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April 28, 2007
Attorney Scandal News Scan

Thanks to some Congress oversight fire on the Justice Department, some cracks are appearing.  Here is a collection of today’s news on the issue:

Administration considered firing 12 U.S. attorneys but cut list down
Senior congressional aides who have seen unedited internal documents say the Bush administration considered firing at least a dozen U.S. attorneys before settling on eight late last year.

GOP Lawmaker Told of Plan to Fire U.S. Attorney
The White House told a Republican member of Congress last summer about its plans to fire a U.S. attorney in Arkansas and replace him with a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove, but it did not tell Democratic lawmakers, according to a new Justice Department e-mail released yesterday.
[…]
The message indicates that Bush administration officials told Boozman about their plans to fire Cummins at the same time that Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and other Democrats say they were being stonewalled.

Justice Department official resigns as Abramoff probe heats up
Robert E. Coughlin II was deputy chief of staff for the criminal division, which is overseeing the department’s probe of Abramoff.

Coughlin stepped down effective April 6 as investigators in Coughlin’s own division ratcheted up their investigation of lobbyist Kevin Ring, Coughlin’s longtime friend and a key associate of Abramoff.

Coughlin held two senior staff positions at Justice while Ring was lobbying the department on behalf of Abramoff’s clients.

Political Appointees No Longer to Pick Justice Interns
The Justice Department is removing political appointees from the hiring process for rookie lawyers and summer interns, ..
[…]
Since 2002, when Ashcroft adopted the hiring method the department is now abandoning, a large share of honors hires have had strong conservative or Republican ties, according to Justice lawyers and law school career-placement officers.

A while ago I wondered why the "loyal Bushie" Schlozman was replaced as US Attorney in Kansas. Via a (recommendable) Salon piece there comes some hint but not an answer:

On Jan. 16, two days before he gave his annual testimony to Congress, during which Democrats questioned him about the mass firing of U.S. attorneys, Attorney General Gonzales announced that John Wood would be taking Schlozman’s place in Kansas City. "Schlozman had [only] been there for 10 months," the former senior Justice Department official told Salon. Until the firings became an issue, "They weren’t going to replace him."

It smells fishy and I suggest the replacement was only done to keep something hidden. Schlozman is now back at the Justice Department but it is not clear what he is doing there. Maybe Gonzo just wants to keep off the street?

There is of course still more behind this all. Gonzales is now the last defense before the coming assault on Karl Rove, the architect of the Republican defrauding of the republic.

Another big crack will be needed to get there. Maybe tomorrow’s news has more?

Posted by b on April 28, 2007 at 09:33 UTC | Permalink
Comments

A hidden story of prosecutorgate. This one has dead bodies.

“I value the years I spent at DOJ (Department of Justice) and the friendships I forged there. But the current environment at the Department can only be described as toxic, and I am very thankful I left…What is going on now in DC is a three-ring circus, and I don’t want to have anything to do with it.”

Even if Bush leaves office in 2009 it largely won’t matter: They have purged and stacked the CIA and NSA with “sleeper cells”; they have infiltrated and permeated the Pentagon ; they have appointed loyalists for a lifetime to the Supreme Court; they have appointed operatives for a lifetime to the State Department (and appointed for life to the Justice Department in non-administration positions They have been appointed to Federal Prosecutor positions (let’s remember: the real scandal is not the Federal Prosecutors who were fired, but the ones who weren’t fired because they’re loyalists).
The president has a right to do whatever the citizenry and other branches of the federal government let him get away with.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 28 2007 10:56 utc | 1

grrr…
here’s the missing link from my above…
CIA ‘Purge’?
Also, here’s a bit more…
Get this: DoJ released NO obituaries, no press releases – about Thelma-Quince Colbert’s death
Now isn’t that odd?
Of course not, not from a DOJ [whom]Stalls Anthrax Investigation‘s. As many of us have said IN THIS VERY BAR :this is Murder Inc.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 28 2007 11:33 utc | 2

an email by monica goodling found in friday’s document dump by anonymous liberal explains why her lawyers wanted her to take the fifth: the email instructs others to delete emails after congress began its investigation. lawyers out there say this amounts to obstruction of justice and could result in criminal prosecution. recommended legal links: anonymous liberal and talkleft.

Posted by: conchita | Apr 29 2007 3:32 utc | 3

TMP has Ten articles of late of an very enlightening nature regarding the Abu’s DOJ :here and it is more serious than many Imagine. I highly recommend reading them all.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 3 2007 1:43 utc | 4

Addendum: If you guys can, read em all, but if you can only get to one I suggest…
DoJ Official to Lam: Leave in “Weeks, Not Months”

In her written answers to questions from Congress, Lam recounted a conversation with Justice Department official Michael Elston after she was fired in which Elston made it clear to her that she would be gone within “weeks” regardless of the fate of certain cases, and that this order came “from the highest levels of the government.”

He responded that he wanted some time to think about how to answer that question because he didn’t want to give me an answer “that would lead” me down the wrong route. He added that he knew I had personally taken on a long trial and he had great respect for me. Mr. McNulty never responded to my question.

Just as Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney never got answers to her questions. It’s the M.O. of these jackals.
I can’t recommend highly enough that everyone read Ms. Lam’s entire response. Over the past 6+ years, we have been so thoroughly desensitized to soundbites, spin, and utter bullshit, and it incredibly refreshing to read well-reasoned, straightforward, and cogents responses to discussions. In addition to the more scandalous issues noted above, her responses decimate the argument that she performed poorly on immigration and gun crime.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 3 2007 3:50 utc | 5

For those following along add this to the mix…
Comey & The OTHER Gonzales Scandal
I need not comment that as per the norm, dire posts such as this one, generated a mere 15 whole comments over on one of the biggest and most popular of political blogs in the cyber universe.
Thus, one wonders whom it serves. To condone this by omission is still condoning future behavior.
I am also at a loss to understand how even here at my favorite pub, how such an important topic lays glittering to us political junkie raccoon types, yet it doesn’t seem to stimulate much attention, even with it’s mouth watering odor.
Just as the Iraq war is the biggest smash-and-grab robbery in US history, so too is the parallel war front here at home. Bush Has Destroyed Iraq And America*. I can not emphasize enough how we have to look at “the war” –abroad and at home–as two sides of the same coin.
At lunch the other day, I was with a friend who made the following remark, “You can say what you want about this country. I love this country. I love the freedoms that we used to have.”
He was trying to be witty and cute, while many at our table laughed at his bon mot; it left me cold and alienated.
It was one of those fleeting Samadhi moments where something shifts in your mind or soul, but you can’t put your finger on it nor explain it.
Where you all at once come to the realization and it dawns on you, that someone with whom you thought you knew had spent many years with, whom you had thought you were on the same page with, reveals
and reflects your own illusions and leaves you feeling alone and estranged. Where what started out seemingly objective suddenly becomes subjective and your vision becomes an artifact.
Like the Hindu axiom of the traveler who mistook the rope for a snake super-imposing a false impression (a snake)upon the truth (a rope).
I suspect this type thing has happened to some of you as well, on this very board.**
*I say this with the caveat that Bushco is merely the latest and boldest to date, in what I suspect is a long line of methodical and generational rightwing putsch.
** I may have more to say on my thoughts here, as I continue to process it and if there are any comments as this (my) post.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 3 2007 8:36 utc | 6

Thanks Uncle – certainly a good theory in that diary. Yes, it deserves more attention.

Posted by: b | May 3 2007 14:36 utc | 7

Former Justice Department guy Comey in the House hearing on CSPAN3 right now

Posted by: b | May 3 2007 14:40 utc | 8

uncle- speaking only for myself, i haven’t commented on this b/c (1) just trying to keep up w/ your posts — so much reading, so little time… — and, (2) outrage fatigue over self-inflicted domestic political scandals, on which i would likely only contribute sardonic noise. not saying that your work is not appreciated, just that i don’t seem capable of adding anything of substance right now. carry on.

Posted by: b real | May 3 2007 14:46 utc | 9

uncle, i have been following the Novation scandal and sent your Dk link out earlier to some of my other friends who are up on it. yeah, i am just not too chatty lately.

Posted by: annie | May 3 2007 15:48 utc | 10

I will chime in too, if only to give some moral support to Uncle. I fear we all suffer from outrage fatigue, so many instances of illegal activity, so little time. Hopefully enough of a trail has been left so that they can be prosecuted later but I fear they are ahead of us there too wrt the deleted emails on an alternate server which have come to light in this case already. A good prosecutor will have to grab one of them and threaten them with life in a maximum security prison in order to get some good testimony to bring down the others.
i am not so disappointed as you in that few comments were generated from that diary. It takes a while to digest what is written and the gravity of it all calls for a reasoned response and not just a bunch of “frists” and such.

Posted by: dan of steele | May 3 2007 15:51 utc | 11

Makes me proud to say, I helped get this guy elected…
Sen. Jon Tester calls for Mercer’s Resignation

This morning, the Washington Post reported that William Mercer was violating federal law by serving both as Montana’s U.S. Attorney and as a high-ranking official at the Department of Justice. Instead of abiding by federal law, Mercer had the law changed.
Today, Sen. Jon Tester issued the following statement:
“For months, I gave Bill Mercer the benefit of the doubt that he was shooting straight with me and with the people of Montana. Mr. Mercer has been given every opportunity to do right by the people he represents; he has passed on that chance too many times. Mr. Mercer was operating outside federal law, so he had the law changed. That might work in Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department, but it’s not how we do business in Montana. He should resign his post as Montana’s U.S. Attorney immediately.”

Thanks guys, I was beginning to wonder if this topic was going to float by with no discussion. And yes, b real, I was just saying to myself yesterday day, “how the hell does one keep up w/all this ink”, surely someone is synthesizing all this in one place.
I suspect that these things play in favor of these criminal dinks, especially, in our sound-bite nation. It is overwhelming trying to watch and stay on top of it all. One of the reasons I miss Billmon, is he always seemed to be able to focus much of it all in one digestible meal. And what he didn’t would always be fleshed out by the rest of us in potluck fashion.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 3 2007 15:56 utc | 12

A good one by McClatchy: 2006 Missouri’s election was ground zero for GOP

The preoccupation with ballot fraud in Missouri was part of a wider national effort that critics charge was aimed at protecting the Republican majority in Congress by dampening Democratic turnout. That effort included stiffer voter-identification requirements, wholesale purges of names from lists of registered voters and tight policing of liberal get-out-the-vote drives.
Bush administration officials deny those claims. But they’ve gotten traction in recent weeks because three of the U.S. attorneys ousted by the Justice Department charge that they lost their jobs because they failed to prove Republican allegations of voter fraud. They say their inquiries found little evidence to support the claims.
Few have endorsed the strategy of pursuing allegations of voter fraud with more enthusiasm than White House political guru Karl Rove. And nowhere has the plan been more apparent than in Missouri.
…

Posted by: b | May 3 2007 16:19 utc | 13

Firing Carol Lam Was a CRIME, Stupid
and why, Lam may not be one of the good guy in all this either, keep reading…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 7 2007 7:43 utc | 14

and why, Lam may not be one of the good guy in all this either, keep reading…
i kept reading. what leads you to think lam might be implicated in wrong doing?

Posted by: annie | May 7 2007 9:41 utc | 15

Annie, from the comments…
There’s a bit of stuff I left for later. Hopefully it will materialize. I’m trying to find out how Carol Lam may have been bought off with a fat gig at Qualcom which is, among other things, a defense contractor.
here…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 7 2007 10:56 utc | 16

hmm uncle, i suppose we could check out any job she was offered after she was fired that doesn’t exactly lead to being ‘bought off’. she must have a considerable reputation and be one hot lawyer to be in the position she was in thus i imagine she has many options open to her. not quite the same circumstances as YANG,/A> which sounds really scandalous.

Posted by: annie | May 7 2007 20:04 utc | 17

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