The plot thickens....

More emails dumped on the Department of Justice scandal. This time they have Sara Taylor, one of Karl Rove's top aides, strategizing on how to get back at the Republicans who spoke homnestly to the Senators in the Senate Hearings on the U.S. Attorney purge.

These emails come from the RNC accounts used by top White House personnel to avoid leaving records that could be used against them. Guess that didn't work so well, did it?

It appears that Ms. Taylor was unhappy that many of the Republican witnesses at the Hearings were unwilling to pull a "Scooter" Libby and lie, committing Obstruction of Justice.

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This is interesting. EmptyWheel discusses WHY these documents were dumped at this time.

Goodling gave us the crime. Caging. Who will take it from here?

Greg Palast has pointed out that Monica Goodling gave up the real crime at the core of Department of Justice antics. (See Bradblog.) The key is "Caging." The following is from a letter from Greg Palast published in Bradblog:

Goodling testified that Gonzales' Chief of Staff, Kyle Sampson, perjured himself, lying to the committee in earlier testimony. The lie: Sampson denied Monica had told him about Tim Griffin's "involvement in 'caging' voters" in 2004.

Huh?? Tim Griffin? "Caging"??? [Snip]

...what's 'caging' and why is it such a dreadful secret that lawyer Sampson put his license to practice and his freedom on the line to cover Tim Griffin's involvement in it? Because it's a felony. And a big one.

Here's how caging worked, and along with Griffin's thoughtful emails themselves you'll understand it all in no time.

The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked "Do not forward" to voters' homes. Letters returned ("caged") were used as evidence to block these voters' right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and --- you got to love this --- American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.

Why weren't these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation --- and the soldiers were overseas. Go to Baghdad, lose your vote. Mission Accomplished.

How do I know? I have the caging lists...

I have them because they are attached to the emails Rove insists can't be found. I have the emails. 500 of them --- sent to our team at BBC after the Rove-bots accidentally sent them to a web domain owned by our friend John Wooden.

Here's what you need to know --- and the Committee would have discovered, if only they'd asked:

1. 'Caging' voters is a crime, a go-to-jail felony.
2. Griffin wasn't "involved" in the caging, Ms. Goodling. Griffin, Rove's right-hand man (right-hand claw), was directing the illegal purge and challenge campaign. How do I know? It's in the email I got. Thanks. And it's posted below. [Note: go to Bradblog for this. Editor, PPS.]
3. On December 7, 2006, the ragin', cagin' Griffin was named, on Rove's personal demand, US Attorney for Arkansas. Perpetrator became prosecutor.

The committee was perplexed about Monica's panicked admission and accusations about the caging list because the US press never covered it. That's because, as Griffin wrote to Goodling in yet another email (dated February 6 of this year, and also posted below), their caging operation only made the news on BBC London: busted open, Griffin bitched, by that "British reporter," Greg Palast.

This is the next step in opening up the "caging" issue. It's not over by a long shot.

But why have the American media not picked up on it? Too complicated for them?

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Prior related posts.

• "Caging" in Republican practice
  May 24, 2007


• "Caging" - an explanation of the term
  May 23, 2007

DoJ and White House withholding letters and emails

Murray Weiss reports that Kyle Sampson drafted and sent letters to the Senate that left out Karl Rove's part in replacing Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummings with his aide and protege, Timothy Griffin.

"But an earlier e-mail from Sampson to Oprison" [an associate White House counsel] "that has already been made public indicates that the two men discussed Rove and then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers as being at the forefront of Griffin's nomination."

There are also other emails and documents that the White House is withholding from Congress.

Several of the e-mails that the Bush administration is withholding from Congress, as well as papers from the White House counsel's office describing other withheld documents, were made available to National Journal by a senior executive branch official, who said that the administration has inappropriately kept many of them from Congress.

The senior official said that Gonzales, in preparing for testimony before Congress, has personally reviewed the withheld records and has a responsibility to make public any information he has about efforts by his former chief of staff, other department aides, and White House officials to conceal Rove's role.

"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. As the country's chief law enforcement official, he has a higher duty to disclose than to protect himself or the administration." [editor - highlighting is mine.]

The item highlighted above is confirmation of my earlier assertion that Al Gonzales has been playing a role. He knows everything that has happened and why, and his statements to the contrary are the equivalent of the small child standing next to the broken cookie jar looking up and saying "What? I don't know how that happened." Gonzales is playing his role to protect the White House.

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Some of my prior discussions of Alberto Gonzales' testimony can be found here, here and here.

Prior reports by Murray Waas reported in the National Journal can be found here.