Agency Weighed Prosecutors' Politics

By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press Writer

April 14 2007, 6:02 AM EDT

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department weighed political activism and membership in a conservative law group in evaluating the nation's federal prosecutors, documents released in the probe of fired U.S. attorneys show.

The political credentials were listed on a chart of 124 U.S. attorneys nominated since 2001, a document that could bolster Democrats' claims that the traditionally independent Justice Department has become more partisan during the Bush administration.

The chart was included in documents released Friday by the department to congressional panels investigating whether the firings last year of the U.S. attorneys were politically motivated -- an inquiry that has Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fighting for his own job.

"This is the chart that the AG requested," Monica Goodling, Justice's former liaison to the White House, wrote in a Feb. 12 e-mail to two other senior department officials. "I'll show it to him on the plane tomorrow, if he's interested."

Goodling resigned last week, refusing to testify to Congress about her role in the firings and citing her constitutional protection against self-incrimination.

The 2,394 pages of e-mails, schedules and memos released Friday included a few hand-scribbled pages of notes of reasons why some of the eight were ousted -- notes that Justice officials confirmed were written by Goodling.

Under Iglesias' name, Goodling wrote: "Domenici says he doesn't move cases" -- a reference to Sen. Pete Domenici, the six-term Republican from New Mexico accused of pressuring the prosecutor on a political corruption investigation. That allegation has been one of the factors driving Democrats' claims that the firings were politically motivated.

The documents also included indications that senior department officials had replacements in mind for the outgoing prosecutors nearly a year before the ousters, seemingly contradicting testimony last month by Gonzales' former top aide.

The new batch of documents -- adding to more than 3,400 previously released -- came amid questions about missing White House e-mails, including some from presidential counselor Karl Rove and other administration officials. The Democratic-controlled Congress is seeking those e-mails as evidence for its inquiry into the firings.

Private attorney Robert Luskin denied that Rove intentionally deleted his own e-mails from a Republican-sponsored computer system. He said President Bush's political adviser believed the communications were being preserved in accordance with the law.

Democrats are questioning whether any White House officials purposely sent e-mails about official business on the RNC server -- then deleted them, in violation of the law -- to avoid scrutiny.

White House officials said the administration is making an aggressive effort to recover anything that was lost. "We have no indications that there was improper intent when using these RNC e-mails," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

The new documents also show Justice efforts to tamp down the controversy by meeting with congressional aides they considered potentially sympathetic to their viewpoint -- including a staffer to Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., who has been one of Gonzales' most vocal critics. Additionally, the documents include correspondence from some prosecutors complaining about being ensnared in the political storm.

The chart underscores the weight that conservative credentials carried with the Justice Department.

The three-page spreadsheet notes the "political experience" of each prosecutor, which was defined as work at the Justice Department's headquarters in Washington, on Capitol Hill, for state or local officials, and on campaigns or for political parties.

Several of the 124 prosecutors on the list were also members of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. The group was founded by conservative law students and now claims 35,000 members, including prominent members of the Bush administration, the federal judiciary and Congress.

How the information was used by the administration isn't clear.

One of the eight attorneys fired in December -- Kevin Ryan, the prosecutor in San Francisco -- was a Federalist Society member.

Two others, David Iglesias in New Mexico and Bud Cummins in Little Rock, Ark., held Republican Party posts or ran for office before being tapped as U.S. attorneys, the chart shows.

The documents reveal a new contradiction in officials' accounting of the firings, indicating that replacements for those dismissed were chosen by Justice officials nearly a year beforehand.

Beginning with a January 2006 e-mail to White House Counsel Harriet Miers, former Justice chief of staff Kyle Sampson proposed replacing U.S. attorneys in San Diego, San Francisco, Michigan and Arkansas. The replacements were to include Rachel Brand, who heads the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, to oust Margaret Chiara in Michigan, and Tim Griffin, a Rove protege who now is acting U.S. attorney in Arkansas.

But Sampson, who resigned under fire last month, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 29 that "I did not have in mind any replacements for any of the seven who were asked to resign" last Dec. 7.

Gonzales is to explain his role in the firings to the same panel next Tuesday -- an appearance that even Republicans say is crucial to restoring his shaky credibility amid growing calls for his resignation.

"The contradictions continue to pile up," Schumer told reporters Friday. "The questions for the attorney general continue to mount."

Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse maintained that, except for Griffin, no replacements were selected before the prosecutors were told to resign.

"The list, drafted ten months before the December resignations, reflects Kyle Sampson's initial thoughts, not preselected candidates by the administration," Roehrkasse said. "Sampson's initial thoughts were just that."

Sampson attorney Brad Berenson said his clients' testimony was "entirely accurate." He said that "some names had been tentatively suggested for discussion much earlier in the process, but by the time the decision to ask for the resignations was made, none had been chosen to serve as a replacement."

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers said the new documents "were not a complete response to our subpoena request,"

"I expect that the attorney general, as the nation's chief law enforcement officer, will be respectful of his obligations under the committee's subpoena and respond in full by Monday," said Conyers, D-Mich.

Some of the documents released could prove embarrassing.

An Oct. 2, 2006, e-mail to Brand, for example, derides Chiara as "Miss Margaret," an insensitive manager who announced in an all-staff meeting which employees would be receiving bonuses and outstanding staff evaluations. The sender's name on the e-mail was stripped from the document.

And in a Feb. 28, 2007, e-mail, Griffin complained to Justice headquarters that he was being maligned as a White House pawn in the media.

"Someone at DOJ left the press with the impression that Harriet Miers vouching for me was some sort of extraordinary event," Griffin wrote to three senior Justice officials. "It wasn't."

Responded Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling: "Not sure your assertion is accurate. Someone at DOJ merely recounted the facts. ... Your point is well taken, however, in that we need to emphasize the normalcy of the process in your case. I think we are ready to do that."

The Chart of Injustice
by Devilstower
Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 04:20:16 AM PDT

Kos readers got a preview of this story in drational's diary, and now that chart for selecting US attorneys is getting some scrutiny from the Associated Press. Far from being the kind of politics-free evaluation of prosecutorial competence that Bush, Gonzales, and crew had maintained, the document encapsulates the real motivations behind the firings.

To sharpen the damage caused by this document, there's an accompanying note that completely demolishes the argument that Gonzales was either duped by his underlings or merely asleep at the wheel.



Alberto Gonzales requested a chart showing the political activism of the USAs and their membership in the Scaife-funded Federalist Society. Any notion that he was only interested in their success in prosecutions is now completely lost. Explaining that when Gonzales gets on the stand next Tuesday should be very, very interesting. In fact, a better question might be whether Alberto Gonzales will actually be AG by Tuesday.

This is where to read all the findings of people like you and me going through all the documents dumped this week.

Biskupic the Politician Emerges
Submitted by mal contends on Sat, 04/14/2007 - 8:14pm. Federal Prosecutors

by MAL Contends

Reacting to the growing pressure on his office after McClatchy Newspapers reported that US Atty Steven Biskupic’s name appeared on a US Justice Department hit list of prosecutors; Biskupic’s office released an extraordinary statement on Saturday.

The statement makes the following points, among others:

- That the career prosecutor’s much-criticized Georgia Thompson prosecution (derided as politically motivated and harshly thrown out of appellate court) included consultations with two Democratic prosecutors (former US Atty and Wis Atty Gen Peg Lautenschlager, and Dane Co DA Brian Blanchard)

- That Biskupic’s public corruption cases included Republican-affiliated defendants

- And that “(u)ntil the recent controversy surrounding the firings of eight United State Attorneys around the country, it was never communicated to me that my job could be in jeopardy or that I was considered to be disloyal to President Bush's agenda.”

The 216-word statement does nothing to quell the controversy and raises more questions about the nature of Biskupic’s office, which is sounding more and more like that of a desperate politician’s out to save his hide.

Peg-and-Brian-said-it-too

The Peg-and-Brian-said-it-too rejoinder regarding the failed Thompson prosecution is a fallacious appeal-to-authority argument that does nothing to bolster Biskupic’s case that an appellate judge said is composed of evidence called “beyond thin.” And, anyway, the last time I checked Lautenschlager and Blanchard were not infallible prosecutors, but rather were/are both ambitious politicians and prosecutors for whom bipartisan alliances are useful. As for the Thompson case being thrown into the hands of Republican political operatives seeking to unseat Gov. Doyle (D-WI) in the 2006 election, we are to believe – apparently on faith – that Biskupic’s “decision to charge Thompson was based solely on the facts,” the “beyond thin” facts.

Republican-money-donating-aligned individuals

The number of Biskupic’s Republican public corruption cases increases substantially when—as opposed to the study by Shields and Cragan noting the US Attys’ investigations of “Republican officials”—Biskupic notes inclusively the “cases against individuals who donated money to Republican candidates or who were aligned with the Republican Party.” This reminds one of the diminishing “weapons of mass destruction-related program activities” charge made at the 2004 State of the Union Address.



I ask:

- What kind of administration would even consider axing this career prosecutor selected through a bipartisan commission, if he is the apolitical man he claims?

- Why did Biskupic (as the nation's principal litigator for some one-half of Wisconsin) not publicly challenge the administration in the name of the citizens of the Eastern District of Wisconsin?

- How does Biskupic feel about his overseers at the DoJ and White House and the way they mix partisans and prosecutors?

- What about the maligned voter fraud prosecutions that happen to be consonant with Karl Rove’s attack politics?

- Doesn’t it strain credulity to believe the Biskupic’s US Atty’s office is really the equivalent of a political monastery, isolated from arguably the most politicized White House and DoJ in American history? What does “never communicated to me” mean, did he intuit?

The Biskupic statement’s obvious PR message was: Candid, impartial, non-partisan public servant.

I see a careerist either disinclined or afraid to challenge the White House publicly, and stumbling badly for fear of standing up.