U.S. Attorney Scandal

At Talking Points Memo.

Department of Justice civil appellate attorney John S. Koppel has written a scathing editorial in The Denver Post: As a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time. The public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. The unconscionable commutation of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act and the deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse. ...

Salon.com has an interesting article about how the American Center for Voting Rights, which was front-and-center in convicted felon ex-Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH)’s congressional committee hearings on alleged voter fraud, has disappeared. The Republicans were attempting to crack down on alleged voter fraud in locations that had high Democratic voter turnout, despite the fact that no prosecutable cases of such fraud have turned up. The American Center for Voting Rights was an apparent think tank (which formed right before the hearings started) which offered sound bites and alleged research documenting the putative problem. Several of the fired U.S. Attorneys were individuals who had refused to go after weak voter fraud cases against Democratic candidates in locations where the Republicans and ACVR were also trying to make it more difficult to vote and reduce Democratic voter turnout. Check out the Salon.com article.

The Senate Judiciary committee subpoenaed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to appear before them yesterday at 2 p.m. EDT with copies of all of Karl Rove’s emails regarding the U.S. Attorney scandal. He didn’t show up. Here’s the letter from chairman Patrick Leahy and ranking member Arlen Specter to Gonzales, which includes this paragraph: You ignored the subpoena, did not come forward today, did not produce the documents and did not even offer an explanation for your noncompliance. Your action today is in defiance of the Committee’s subpoena without explanation of any legal basis for doing so.Hasn’t the Bush administration already made it abundantly clear that it does not consider itself bound by the rule of law? UPDATE: The Department of Justice has responded to the subpoena by producing a single Karl Rove email sent on February 28, 2007.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington points out that there are millions of emails missing from the White House servers (the official ones, not the Republican National Committee ones): Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) today has released a report, WITHOUT A TRACE: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act, detailing the legal issues behind the story of the White House e-mail scandal. In a startling new revelation, CREW has also learned through two confidential sources that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) has lost over five million emails generated between March 2003 and October 2005. The White House counsel’s office was advised of these problems in 2005 and CREW has been told that the White House was given a plan of action to recover these emails, but to date nothing has been done to rectify this significant loss of records. ...

One of the facts that has come out of the U.S. Attorney purge scandal is that the White House has been using email accounts set up by the Republican National Committee to avoid official records being kept in the White House email systems. This also, however, has undermined White House attempts to claim that these are privileged internal communications. Now, however, the RNC says that it has accidentally lost “an undetermined number of emails concerning White House business." Oops. (Via Talking Points Memo.) UPDATE (April 12, 2007): Dan Froomkin points out how the White House staff must have known that they were violating federal law and White House policy by using RNC email accounts and deleting emails.

Talking Points Memo has been discussing the fact that the very first contract that Mitchell Wade’s MZM, Inc. got with the federal government, back in July 2002, was with the Executive Office of the President, allegedly for office furniture. It now turns out that it was actually to screen mail for anthrax. How did MZM, Inc., which had no record or experience, get such an important contract? Who did Mitchell Wade bribe to get that one? Rep. Henry Waxman is asking for answers. And remember, the Cunningham/MZM scandal is what San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam was investigating when she was asked to resign, the day after she announced that she was going after “Dusty” Foggo, then #3 at the CIA. More at Talking Points Memo.

Radley Balko reports at the Agitator on the political reasons behind the firing of U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton of Arizona. The only reason for his filing in documents released from the Justice Department is that former Speaker of the House Denny Hastert complained that Charlton refused to pursue marijuana cases unless they involved at least 500 pounds of marijuana. This seems like a reasonable strategy for something that shouldn’t even be illegal in the first place, and certainly should be a lower priority than other issues. But it also seems that the White House was not happy that Charlton and one of the other fired U.S. Attorneys were not pursuing obscenity cases that were being sent to them by the Justice Department. The Justice Department’s “porn czar,” Brent Ward, sent a memo to recently resigned DOJ Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson titled “Obscenity Cases” which said: We have two U.S. Attorneys who are unwilling to take good cases we have presented to them. They are Paul Charlton in Phoenix (this is urgent) and Dan Bogden in Las Vegas. In light of the AG’s [Attorney General’s] comments at the NAC to ‘kick butt and take names’, what do you suggest I do? Do you think at this point that these names should go through channels to reach the AG, or is it enough for me to give the names to you? If you want to act on what I give you, I will be glad to provide a little more context for each of the two situations."Adult Video News did further investigation, and found that Charlton had taken an obscenity case, but it would be far-fetched to call it a “good case.” It was an obscenity case against an adult video store in Arizona, while simultaneously another video store chain was selling and renting the same titles that the first video store was indicted for selling. The reason the second chain wasn’t also prosecuted? It had recently declared bankruptcy and was being run by trustees from the federal government. And it appears that this inequity in treatment may be the reason why Charlton declined to pursue the original case, after it was brought to his attention by attorneys from the indicted store. More details and links at The Agitator. And there’s more on the other attorney firings at TPM Muckraker. UPDATE (March 26, 2007): Balko has further comments on Charlton’s firing based on the emails that have been released from the DOJ. Charlton was the #1 prosecutor in the nation for number of cases, and had the backing of Sen. Jon Kyl, but was fired anyway. Was it for his refusal to prosecute low-level pot cases, for his investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi, or was it because he was promoting the idea that the FBI should videotape interrogations and interviews of suspects, an idea which was scuttled because the FBI and DOJ didn’t want juries to see what actually happens in such interrogations. UPDATE (April 27, 2007): The New York Times editorialized yesterday about the connection between Charlton’s firing and his investigation of Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi: ...

Sen. Charles Schumer has provided a nice list of how the Bush administration has lied to Congress so far about the U.S. Attorney purge: Schumer: Here are some of the falsehoods we’ve been told that are now unraveling. First, we were told that the seven of the eight U.S. attorneys were fired for performance reasons. It now turns out this was a falsehood, as the glowing performance evaluations attest. Second, we were told by the attorney general that he would, quote, “never, ever make a change for political reasons." ...

The Duke Cunningham scandal, which reaches into the Central Intelligence Agency due to contracts awarded for intelligence-related contracts, has been stalled due to CIA refusal to cooperate with DoJ prosecutors. And now the White House has asked San Diego U.S. Attorney Carole Lam to resign. There’s still a lot of federal corruption that needs to be cleaned up, but it looks like the big fish are being protected from the top. Wikipedia has some good entries on Dusty Foggo of the CIA, his pal and contractor/Cunningham briber Brent Wilkes, California Rep. Jerry Lewis, and former CIA Director Porter Goss. UPDATE (January 17, 2007): San Diego U.S. Attorney Carole Lam has resigned. And, due to a provision in the USA PATRIOT Act (inserted by Sen. Arlen Specter), the Attorney General has the right to appoint replacement U.S. Attorneys without Senate approval. Previously the AG could only appoint interim U.S. Attorneys that had to be confirmed within 120 days or be subject to replacement by the relevant federal district court. UPDATE (February 13, 2007): Foggo and Wilkes were both indicted today on charges of money laundering and “honest services wire fraud."