Today Richard A. Hertling informed the Senate Judicary Committee that Bradley Schlozman would not be able to testify before the Committee on May 15th because Schlozman will be on a previously scheduled vacation.

Text beneath the fold.

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Check out some snapshots from the Caribbean cruise businessman Warren Trepp sent Gov. Jim Gibbons (R.-NV) and his wife on in 2005.

Trepp is the founder of eTreppid, a company for which Gibbons helped secure federal contracts while a member of the House. Gibbons is now reportedly under FBI investigation for his involvement with Trepp.

You can see the photos here. (Be sure to scroll down for the group shot.) It looks like a good time.

The pictures accompany an NBC interview with Dennis Montgomery, who raised the bribery allegations in a lawsuit he filed against Trepp, his former business partner, over intellectual property infringement of software he says he created. During the interview, Montgomery describes just how certain he is that Trepp gave Gibbons $100,000 in cash and casino chips on the cruise.

Dennis Montgomery: There was a lot of alcohol and a lot of drinking. And that's when I first saw Warren give Jim Gibbons money.

Lisa Myers: How much?

Montgomery: Close to $100,000.

Myers: How can you know?

Montgomery: Because he gave him casino chips and cash.

Myers: Are you sure about what you saw?

Montgomery: I'm absolutely, positively sure.

No more absentee landlords!

It's hard work for Democrats undoing the damage of the Patriot Act Reauthorization bill passed last year, a huge bill that contained a number of provisions that affected U.S. attorneys.

Last month, the Congress passed* a bill reversing one of those provisions -- one that made it possible for the attorney general to indefinitely appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation.

Now Four Democrats are trying to undo another of those little-noticed provisions -- one that made it possible for certain U.S. attorneys to pull double duty in the Justice Department leadership. The provision was shepherded through by William Mercer, the principal associate deputy attorney general, who's also the U.S. Attorney for Montana. When the chief judge in his district, hopping mad that Mercer is gone almost all the time, charged that Mercer was violating the residency requirement for U.S. attorneys, Mercer had the law changed. And he's kept both jobs for two years.

But Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Max Baucus (D-MT), and Jon Tester (D-MT) will introduce legislation on Monday to change the law back to what it was. “U.S. Attorneys cannot do their jobs adequately from Washington, D.C.," Feinstein said. "The position requires a huge commitment.”

The punchline to all this, remember, is that Justice Department officials have claimed that U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias was fired because he was an "absentee landlord," spending 30 days a year away from the office -- on Navy reserve duty.

*Update: A TPM reader points out to me that although both houses have passed a version of this bill, they have not yet been reconciled in conference. So the Congress hasn't yet passed a final version.

OK, one last clip from yesterday's hearing, one that I didn't get to yesterday out of sheer Gonzales fatigue.

But it encapsulates the absurdity of Gonzales' claim of "full responsibility" for the firings while at the same time hiding behind a review "process" that, as everyone now knows, was a joke.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) asked Gonzales a simple question: was it a mistake to fire the eight prosecutors?

And here we go down the rabbit hole...

Gonzales: ...I stand by the decision.

Sherman: So if you had it do all over again, these eight would be toast?

Gonzales: No, again, because we would have used a different process. And I don’t know if using a different process, the same recommendations would have come to me. I relied upon….

Sherman: I’m asking you whether you made a mistake, not whether you like your process. The conclusion to fire these eight, was that the right, best thing to do for the administration of justice?

Gonzales: I think... I stand by the decision. In hindsight, I’m not happy with the process. I know that… to me, the process was important, too. And I think using a different process, we may have come out with different recommendations to me, which would have made a difference… perhaps.

If I could dare to summarize: Gonzales stands by his decision to fire those eight, but if he had it to do all over again, he would have fired somebody else.

Amazing... Gonzales makes Kyle Sampson look like a model of directness.

It's a done deal. From the AP:

A federal judge approved an immunity deal Friday allowing former Justice Department aide Monica Goodling to testify before Congress about the firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Goodling, who served as the department's White House liaison, has refused to discuss the firings without a guarantee that she will not be prosecuted. Congress agreed to the deal, Justice Department investigators reluctantly agreed not to not oppose it and U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan gave it final approval Friday.

That's a hearing I look forward to.

White House Sought Investigations of Voter Fraud Allegations Before Elections
"Only weeks before last year's pivotal midterm elections, the White House urged the Justice Department to pursue voter-fraud allegations against Democrats in three battleground states, a high-ranking Justice official has told congressional investigators. In two instances in October 2006, President Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove, or his deputies passed the allegations on to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson." (McClatchy Newspapers)

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If at first you don't succeed, investigate again.

That, at least, seems to be Karl Rove's philosophy.

As McClatchy and The Washington Post report this morning, Rove requested last October that the Justice Department investigate allegations of voter fraud in three jurisdictions. Those three were Milwaukee, New Mexico and Philadelphia -- all battleground states.

The White House really put the heat on. McClatchy reports that at least twice in October, Rove or his deputies passed on word of the allegations to Kyle Sampson. In addition, both Rove and President Bush raised the issue with Alberto Gonzales the same month.

Sampson, in turn, passed on the allegations to a Justice Department official named Matthew Friedrich. Friedrich dutifully agreed "to find out whether Justice officials knew of 'rampant' voter fraud or 'lax' enforcement in parts of New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and report back."

Friedrich has told congressional investigators that Sampson also gave him a 30-page report prepared by Wisconsin Republicans about voter fraud in Milwaukee. Sampson apparently expected Friedrich to pass it on to the department's criminal division. Friedrich says he didn't do that because that would "violate strict Justice rules that limit the pursuit of voter-related investigations close to an election." (At least someone in the Justice Department cares about that rule.)

Now, you can see that 30-page report, titled "Fraud in Wisconsin 2004: A Timeline/Summary" here (pdf, see page 10). As the title would indicate, it was nothing but a collection of news clippings related to voter fraud allegations in Milwaukee... in the 2004 election.

Two things about that. First, it appears that Rove wanted the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation of two-year old allegations right before the 2006 election. But second, these allegations had already been investigated -- as part of the most comprehensive effort by a U.S. attorney's office to investigate voter fraud in the entire country. The U.S. attorney there, Steven Biskupic, launched a joint task force with local prosecutors to probe allegations of fraud in the 2004 election. Finally, more than a year after the election, Biskupic announced that the task force hadn't in fact found evidence of a conspiracy to steal the election. But prosecutors nevertheless prosecuted nearly twenty individual cases for a variety of voting-related offenses (Biskupic's office handled 14). No U.S. attorney office in the country can touch those numbers.

But that apparently wasn't good enough for Rove, who thought that Biskupic had been "lax" in his approach to voter fraud.

The only thing that saved Biskupic from being fired, according to the Post, is that "Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty argued against the firing, saying it would 'not be a wise thing to do politically' and could raise 'the ire' of Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who had recommended Biskupic and was then chairman of the House Judiciary Committee."

David Iglesias of New Mexico, obviously, wasn't so lucky. Nevermind that, together with Biskupic, he was the only other U.S. attorney to have launched a voter fraud task force in the 2004 election -- and that the Justice Department had him and Biskupic teach a seminar on election crimes. He hadn't convinced the person whose opinion matters most at the Justice Department: Karl Rove's.

Note: In case you're wondering about the U.S. attorney in Philadelphia and why he wasn't fired.... Pat Meehan was formerly senior counsel to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), formerly the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee -- now the ranking member. If they didn't want to risk the ire of Rep. Sensenbrenner, they certainly didn't want an angry Sen. Specter.

Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) is marching forward with his “the-FBI-unfairly- raided-my-house” media campaign.

Doolittle, who is under scrutiny for his ties to Jack Abramoff, and has been hyping up his defense in the media recently, went on Tom Sullivan’s KFBK radio show yesterday to complain about being a victim of a political move by the Justice Department to produce another Abramoff-related indictment.

You can read the full transcript of the 40-minute interview here.

The Sacramento Bee noticed that during the interview Doolittle admits that the Justice Department approached him and his wife before the search with an apparent offer to plead guilty. But the Doolittles stood strong. And what did their courage win them? A search of their home.

Here’s that passage from the radio transcript:

And I think it's fair to ask, Well, why was this search conducted? And I would just point out to you a few weeks before the search occurred, our attorneys had a meeting with the government, and at that point, it became apparent to us that there is an attempt by the government to strongarm Julie in order to get me to admit to a crime that I did not commit. And in our mind, as a result of my refusing to admit to a crime that I did not commit, the government searched our home in what we believe was little more than an attempt to intimidate and pressure us.

...or to gather evidence?

Alberto Gonzales walked an absurdly fine line explaining the firing of U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias.

Some quick background: On three different occasions, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), evidently perturbed at Iglesias' lack of haste in indicting Democrats, called Gonzales to complain about Iglesias' handling of public corruption cases. The calls took place in September of 2005, January of 2006, and again in April of that year. Gonzales has been careful to say that they did not talk about a specific case -- just public corruption cases in general (and, he added for the first time today, "voter fraud cases generally"). Gonzales has said that it was because of these calls that he was "not surprised" to see Iglesias' name on the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired.

But under persistent questioning by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Gonzales admitted that when he visited Iglesias' district in July of 2006, he didn't talk with Iglesias about his handling of public corruption or voter fraud cases at all. So apparently it wasn't such a burning issue.

And Schiff questioned Gonzales about a statement that his spokesman Brian Roehrkasse made back in March, during the media frenzy over Sen. Domenici's October call to Iglesias. The frenzy, you'll remember, was over a call Sen. Domenici had made to Iglesias wanting to know if Iglesias would be indicting a state Democrat on corruption charges before the election.

When addressing Domenici's calls to Gonzales then, Roehrkasse seemed to indicate that the calls hadn't had anything to do with a corruption case. Domenici "expressed general concerns about the performance of U.S. Attorney Iglesias and questioned whether he was up to the job," Roehrkasse said. And "at no time" in those calls to Gonzales had the senator mentioned "this corruption case."

But according to Gonzales' testimony, Domenici had indeed called to complain about Iglesias' handling of corruption cases.

So, don't you think that Roehrkasse's was a misleading statement? Rep. Schiff wanted to know.

Gonzales answered that "there was no mention of a corruption case" during Domenici's calls. They talked generally about corruption cases, not about a particular case. And so: " I don't think that was misleading."

Alberto Gonzales' strategy in a nutshell: to defend the firing of the U.S. attorneys whenever possible, but when confronted with inescapable evidence that the process was a sham, to backpedal and either blame Kyle Sampson or admit that the process could have been more "rigorous."

Here's an example. Under questioning by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), Gonzales cited Kyle Sampson's consultation of then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey in early of 2005 as proof that there had been a process of consulting career Justice Department officials on their views of U.S. attorneys. Of course, Comey testified last week that he had not known that there was any sort of effort to target U.S. attorneys for removal when he offered his views to Sampson (views that Sampson totally ignored).

Gonzales admitted as much: "There were people that were being consulted... they may not have known they were providing information that would then form the basis of some kind of list."

So there you have it: Comey was part of a collaborative review process that he didn't know he was a part of.

Later in the hearing, Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) questioned Gonzales about Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty's comment to a fired U.S. attorney that McNulty had had "limited input" in the process. And here Gonzales said that "it was my understanding or belief" that Sampson was giving McNulty plenty of input. Sampson just let him down.

Well, here's something new. During questioning from House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) about David Iglesias' firing, Alberto Gonzales volunteered that Iglesias was added to the list on "Election Day, November." Up till now, it's been unclear when Iglesias made the list -- though it was known to be sometime in October or November.

It's been reported that Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) called Karl Rove "at some point after the election" to ask that Iglesias be fired. Does that mean that something else had already placed him on the list? We know that Karl Rove and President Bush had already complained to Gonzales about Iglesias' handling of voter fraud cases earlier in October.

Update: Gonzales added later that he didn't know exactly when Iglesias was "selected" to be on the list. But he said that Iglesias first appeared on the firing list on Election Day.

Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC) gets the medal for the best line of questioning of the day so far, pressing Gonzales on the reason for John McKay's firing.

Gonzales has previously pointed to McKay's touting of an information sharing system (a system that former Deputy Attorney General James Comey praised effusively during his hearing last week) and his choice to speak to the press about his office's lack of resources to explain McKay's firing. But as Rep. Watt pointed out, McKay appeared on the firing list far before either of those things became issues.

When Watt pressed Gonzales on whether McKay had been removed because he'd failed to indict Democrats on voter fraud charges. Gonzales said no, but seemed to leave the door open for that possibility:

Yes, I agree that if in fact there was pressure put on McKay to investigate a case, which didn’t warrant an investigation [that would be improper]. But obviously there may be some circumstances where investigation may have been warranted. We’d have to look at the circumstances of the particular case.

He added that there had been "a great deal of concern with his efforts with respect to voter fraud," that he had received letters "from a number of groups and outside parties."

McKay has said that he didn't pursue criminal charges in the probe arising from the 2004 Washington gubernatorial election because there was "no evidence."

Here's Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) doing his best to dredge up a good reason for U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias' firing, even if it's after the fact.

Iglesias received two calls just weeks before Election Day from two members of Congress asking him about his office's corruption investigation of a state Democrat. Iglesias has described them as pressure calls, but Iglesias did not report the calls to his superiors, as required by Justice Department policy.

Cannon quotes a Justice Department official David Margolis as saying that "giving everything I know today, he would have been number one on my list" -- meaning that Margolis thinks Iglesias' failure to report the calls is a firing offense in Margolis' eyes. But of course no one in the Justice Department knew about this when Iglesias was fired. Nevertheless, Cannon concluded, "So we did have problems with some of these guys, they weren't exactly paradigms (sic) of competence, were they?" [Note: I think Cannon means "paragons," not "paradigms."]

Murray Waas has a new story on the U.S. attorney firings, this one leading to the inescapable conclusion that the administration was complicit in attempts to cover up White House involvement in the firings.

The revelations come from emails that the Justice Department is withholding from Congress.

A "senior executive branch offiical" tells Waas that it's no accident that Congress hasn't gotten their hands on these documents:

"If [Gonzales] didn't know everything that was going on when it went down, that is one thing," this official said. "But he knows and understands chapter and verse. If there was an effort within Justice and the White House to mislead Congress, it is his duty to disclose that to Congress."

A "senior administration official" adds that "Gonzales is doing this to save his own neck."

So what documents are we talking about? The story deals with two separate letters that the Justice Department sent to Congress about the firings.

The first was a January 31 letter to Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AK) assuring him that "not once" had the administration considered using the Patriot Act provision to install Tim Griffin, Karl Rove's former aide, as the U.S. attorney for Little Rock. The provision allowed the attorney general to appoint interim U.S. attorneys indefinitely without Senate confirmation.

Of course, Kyle Sampson had been pushing to use the provision for months -- and had communicated the plan to the White House.

But when it came time to answer questions about it, the White House signed off on a letter saying that they had never contemplated such a thing. And the withheld documents show that Christopher Oprison was the White House official who signed off on the letter -- that's funny because Kyle Sampson had layed out the plan to use the Patriot Act provision to appoint Griffin in an email to Oprison just a month before.

The second letter in the piece is a February 23rd letter to Congress that claimed that Karl Rove hadn't had any role in appointing Griffin. Fittingly, Oprison also signed off on that one -- even though Sampson had written him in an email in December that Griffin's appointment was "important to Karl."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto tells Waas that "Chris did not recall Karl's interest when he reviewed the letter."

But Fratto also says that "We have no record of that letter ever leaving the White House counsel's office." In other words, they never bothered to ask Karl Rove or any one in his office to check whether the statement was true. And they just forgot that Sampson earlier had boasted about Rove's interest. Huh.

Last night, we reported that Todd Graves, formerly the U.S. attorney for Kansas City, was asked to resign. Graves says that he refused to sign a Justice Department lawsuit against the state of Missouri to purge its voter rolls of potentially invalid voter names. (The department eventually lost the case.)

That's been floated as one of the possible reasons for his dismissal, since Graves' replacement, Bradley Schlozman had pushed the lawsuit from atop the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Schlozman, an anti-voter fraud enthusiast, subsequently replaced Graves as the U.S. attorney there -- and did all he could to hype the cause.

But during his testimony today, Gonzales pushed back, saying that, after speaking with the current head of the Civil Rights Division, they hadn't been aware of "any concerns" from Graves or anyone in his office about the voter roll purge case. Gonzales didn't say why Graves had been asked to step down, however.

Earlier in the hearing, Gonzales appeared to offer an explanation for why he's only made reference to eight fired prosecutors, when in reality there were at least nine who were fired. Gonzales explained that those eight were fired "as part of this process." Graves was a special case, apparently.

Here's a new one. Adam Cohen of The New York Times reported last week that Kyle Sampson had told congressional investigators that Harriet Miers was "intent on removing" Debra Wong Yang, the U.S. Attorney for Los Angeles. Yang, remember, had opened an investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), the most powerful Republican on the powerful appropriations committee. Yang left just before the firings occurred to join the firm that represented Lewis (the firm says she recused herself from any dealings with the case). Yang received a $1.5 million signing bonus.

Today, Gonzales suggested that Miers had targeted Yang for removal simply because she knew that Yang wanted a more lucrative position. "Ms. Miers may have known about Ms. Yang's concern about being able to remain on the job due to financial reasons," Gonzales testified.

Three top lawyers in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, who said they demoted themselves in protest of the management style of 34-year-old U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose, sent their boss an angry letter demanding she plug leaks claiming they quit because they can't handle working for a powerful, young, Indian woman.

You can read the letter here.

Yesterday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported on the letter sent by the three former managers and an interim human resources officer:

In a letter to Paulose dated April 27, the four employees complained about comments from unidentified Justice Department employees that were included in a story published three weeks earlier in the New York Times. They objected in particular to the suggestion that "older lawyers had difficulty dealing with a young, aggressive woman" who tried to implement the priorities of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, including the prosecution of child exploitation.

Paulose was named interim U.S. attorney last year when she was just 33, making her the youngest person to fill the job in Minnesota.

The aggrieved employees also cite remarks in C.J's gossip column published April 24 in the Star Tribune. C.J. had interviewed Paulose, and C.J. wrote: "Isn't it possible that an office dominated by people who don't look the way Paulose does could be filled with threatened, resentful types who are jealous of someone so young climbing where they probably never will?"

Paulose is of Indian descent.

Apparently deaf to the improper tone of the request in the context of a hearing on the firings of the U.S. attorneys, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) encouraged Alberto Gonzales to hurry up and indict Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA). The Jefferson case has dragged on for nearly two years and is awaiting the decision of an appeals court on the FBI's seizure of evidence from Jefferson's congressional office.

"I hope that you will tell your prosecutors to wrap this thing up," said Sensenbrenner.

Alberto Gonzales in a nutshell: "I think I may be aware of that."

During the first line of questioning today, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) tried to get Alberto Gonzales to answer the simply of question of who put the U.S. attorneys on the firing list and why they were put there. Gonzales replied as he has in the past, by saying that he'd initiated a "process" and that he trusted the process. Conyers summarized this response, "So you don't know?"

Conyers also cited the testimony of a Justice Department official Matthew Friedrich, who told congressional investigators that he'd met with two New Mexico Republicans who had complaints about U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias' handling of voter fraud cases (i.e. Iglesias' failure to indict Democrats). The two Republicans told Friedrich that they'd brought their complaints to Karl Rove and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM). Iglesias, of course, was subsequently fired.

When Conyers asked if Gonzales was aware of that conversation, he replied, "I am certainly aware of it now."

The hearing before the House Judiciary Committee is beginning now. It's airing on C-Span 3 and streaming from the House Judiciary website. We'll provide you running updates throughout the day.

Here's a little preview of what you'll be hearing from the Republican side. From Roll Call (sub. req.):

In what may be the most spirited public defense of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to date, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee today will demand an end to what one called an “endless piscine expedition” in the U.S. attorneys scandal....

“If there are no fish in this lake, we should reel in our lines of question, dock our empty boat and turn to more pressing issues,” [Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the ranking member on Judiciary said].

Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), the ranking member of the Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law, which is in charge of the probe, also sounded fed up.

“I hope he’s clear, direct and unapologetic,” Cannon said of Gonzales’ testimony.

“I’m really tired of innuendo and repeated use of the word corruption,” Cannon added. “If [Democrats] can’t produce tomorrow, the story ought to disappear.”

Pentagon Restricting Testimony in Congress
"The Pentagon has placed unprecedented restrictions on who can testify before Congress, reserving the right to bar lower-ranking officers, enlisted soldiers, and career bureaucrats from appearing before oversight committees or having their remarks transcribed, according to Defense Department documents. Robert L. Wilkie , a former Bush administration national security official who left the White House to become assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs last year, has outlined a half-dozen guidelines that prohibit most officers below the rank of colonel from appearing in hearings, restricting testimony to high-ranking officers and civilians appointed by President Bush." (Boston Globe)

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You can look at it two different ways:

1) Alberto Gonzales has been revealed to be at best an incompetent amnesiac and at worst an apparatchik determined to cover up the White House's total control of the Justice Department. He's lost even the confidence of administration loyalists on Capitol Hill and is nothing but a ghost with the title attorney general.

2) Alberto Gonzales has run the gauntlet. And he won! He doesn't have any credibility left to lose.

You can guess what the Gonzales way of seeing the world is. "[Gonzales] has told aides he believes he has weathered the storm," reports The New York Times.

Of course, the Justice Department is in a shambles, but President Bush just won't waver. The expressions of support keep coming, getting even fuller, wholler. The latest from Tony Snow: the president “still supports the attorney general fully and wholly.”

Meanwhile, the Times reports, a division has occurred in the Justice Department "between Gonzales loyalists and backers of Paul J. McNulty, the deputy attorney general." The AG's backers fault McNulty for blowing their cover; McNulty's backers "have faulted Mr. Sampson for misleading Mr. McNulty and other officials about the origin of the dismissals and the extent of White House involvement." McNulty is reportedly considering whether to step down "soon," says the Times. But Gonzales is staying put.

Perhaps the most amusing bit in the piece is the assertion that Karl Rove is pushing for Gonzales' removal:

A Republican strategist familiar with Mr. Rove’s thinking said that Mr. Rove, the president’s chief political adviser, “believes it’s in the best interest of the president for Gonzales on his own to resign.” But, this person said, Mr. Rove and other like-minded aides have concluded that “there’s nothing they can do — it’s about the relationship between Gonzales and the president.”

Right.

Maybe this might explain Rove's feeling of helplessness:

Yet there are reasons White House aides are content to see Mr. Gonzales stay put. First, they say they believe that if Mr. Gonzales were to step down under pressure, it would empower Congressional Democrats to set their sights on others, including Mr. Rove, who has acknowledged complaining to Mr. Gonzales and the president about several prosecutors.

And removing Mr. Gonzales would pose another set of complications: finding a candidate who could be confirmed by the Senate and risking replacement of a loyalist with someone who might be more independent.

Eleven months before seven US Attorneys were fired on December 7th, 2006, former Kansas City US Attorney Todd Graves received a call from an official at the Executive Office for the U.S. Attorney telling him he was fired. Graves announced his resignation less than two months later on March 10.

Justice Department officials would later tell Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) that Graves had been dismissed for "performance" issues, according to Wednesday article in the Kansas City Star. But that's not what Graves was told at the time. According to a source with detailed knowledge of the conversation, Graves was told that his removal was not based on his performance as a prosecutor, but that it was simply time to let someone else have a chance at the job.

That someone, of course, turned out to be Bradley Schlozman, Graves' successor as US Attorney and the first US Attorney to be appointed using the special powers granted the Attorney General in the revised version of the USA Patriot Act signed into law in March 2006.

Contacted today by TPMMuckraker.com, a Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on Graves' dismissal, but Graves' case resembles those of at least two other fired prosecutors whose dismissals have been tied to complaints from Republican party officials that they did not press vote fraud indictments against Democrats.

According to the same knowledgeable source, over the last four years, Graves, a Republican himself, had two flaps with the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

The first, dating back to 2002, was not voting-rights related, but involved a cross-burning case where Graves helped negotiate a civil mediation. Graves hung up on the head of the Civil Rights Division at the time over a disagreement about the terms of the settlement.

In 2005, Graves again clashed with the Civil Rights Division when he declined to sign a letter outlining a voter-registration lawsuit against the State of Missouri pushed by Bradley Schlozman, then an assistant attorney general in charge of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division.

The suit alleged that Missouri was not being sufficiently aggressive in purging its vote rolls of out of date or ineligible registrations. Graves allegedly dragged his feet during the lead-up to the lawsuit’s filing and was openly dubious about whether the case would ultimately prove successful.

After the firing, at Graves' request, Missouri's senior Senator Kit Bond placed a call to the White House to briefly extend Graves’ time in office, a Bond spokeswoman said in a statement yesterday. But Bond’s request was denied.

Purged U.S. attorneys John McKay of Seattle and David Iglesias of New Mexico sat down with The Seattle Times today and had a lot to say.

First, they were clear that they think the various investigations -- by Congress and the Justice Department's internal watchdogs -- will result in criminal charges, whether for trying to influence criminal investigations or for lying to Congress:

"I think there will be a criminal case that will come out of this," McKay said during his meeting with Times journalists. "This is going to get worse, not better."...

McKay said he believes obstruction-of-justice charges will be filed if investigators conclude that the dismissal of any of the eight prosecutors was motivated by an attempt to influence ongoing public-corruption or voter-fraud investigations....

Additionally, McKay and Iglesias said they believe Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty lied under oath when they testified before Congress that the eight prosecutors were fired for performance-related reasons and because of policy disputes with Justice Department headquarters.

But McKay also told an anecdote that shows what has recently become painfully apparent -- that Alberto Gonzales never stopped being White House counsel when he became attorney general. He never stopped thinking of himself as the president's lawyer. From the Times:

McKay said he began to have concerns about politics entering the Justice Department in early 2005, when Gonzales addressed all of the country's U.S. attorneys in Scottsdale, Ariz., shortly after he took over as attorney general.

"His first speech to us was a 'you work for the White House' speech," McKay recalled. " 'I work for the White House, you work for the White House.' "

McKay said he thought at the time, "He couldn't have meant that speech," given the traditional independence of U.S. Attorneys. "It turns out he did."

He looked around the meeting room and caught the eyes of his colleagues, who gave him looks of surprise at Gonzales' remarks. "We were stunned at what he was saying."

Well, here it is, so you can read it yourself, the secret order signed by Alberto Gonzales in March of last year that gave Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling, two young aides with close ties to the White House, the power to hire and fire junior political appointees at the Justice Department (click to enlarge):

You can expect to hear a number of questions about the order tomorrow.

Update: Marty Lederman has a helpful dissection of the order's meaning and motivation over at Balkinization.

Another red flag in the ongoing U.S. Attorney scandal is waiving over at The Kansas City Star.

It looks like former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves was fired and quickly replaced by frequent TPMmuckraker subject Bradley Schlozman. Schlozman is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee this coming Tuesday.

Graves himself hasn’t said definitively whether he got the ax, but, in a statement released last night, he did say it was better to leave his post and “take a graceful exit than to do something that you should be ashamed of.” It's not immediately clear what shameful act he's referring to.

Read on below for his full statement.

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The House Judiciary Committee has released Alberto Gonzales' written statement in preparation for tomorrow's hearing. The story won't surprise anyone, but it's clear at least that Gonzales has honed it down to a streamlined tale of his chief of staff Kyle Sampson's failure to fulfill Gonzales' expectations.

Sampson and Gonzales had agreed, Gonzales writes, on how the U.S. attorneys to be fired should be selected. Sampson was to make the rounds among senior Justice Department officials " to collect insight and opinions" on U.S. attorneys. And he was to "provide, based on that collective judgment, a consensus recommendation of the Department’s senior leadership on districts that could benefit from a change."

Nevermind that none of those DoJ officials take responsibility for having pushed for the firing of the six U.S. attorneys at the heart of the scandal. That's Gonzales' story and he's sticking to it. Gonzales will only admit that " it is clear to me that I should have done more personally to ensure that the review process was more rigorous."

An excerpt of his testimony is below the fold.

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Who's Afraid of the White House Attorneys Connection?
"After Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified to the Senate Judiciary committee, word leaked that Gonzales was upset by McNulty’s claim that former US Attorney Bud Cummins was not fired for performance reasons. On April 15, Congressional sources tell TIME, Gonzales' former chief of staff Kyle Sampson told a different story. During a private interview with Judiciary Committee staffers Sampson said three times in as many minutes that Gonzales was angry with McNulty because he had exposed the White House's involvement in the firings had put it's role 'in the public sphere,' as Sampson phrased it, according to Congressional sources familiar with the interview." (Time)

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Hell hath no fury like a lawmaker searched!

Or something like that.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) is furious that the FBI is thoroughly investigating him, issuing subpoenas for documents, and interviewing a number of his former aides.

For one thing, the Justice Department just won't stop asking questions about his wife's work for two organizations controlled by Ed Buckham, a lobbyist and close associate of Jack Abramoff. Here's DeLay speaking with reporters yesterday:

“They’re going after other people and they’re questioning the other people about whether they know anything I may have done. And we’ve given them all the records and that’s the problem they’re having.... [My wife] did her work and she was underpaid for the work she did and they can’t make the case. It’s a Justice Department that is running amok. Fish or cut bait. Do something.”

Yeah, bring 'em on!

It's at this point that DeLay's defense lawyer, Richard Cullen, steps in to moderate. You can hear the soothing tone: “When Tom DeLay said that [about Justice], it reflected frustration that many people feel when they are involved in an investigation... We are very comfortable that the Justice Department is proceeding properly and expeditiously."

Investigators have reportedly been probing whether DeLay's wife actually did any work at those jobs, but that's far from their sole focus. Abramoff and DeLay were key allies; a bond forged by millions of dollars. It's no coincidence that two of DeLay's former aides have pled guilty in the Abramoff scandal, and a third, Buckham, is in danger of being indicted.

But DeLay isn't the only lawmaker who's outraged (outraged!) by the FBI's tactics. Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), who is also in investigators' sights for his ties to Abramoff, just can't believe that the FBI searched everything in his house:

“The agents systematically searched our home, removing every book, turning over every couch cushion and every pot and pan, and rummaging through every drawer, file cabinet, cupboard and closet...”

The nerve.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), a member of the committee, wrote Alberto Gonzales today to ask about U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Rachel Paulose, the Federalist Society member and former senior aide in the Justice Department who was installed there last year. Paulose attracted attention last month when four members of her senior staff voluntarily stepped down to protest her apparently dictatorial managerial approach.

One of the mysteries of the U.S. attorney scandal has been whether Paulose's predecessor, Thomas Heffelfinger, who abruptly resigned in February of last year, left voluntarily. He says he did. If so, it's a hell of a coincidence -- just the month before, he'd appeared on a draft of Kyle Sampson's list of U.S. attorneys to be fired.

Conyers and Ellison want answers on whether Heffelfinger was asked to leave and why Paulose was put in his place. They've also asked for any documents relevant to Heffelfinger's removal, Paulose's selection, or the turmoil there. You can read the letter here.

So it would appear that Gonzales can expect some questions about Paulose when he appears before the committee on Thursday.

Veco Corp., the oil company at the center of a bribery scandal involving at least five lawmakers has spent the last three decades establishing itself as a force in Alaska politics. Some 2,000 Alaskans work for the company that cleaned up after the Exxon-Valdez catastrophe and controls a conservative opinion arm of the Anchorage Daily News. And, for lawmakers at the state and federal level, Veco is a major source of campaign financing. Two Veco heads, Bill J. Allen and Richard L. Smith, pled guilty yesterday to bribery charges for paying lawmakers for votes, including the former Alaska Senate President Ben Stevens, son of Sen. Ted Stevens. According to the plea agreement, Veco paid Ben Stevens about $240,000 in consulting fees that were actually in exchange for political favors. Stevens' lawyer said his client is not guilty of any wrongdoing. Since 1993, Veco says it has completed about $25 billion worth of projects involving oil refining, pipeline work and power production. Recently, it created a separate corporate entity to handle federal contracting , to meet “the recent growth in the market.” Veco prides itself on honesty, which the company lists as its second priority behind safety, and just before being a “good corporate citizen” – they are, after all, engaged in the political process.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has invited Bradley Schlozman to testify before the committee in a hearing next Tuesday, May 15.

As laid out in a letter by Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) and ranking member Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) yesterday, the committee wants to question Schlozman about his efforts to push allegations of voter fraud while a political appointee overseeing the Civil Rights Division and later as a U.S. attorney in Kansas City.

Click the tag below to read all our reporting on Schlozman, or check out today's episode of TPMtv.

Roll Call (sub req.) and the Anchorage Daily News named Ben Stevens, son of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), as one of the unidentified legislators involved in the VECO cash-for-favors corruption scheme. According to charges filed Friday against two top executives at the oil company, Stevens’ company allegedly received $243,250 for consulting fees that were “in fact for the purpose of obtaining (Stevens’) official support on matters pending before the Alaska State Legislature.” Ben’s dad, Sen. Stevens, is pals with one of the executives, Bill J. Allen, who pled guilty to bribery charges yesterday. The two men belong to a group that bought a race horse named "So Long Birdie," for a bargain-basement price of $40,000 in 2005.

Allen and his wife also have hosted numerous fundraising events for Stevens, as well as his fellow members of the Alaska delegation, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) and Rep. Don Young (R). A preliminary review of campaign finance records shows Allen and other executives at VECO have made $206,900 in campaign contributions to the Alaska delegation, with more than $72,000 of that total going to Ted Stevens.

Ted Stevens does not seem to be on prosecutors' radar screen in the corruption investigation.

Monica Goodling did what she could, allegedly, to make sure that certain U.S. attorneys didn't hire left-leaning prosecutors. And meanwhile, senior Justice Department officials apparently made sure friendly prosecutors got hired -- not matter what blemishes they might have had on their record:

When he was counsel to a House subcommittee in 2005, Jay Apperson resigned after writing a letter to a federal judge in his boss's name, demanding a tougher sentence for a drug courier. As an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia in the 1990s, he infuriated fellow prosecutors when he facetiously suggested a White History Month to complement Black History Month.

Yet when Apperson was looking for a job recently, four senior Justice Department officials urged Jeffrey A. Taylor, the top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, to hire him. Taylor did, and allowed him to skip the rigorous vetting process that the vast majority of career federal prosecutors face.

As Congress and the administration spar over whether Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales allowed politics to unduly influence the work of the Justice Department, Apperson's hiring has been cited by government lawyers and others as an example of how a system that relies on apolitical prosecutors should not function.

Hiring Process Was Bypassed for Federal Prosecutor
"When he was counsel to a House subcommittee in 2005, Jay Apperson resigned after writing a letter to a federal judge in his boss's name, demanding a tougher sentence for a drug courier. As an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia in the 1990s, he infuriated fellow prosecutors when he facetiously suggested a White History Month to complement Black History Month. Yet when Apperson was looking for a job recently, four senior Justice Department officials urged Jeffrey A. Taylor, the top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, to hire him. Taylor did, and allowed him to skip the rigorous vetting process that the vast majority of career federal prosecutors face." (Washington Post)

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Put a big, red circle around September on your calendar, reports The Washington Post, because that's President Bush's deadline to show substantial progress in Iraq.

Now, you've heard this before -- possibly as many as half a dozen times, depending on which pundit you trust to set crucial deadlines for the Iraq War. But, the Post wants you to know, the stars really are in alignment this time around:

-- Gen. David H. Petraeus has said that by September "he will have a handle on whether the current troop increase is having any impact on political reconciliation between Iraq's warring factions."

-- "September is also the last month of the fiscal year in Washington. Without tangible signs of progress, Congress is likely to demand tougher conditions on war funding for fiscal 2008."

So if, as one would e