove responded.

Go read the whole thing.

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee extended an invitation for Alberto Gonzales' former chief of staff Kyle Sampson to testify. If he didn't want to come voluntarily, the committee said, he'd be subpoenaed.

Today, via a letter from his lawyer to the committee, he accepted -- no subpoena necessary.

"Mr. Sampson looks forward to answering the Committee's questions," the letter reads. "We trust that his decision to do so will satisfy the need of the Congress to obtain information from him concerning the requested resignations of the United States Attorneys."

The hearing will take place at 10 AM next Thursday.

Following House Democrats yesterday, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) held a press conference today to send a simple message: let's talk.

As Schumer put it:

I hope the White House recognizes a ten letter word, C-O-M-P-R-O-M-I-S-E. That’s what its all about. And now both parties at this end of Pennsylvania want to sit down and negotiate, but we’re waiting for the White House.

Schumer pointed to Sen. Arlen Specter's (R-PA) proposal to the White House yesterday as an indication that both Republicans and Democrats thought the White House offer of a private meeting with no oath and no transcript was unacceptable. Specter proposed to allow the aides to be questioned publicly by just a limited number of lawmakers without putting them under oath. "When you have the lead Democrat and the lead Republican closer to one another than the White House is to either of them, it really puts a burden on the White House," Schumer said.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) -- who's said he doesn't see what "all the hubbub is about" -- met with White House counsel Fred Fielding today to discuss the dispute.

Update: More from Sen. Feinstein:

“This is not going to go away. It’s not going to diminish. We are very serious in the pursuit of truth here. And there is only one way that we are going to get that truth. And that is in the open with a transcript, so that everybody can hear the same thing....

“What has really surprised me is the defensive mode of this White House. It’s not really called for. This is all within our right. We are the supervisory body, the oversight body. We have the right to ask these questions, we have the right to issue these subpoenas. And the stonewalling of it, I don’t think achieves anything other than encourage the American people to believe that where there is smoke there really is fire.”

We hear there's likely to be another document release from the Justice Department sometime today.

In the runup to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson lied to committee staff in order to convince them that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) "was wrong" to raise questions about the U.S. attorney firings.

The email was produced yesterday by Sen. Feinstein and demonstrates that the Justice Department did not turn over all documents relevant to the firings to Congress earlier this week, since the email was not among the 3000 pages.

In the email, which is an exchange between Sampson and committee staff, Sampson provided a series of bullet points of "the inaccuracies that Sen. Feinstein continues to put out there." They were:

- USAs were encouraged to resign "before their terms expired" -- not true;

- USAs were encouraged to resign "without cause" - no comment (but not true);

- USAs were pushed out so as to interfere with ongoing public corruption cases -- absolutely not true;

- Administration intends to go around the Senate and avoid confirmation of new USAs -- not true/facts conclusively establish as much

"None of these assertions is in any way accurate," Sampson wrote.

In fact, the U.S. attorneys were not told the reason for their firing when they were forced to resign. And although it's extremely debatable what the true cause of the firings was, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified under oath that U.S. Attorney for Little Rock Bud Cummins had been forced to resign without cause, and the Justice Department has still not produced any reason for Cummins' firing other than to install Karl Rove's former aide, Timothy Griffin in his place.

And there's clear evidence that the administration planned to "go around the Senate and avoid confirmation" of Griffin. Less than a month before writing this email, Sampson wrote to a lawyer in the White House counsel's office that the administration should respond to objections to Griffin's appointment by stalling for the remainder of Bush's term.

Read more »

Boy, where Steven Griles' heart leads, trouble follows.

Here's a copy of the criminal information filed by prosecutors this morning; it lays out the facts to which Griles pled guilty this morning.

The filing reveals that Griles was romantically involved with Italia Federici (identified as Person A) from 1998 through 2003, and that it was that relationship which led to Jack Abramoff's access to Griles while he was deputy secretary of the Interior. It also says that Griles lied to the committee to cover all that up.

Here's how it worked. Federici runs a nonprofit called Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), a conservative think tank. Since Federici was a former aide to then-Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton and was well connected in the Interior Department, Abramoff found her very useful. His clients pumped $500,00 into her organization; in return, she ensured that people inside the department knew about his clients' concerns. The person inside who was particularly helpful was Griles, the #2 there.

But Griles didn't want the Senate to know any of this. So he lied.

Read more »

How 41 Pages Helped Unseat Lam
"When an anonymously authored 41-page Border Patrol report was released by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), it became a vital cog in Republican efforts to focus attention on Lam's prosecutorial record -- an assault that ultimately brought down the prosecutor. However, the report is oddly written, with editorial comments and aphoristic tangents interspersed among graphs and statistics." (Voice of San Diego)

Read more »

From the AP:

Former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles will plead guilty to one count of obstruction of justice in the Jack Abramoff corruption investigation, The Associated Press has learned.

Griles, an oil and gas lobbyist who became an architect of President Bush's energy policies while at the Interior Department between July 2001 and July 2005, is the highest ranking Bush administration official implicated in the Washington lobbying scandal.

The former No. 2 official at the Interior Department has agreed to a felony plea admitting that he lied five times to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and its investigators about his relationship with Abramoff, people involved in the case told the AP....

And it sounds like a very good deal for Griles:

Prosecutors dropped earlier allegations that Griles did anything improper to help Abramoff or gained anything of value from the former Republican lobbyist, the AP was told. The agreement does not require Griles to help investigators with their grand jury probe....

In exchange for the plea, federal prosecutors will seek no more than a 10-month prison sentence for Griles — the minimum they could seek under sentencing guidelines — but they will agree to let him serve half that in home confinement, according to one person involved in the case.

More later. In the meantime, here's a post I wrote just after the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs released their report on Abramoff. It was immediately apparent that Griles had lied to investigators.

Every time I think this talking point has finally suffered its long-deserved death, it continues to make the rounds. So, here:

Three weeks ago, Justice Department officials settled on a "talking point" to rebut the chorus of Democratic accusations that the Bush administration had wrongly injected politics into law enforcement when it dismissed eight U.S. attorneys.

Why not focus on the Clinton administration's having "fired all 93 U.S. attorneys" when Janet Reno became attorney general in March 1993? The idea was introduced in a memo from a Justice Department spokeswoman.

The message has been effective. What's followed has been a surge of complaints on blogs and talk radio that it was the Clinton administration that first politicized the Justice Department.

The facts, it turns out, are more complicated.

The central "complicated" fact is this: the talking point is completely bogus. Read the rest of The Los Angeles Times piece for the rundown.

And by the way, here is a report from the Congressional Research Service showing that Alberto Gonzales' dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys in the middle of the term for no outstanding reason is unprecedented.

Soon after he was confirmed as Secretary of Defense, Bob Gates began to advocate closing down Guantanamo Bay, The New York Times, reports. He argued that the base "had become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantanamo would be viewed as illegitimate."

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice backed him up. But they had a powerful contingent opposing them:

Mr. Gates’s arguments were rejected after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the United States, a stance that was backed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, administration officials said.

...[T]he high-level discussions about closing Guantánamo came to a halt after Mr. Bush rejected the approach, although officials at the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the State Department continue to analyze options for the detention of terrorism suspects.

The main logic for Cheney's and Gonzales' opposition was two-fold. First and foremost was the reason that Gitmo was created, because bringing the prisoners to American soil would make things much more complicated -- because of American law. Second was that, even though Bush has said that he wants to eventually close Gitmo, "closing it would be seen as a public admission of an incorrect policy" (i.e. much better for Bush to go back on his word than reverse a disastrous policy).

For now, Gates and Rice are on the losing side of the debate. But that might not last too much longer:

Even so, one senior administration official who favors the closing of the facility said the battle might be renewed.

“Let’s see what happens to Gonzales,” that official said, referring to speculation that Mr. Gonzales will be forced to step down, or at least is significantly weakened, because of the political uproar over the dismissal of United States attorneys. “I suspect this one isn’t over yet.”

With subpoenas at the ready, House Democrats wrote White House counsel Fred Fielding today to tell him that they "remain committed to seeking a cooperative resolution."

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and subcommittee chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA), who oversaw a vote yesterday to authorize the issuance of subpoenas for Karl Rove and other White House officials, signed the letter. You can read it here.

Under the solution Fielding laid out in a letter sent Tuesday, Rove and others would be offered to the committee in closed meetings, with a limited number of participants, with no oath and with no transcript. The letter also said that the White House would not turn over any internal White House communications.

Democrats have said no deal. "[W]e cannot accept your proposal for a number of reasons, and would sincerely hope that your office will work with us," says the letter sent today.

The letter concludes with a request that the White House not dispose of any relevant documents: "In the meantime, we also ask that you ensure the preservation of relevant White House documents, as defined in our March 9 letter."

It's official, this is a talking point. Just to show that this morning was no slip-up, here's Tony Snow during today's briefing:

Q If it's behind closed doors, what's the problem?

MR. SNOW: The thing that we have said all along is, we think that you ought to have the ability for members of Congress to get information in a way that also does not create precedence, and is going to have a chilling effect for presidential advisors to be able to give their full and fair advice to the President of the United States. We think that the compromise we shaped enables us to fulfill that obligation to the President, and to the public in terms of first-rate advice from the White House and the people working in the White House, and at the same time, allows Congress to do what it has to do, which is conduct oversight. There is nothing that says Congress has to have television; it says that Congress does have oversight responsibilities and needs to get at the facts.

Furthermore, the people who are first and foremost in the decision loop here, the folks at the Department of Justice, they aren't going to be out. I mean, they're going to be out, they're going to be testifying, they're offering all their documentation, as well.

Q They get to be in public, but you want your guys behind closed doors.

MR. SNOW: There are -- in this particular case, the Department of Justice -- the Congress does have legitimate oversight responsibility for the Department of Justice. It created the Department of Justice. It does not have constitutional oversight responsibility over the White House, which is why by our reaching out, we're doing something that we're not compelled to do by the Constitution, but we think common sense suggests that we ought to get the whole story out, which is what we're doing.

Update: Steve Benen provides a counterpoint: "...based on Snow’s comments today, this isn’t the executive privilege argument, this is the executive privilege argument on crack."

OK, just for the record, I think this is the final answer on this question of an 18-day gap in the Justice Department emails.

The gap supposedly occurred between November 15, 2006 when the Justice Department asked for White House approval for the purge plan, and December 4, when the White House gave the green light. DOJ spokesman Brian Roehrkasse has responded that it's less a gap than a "lull."

In any case, here are all the emails that readers have found in the interim:

Yesterday, we turned up a November 29th email concerning a DoJ evaluation of U.S. Attorney for San Francisco Kevin "Company Man" Ryan.

Thinkprogress turned up an email chain between DoJ officials regarding obscenity prosecutions between November 20th and the 22nd.

Here's another email from December 1 with an exchange between a DoJ official and former Karl Rove aide Tim Griffin, about when Griffin would start work as the U.S. Attorney for Little Rock. We've also found a similar email between the same two on November 16th.

So that's that. Four email exchanges over the 18 day period.

Now, of course, the really interesting email traffic in this period would have been within the White House. But the administration is determined not to turn that over.

The Hill had an interesting take on the looming legal battle between the White House and Congress this morning:

In an e-mail dated Nov. 15, 2006, Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, asked then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers and her deputy, William Kelley, whether he had the green light to go forward with the firing plan.

Miers responded that she was “not sure whether this will be determined to require the boss’s attention.” Her e-mail ended with the words: “We will see. Thanks.”

Sampson, who resigned last week, responded with a critical question: “Who will determine whether whether [sic] this requires the President’s attention?”...

The e-mail exchange is particularly relevant to Bush’s case because the Supreme Court has provided only limited protection for executive privilege. It acknowledges the need to protect communications between high-ranking government officials and those who advise and assist them, but it has also ruled that the public interest can outweigh that need in “non-military” and “non-diplomatic” discussions. Critics of the U.S. attorney firings argue that Bush’s case for executive privilege would be significantly weaker if his aides never discussed the plan for the firings with him.

In response to a barrage of questions from reporters yesterday, White House spokesman Tony Snow said only that Bush had “no recollection of [the firings] ever being raised with him.”

Here's The Washington Post this morning on what happens next:

If the White House refuses to comply, the judiciary committees will meet in coming weeks to decide whether to issue citations for contempt of Congress. If they do, the full Senate and House would have to follow suit.

That would set in motion the extraordinary spectacle of Congress enlisting the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to impanel a grand jury to seek the indictment of administration officials over their refusal to testify on the firings of eight of his colleagues.

Constitutional scholar Tony Snow on ABC this morning:

The executive branch is under no compulsion to testify to Congress, because Congress in fact doesn't have oversight ability. So what we’ve said is we’re going to reach out to you – we’ll give you every communication between the White House, the Justice Department, the Congress, anybody on the outside, any kind of communication that would indicate any kind of activity outside, and at the same time, we’ll make available to you any of the officiels you want to talk to …knowing full well that anything they said is still subject to legal scrutiny, and the members of Congress know that.

Mark it on the calendar. The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to hear from Kyle Sampson (aka "the fall guy"), Alberto Gonzales' recently resigned chief of staff, at an open hearing next Thursday.

In a letter sent today to Sampson's lawyer signed by committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and ranking member Arlen Specter (R-PA), the committee requested Sampson's "assurance" that he "will appear voluntarily at that time and that a subpoena will not be necessary." The committee has already voted to authorize such a subpoena last week.

Sampson will be the sole witness at the hearing.

He makes a point. Sure, his leadership at the Justice Department has perverted the rule of law in an attempt to turn the nation's top law enforcement officials into agents of the Republican Party... but think of the children.

It looks like the high level Republican official convicted for his role in the New Hampshire phone jamming might get off on a technicality.

An appeals court yesterday reversed the conviction of James Tobin. Tobin has been sentenced to 10 months in prison, 2 years probation, and a $10,000 fine, but has stayed out of prison during the appeal.

In a decision that turned on the technicalities of the statute under which Tobin was convicted, the First Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the case to the district court to hash out the issue. It was not a total victory for Tobin's lawyers, who had sought an acquittal.

But a lawyer friend describes the decision as a major hit to the prosecution:

OK, I read it. This is a big deal, more than just appellate ping pong.

The conviction is overturned because of flawed jury instructions. So the government would have to retry Tobin, but the language of the ruling pretty strongly suggests that the Circuit Court is not convinced that the statute applies here, a position the district court is likely to consider carefully in entertaining any motion from Tobin to dismiss.

If I were a prosecutor, I'd be hard-pressed to retry the case. Even if you managed to get the case to trial again in front of the district judge, you have a very skeptical circuit court waiting for another appeal.

Tobin may very well walk.

You can read a copy of the decision here. And this is an invitation for you lawyers out there to weigh in in the comments.

There you go. The Senate Judiciary Committee just voted to authorize the issuance of subpoenas for White House officials. As with the House committee, there's going to be one last round of negotiations before the committees pull the trigger.

And the two parties have a long way to go in those negotiations. Here, for instance, is Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) characterization of the White House's offer for Karl Rove and other White House officials to testify behind closed doors, not under oath, and without a transcript: "What they are offering is nothing, nothing, nothing."

Here's the video:

Prosecutors Says Bush Appointees Interfered
"The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government's racketeering case. Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government's claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers." (Washington Post)

Read more »

It's almost too perfect. The only U.S. attorney fired by the administration in December who undeniably had performance issues was begrudingly added to the list at the last minute -- and only then because of a federal judge's threat that he would go to Congress with complaints about the prosecutor's performance.

The Los Angeles Times tells the story of San Francisco's Kevin Ryan today, who, as the scandal over the firings began to simmer early this year, telephoned the Justice Department to assure them that he's still a "company man."

Unlike seven other fired federal prosecutors who may have run afoul of the administration for political reasons, San Francisco U.S. Atty. Kevin Ryan was a team player for Bush and had influential Republican support. A friend of the president even went to bat for Ryan after his firing.

"You would have to know Kevin," said UC Hastings College of the Law professor Rory Little. "You can't find a stronger supporter of the Bush administration agenda."

His tenure, however, was plagued by morale problems and accusations that he was a bad manager. A number of the office's most experienced lawyers left....

Even with the unrest, Ryan's support in Washington held during the first few months that planning for the ousters was underway. In an e-mail from D. Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales, to Harriet Miers in March 2005, Ryan was in a category described as "strong U.S. Attorneys who have produced, managed well, and exhibited loyalty to the President and Attorney General." Other U.S. attorneys who were later fired were listed in a column recommending termination.

The following January, Sampson added Ryan to a list of federal prosecutors who might be removed based on performance evaluations. But he was left off later firing lists in September and November, e-mails show.

Ryan only was added to the list in early December, after a federal judge warned the Justice Department that she was "going to ask members of Congress to get her a copy of the blistering evaluations the department had done of Ryan earlier that year." The emails strongly suggest that Ryan was fired in order to prevent that from happening.

Just let that sink in. In the only case where there was a strong case for firing, the DoJ had to be extorted to do it.

It was not always that way at the DoJ. Remember that, before he left in August of 2005, then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey* generated his own list of U.S. attorneys to be fired. Only his list was completely different from the list finally generated by Alberto Gonzales' deputy, Kyle Sampson -- save one name: Kevin Ryan.

U.S. News explained the discrepancy:

In principle, [a former Justice Department official] says, Comey was not opposed to removing incompetent people.

However, Comey's definition of incompetence turned out to be quite different from Sampson's and had nothing to do with politics, says the former official.

*Update: This erroneously read "Paul McNulty" earlier, who's the current Deputy Attorney General.

We reported earlier that people were asking questions about the Justice Department's handling of the Jack Abramoff investigation. Now New Hampshire Democrats are raising questions about another DoJ investigation into Republican wrongdoing -- the New Hampshire phone jamming case.

In a detailed, 10-page letter to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) signed by Kathleen Sullivan, chair of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, and Paul Twomey, a lawyer for the Democrats, they argue that the investigation, which targeted prominent operatives in the Republican Party, was stalled and mishandled.

On Election Day in 2002, Republicans schemed to jam the phone banks for Democratic get out the vote efforts. Two Republicans involved in the plan pled guilty, and James Tobin, formerly the New England Regional Political Director for the Republican National Committee, was convicted for his role. The case took years to play out; the first guilty pleas in the case were not until the summer of 2004, and Tobin was not indicted until after the 2004 election.

One of the reasons the investigation was stalled, Democrats argue, is that "all decisions had to be reviewed by the Attorney General himself" -- first John Ashcroft and then Alberto Gonzales. To back up that claim, the Democrats say that lawyers working on the case were told by prosecutors that delays in the case were due to the extreme difficulty in obtaining authorization from higher levels at DOJ for any and all actions in the case.

A lawyer for one of the Republicans in the case backs up that claim. John Durken, the lawyer for Allen Raymond, a Republican whose consulting firm managed the jamming, says that the lead prosecutor in the case told him during one meeting that Ashcroft was involved in every decision. "He said, 'Every decision in this case goes all the way up to Ashcroft’s desk.'" Durken told me that such a fact didn't "surprise" him, given the political nature of the case.

Read more »

As Josh noted and The Politico reported last night, there appeared to be an 18-day gap in the emails released by the Justice Department Monday night, a gap right after Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson said that they should run the purge plan by the White House and Karl Rove in particular.

But for what it's worth, a couple of TPM readers found an email in the gap (between November 15th and December 4th). You can read the email here, in which DoJ official Michael Elston forwards a review document concerning the Nothern District of California to another DoJ employee and asks that it be printed.

The U.S. Attorney for California's Northern District, Kevin Ryan was ultimately fired because of poor management, the Justice Department has said, an argument apparently supported by the department's evaluation of Ryan's performance.

That's the only document we've been able to find in that time period. If anyone has spotted anything else, please let us know in the comments.

Update: And Thinkprogress finds another email. So that's two.

From today's press briefing:

Click To Play

And here's Snow not having an answer as to why there's an 18 day gap in the emails turned over to Congress:

Click To Play

Contrary to Justice Department and administration officials' attempts to paint U.S. Attorney Carol Lam as recalcitrant on prosecuting immigration cases, an internal email shows that she was "willing to change course if people think that would be beneficial" regarding her handling of criticism on the cases. Lam volunteered to stay silent despite all the personal criticism because she did not want to put the DoJ in a bad light by complaining publicly about the lack of department resources.

The email, written by Associate Deputy Attorney General Ronald Tenpas in May of 2006 and sent to numerous high level Justice Department officials, relays a conversation that Tenpas had with Lam about her office's handling of immigration cases. The conversation followed complaints made by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and other Republicans about the number of border prosecutions in Lam's district.

The email reads:

FYI Carol Lam, USA Southern California, called me earlier today to discuss matters related to the criticism Congressman Issa has been directing at the District re its practices in prosecuting/not prosecuting alien smuggling.... She wanted to communicate the following:

1. In her view, although the unrebutted criticism is making the Department look bad, she has been sitting quiet rather than attempting to respond publicly by explaining the resource limitations that she maintains affect the office's ability to do more smuggling cases;
2. She is willing to change course if folks think that would be beneficial;
3. She notes that she has never even met with Congressman Issa and would be happy to do so if that is thought useful; and
4. She will do anything else that the DAG would wish, including continuing to stand silent despite the personal criticism to which she thinks she is being subject through these comments.

She acknowledged understanding that it may be the judgment that continued silence is the best option of a set of limited options. I explained to her that, given the larger debate going on related to immigration, we would probably evaluate her observations and her offer in the context of wanting to contribute to the Administration's overall goals with respect to immigration reform.

One way or another, somebody such as myself or PADAG or CoS should probably follow-up with her to confirm our guidance lest any silence be construed as lack of guidance/indifference to her activity.

Karl Rove has claimed publicly that Lam was ordered by the attorney general to make immigration prosecutions a priority, and refused, and the Justice Department has publicly cited Lam's immigration policy as the reason for her removal.

*But Lam was apparently more than willing to change her department's policy on immigration cases* -- a policy that favored fewer, high-profile prosecutions over many more, lower-profile cases. But, despite the continued internal grumbling at the Justice Department, that request to change her policies never came, as Lam has testified under oath. Instead, she was abruptly fired.

Update/Correction: As a reader pointed out below shortly after this post went up, this might involve a misreading of the email. The line " She is willing to change course if folks think that would be beneficial" apparently refers to Lam's stance on staying silent in response to criticism, rather than her office's immigration policy.

Considering the overall context of the email, however, it's apparent the conversation that took place between two people on the same side of a debate trying to develop a PR strategy. In other words, if the Justice Department didn't agree with Lam's policy on immigration prosecutions, they would have been on Issa's side, not Lam's. But there was apparently no discussion about revising the policy, because that wasn't what was at issue.

Ed. Note: thanks to muchomaas for catching this in the comments.

As former U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins has written, "Once the public detects partisanship in one important decision, they will follow the natural inclination to question every decision made, whether there is a connection or not."

Today, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog Democracy 21 sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty asking whether there had been political interference in the investigation and prosecution of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

"Based on issues that have been raised in the firing of the eight U.S Attorneys , we're all in a position to want some assurance that there hasn't been political interference in the case," Fred Wertheimer, Democracy 21's president, told me. "This still remains the worse congressional corruption scandal in 30 years. There are lesser players who have been convicted. But there are still big players here, including sitting and former members of Congress whose cases apparently have not yet been resolved. "

Citing concerns about the slow pace of the investigation and high turnover of prosecutors and supervisors working on the case, Wertheimer also asks Gonzales what resources the Justice Department has committed to the investigation.

You can read the letter here.

This is one of the high profile public corruption cases we haven't talked a lot about. From The Arizona Republic:

Two weeks after Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton was ordered to give up his post, he sent an e-mail to a top Justice Department official asking how to handle questions that his ouster was connected to his investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz.

Charlton, one of eight federal prosecutors forced to resign last year, never received a written response....

When the first list of U.S. attorneys targeted for ouster was drafted, Charlton's name was not on it. But his name was on a subsequent list, drafted in September. Although the Renzi inquiry was not yet public, it is likely the Justice Department was aware of the investigation, said a former U.S. attorney who is familiar with the protocol when a sitting lawmaker is involved.

Just reported on CNN. More soon.

Update: The subpoenas are for testimony from Karl Rove, his deputy Scott Jennings, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, deputy White House counsel William Kelley, and Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson. They also seek more documents from the White House.

From House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI):

"The White House's offer provides nothing more than conversations. It does not allow this Committee to get the information we need without transcripts or oaths... This motion allows the Committee to pursue good faith negotiations. We are continuing our talks with the White House, along with the Senate, but we must protect the interest of the Congress and the American people by maintaining the option to move forward with our investigation with or without continued cooperation from the Administration."

Justice Dept. Used Pregnancy As Excuse To Appoint Griffin
"In a Dec. 26, 2006 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse explained that they 'temporarily' appointed Griffin, rather than Bud Cummins’ deputy Jane Duke, because Duke was pregnant. He noted that often, the first assistant U.S. attorney in the affected district will serve as the acting U.S. attorney until the formal nomination process begins for a replacement. But in this case, 'the first assistant is on maternity leave,' he said." (Think Progress)

Read more »

I yield the floor to TPM Reader JD:

This isn't a comment about what has been found in the document dump of last night, but about what HASN'T been found. (Note: my question/comment is inspired by this 3/16 interview of [U.S. Attorney] Bud Cummins).

If the USA's had been forced to resign for performance related reasons, wouldn't you expect to see a huge paper trail of the performance review process itself? Take the case of [U.S. Attorney for Western Michigan Margaret] Chiara. If the problem was office management/morale, I would expect the following in the record:

1) Some document sent to the someone in the AG's office, saying, "Hey, I've been hearing there are some morale/managerial problems in Chiara's office.";

2) A formal letter to Chiara saying, "We would like to review your management of the office. We'll be sending officials out to your district to discuss."

3) A report to the DAG saying, "We went out to her office and, in fact, we believe there are managerial problems. Chiara offered to takes steps A, B & C to correct. Will review in 6 months.";

4) Then, 6 months later, there would be another report saying, "It's been six months since the last review. Nothing's changed. It may be time to consider removing her.";

5) A follow-up from the DAG saying, "Nope, her time is up. We'll recommend her removal and replacement to the AG.";

6) Then a series of letters/emails between offices about "Should we remove her?" and "Yes, we should remove her. Set it up." and "Here's how and why we're removing her.";

7) Finally, a series of documents setting up her formal removal, communicating that to the AG and the WH.

But, there's none of that. You'd think if such documents existed, they'd be definitive and the first set of docs the Justice Department would release. If the attorneys in the AG's office are anything like the private attorneys I know, they wouldn't do anything as significant as forcing the resignation of any single USA, without first creating a paper trail a mile long. Should be 1000 pages of docs for each USA removal, right?

Everybody seems to be looking for a smoking gun, but the real story is that the evidence we've been given is of a gun that's never been fired.

As I wrote yesterday, the Justice Department actually brainstormed on the justifications for the firings after they happened.

The best bunch of prosecutors you'd ever want to fire.

I've said it before here, and I'll say it again. One of the remarkable aspects of the U.S. attorney firings is that the Justice Department didn't select a group of mediocre prosecutors and then try to smear them as underperforming -- oh, no. They chose from among the most distinguished U.S. attorneys in the country (by the DoJ's own admission), and then announced to the world that they'd canned them for "performance related" issues.

Let's go down the list, shall we?

New Mexico's David Iglesias, we pointed out yesterday, was considered for a promotion in 2004 to head up the office that oversees all U.S. attorneys. And that wasn't the only promotion for which he was considered. As The Washington Post points out this morning, he was also considered for the position of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia (the crown jewel of the U.S. attorney offices) and U.S. Attorney for Manhattan (another very high profile office -- just ask Rudy Giuliani). And just to clinch it, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey (he left in August of 2005), has called Iglesias "one of our finest and someone I had a lot of confidence in as deputy attorney general."

And then there's Arizona's Paul Charlton. Here's what Comey to say about him (from The Los Angeles Times):

"I considered you a star among U.S. attorneys," Comey told Charlton in [a Feb. 9 e-mail]. "You ran an office with a staggering caseload, in both numbers and variety, and did it beautifully."

Comey added that he knew of "no performance issues" with Charlton. "In fact, quite the contrary, because you were at the top of your class."

And Seattle's John McKay. Here's Kyle Sampson, Alberto Gonzales' right hand and the point man for the purge, writing about McKay in August, 2006: "re John, it's highly unlikely we could do better in Seattle." (Update: as a reader points out below, this was written in the context of considering McKay for a position as a federal judge in Seattle, but I think it's fair to say the point still applies.)

And then there's the case of Daniel Bogden of Nevada, the one Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty got cold feet about just two days before he was fired ("I'm a little skittish about Bogden"). Even though he was supposedly derelict in his prosecution of obscenity cases, the Justice Department is currently helping him get another position at