The Purge of U.S. Attorneys

Let’s go back and look at what recent reporting on the Purge of U.S. Attorneys has revealed.

First, the Justice Department fired seven U.S. Attorneys on December 7, 2007. There are only a total of 93 U.S. Attorneys. For the most part, the Senator of the Party holding the office of President recommends them in each state, so they have strong connections to the Senate. Removing a U.S. Attorney is not done lightly, and is done with full knowledge of the Attorney General. They are rarely removed. These removals also had the approval of the White House Counsel, Harriet Meirs.

This means that the reasons they were removed was much the same for all those removed December, and probably for all of them. It also means that such an action is overtly political, even if there might be real non-political reasons for taking the action. All of them could not be doing the same non-political things wrong. Also, the fact that none were given performance reasons for their removal rather clearly makes these removals political in nature. So what political reasons are known to exist that would make the White House unhappy with the removed U.S. Attorneys? Of the eight removed, five were supervising public corruption charges when removed. When looking for likely political reasons for the removals, this is a good place to start. Three of those were Lam, Iglesias, and McKay.

U.S. attorney Carol Lam of San Diego, CA. - She had run the investigation into the bribery of Republican Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, who is now serving the longest sentence in federal prison of any Congressman ever convicted of bribery. She and the FBI were also investigating two other (Republican) Congressmen as well as the Cunningham Briber-in-Chief, Brent Wilkes.

U.S. attorney David C. Iglesias of Albuquerque, NM. – Congresswoman Heather Wilson was the singly most threatened Republican Congress member fighting for reelection in November 2006. Both she and New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici called US Attorney Igliesias prior to November and asked if he intended to file corruption charges against the Democrat who was running against Rep. Wilson prior to the election (the calls were violations of ethics for both the Senator and the Congresswoman.) Igleasias told them both that the investigations had not progressed to that point, so he was not going to file any charges before the election. Wilson won reelection by slightly more than 800 votes.

U.S. attorney John McKay of Seattle, WA appears to have been removed because Republicans in Washington state did not believe that he investigated the extremely narrow (under 100 votes) margin by which the Democrat defeated the Republican for Governor of Washington in 2004 in the closest gubernatorial election in U.S. history.

U.S. attorney Bud Cummins of Little Rock, AR was removed to make way for a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove. The White House has admitted this, followed by the question “What’s wrong with that?” The White House also claims that the investigations into corruption had nothing to do with the firings.

U.S. attorney Daniel Bogden of Nevada. The statement from Moschella of the Department of Justice said "given the importance of [Bogden's] district," that the department felt they needed "renewed energy, renewed vigor" in that office in order to "take it to the next level." Rather clearly a non-informational statement. I haven’t found any hint to the real reason for removing him yet.

Paul K. Charlton United States Attorney for the District of Arizona – Moschella of DoJ said "taping FBI confessions," a policy that had ramifications throughout the government and that was "completely contrary" to the department's policy. [Of course, since Charlton’s district included several Indian tribes, the taping of confessions were frequently required by State Law for conviction, and the U.S. Attorney was trying cases under state law because of the unusual relationship between a federal prosecutor and the Indian tribes. Clearly this is a specious argument by DoJ.] Again, I haven’t found any hint to the real reason for removing him yet. It clearly was not what Moschella of DoJ alleged (under oath) to the Senate.

So the Department of Justice says that there was no politics involved in the firings. They were all for performance issues. Yeah, Right. And I happen to know that the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge is up for sale to someone who would like to start charging tolls. For a mere $5,000,000 up front and a contract to collect the tolls I will broker the deal. Any takers?

If you think there has not been any politization of the function of the U.S. Attorneys under the Bush/Rove administration, go look at the post by Kevin Drum and explain the discrepancy in the number of cases opened on Democrats and Republicans at the State and Local levels.

This is an on-going story, so I am sure we will see a lot more about it.