Karl Rove's fingers caught in the cookie jar--more thoughts on the U.S. attorney purge

I've been reading through news articles and the emails regarding the Bush administration's firings of the U.S. attorneys. For the past week, the stuff has been coming out so fast here. TPM Muckraker still has some of the best news coverage of this scandal. McClatchy has a good selection of articles for the mainstream news. There was even a huge document dump of White House emails to the public regarding this attorney purge. You can find the emails here in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. You can find a list of the New York Times stories regarding the attorney purge here, and a list of the Washington Post stories here. For the best overall summary of this scandal today, you can check out Countdown with Keith Olbermann's story on Rove, and Gonzales. Olbermann's story on Rove has been posted on YouTube in two parts.

Here is Part One:



And here is Part Two:



So what happened? I think there was a convergence of two separate political events that created the genesis of this attorney purge. The first even was the complaints Rove received by state Republicans regarding the U.S. attorneys. What is interesting about this event is that the Bush White House was already politicizing the U.S. Attorney's office. You can view a study reporting this politicizing of the U.S. Attorney's office here. I have not gone through this study yet. But one thing I do recall back in 2005 has been the publication of GOP scandal after scandal. Duke Cunningham pleaded guilty to bribery charges in November, 2005. The Tom DeLay scandal started breaking out late August and early September of 2005. My first posting on the Jack Abramoff scandal was in June 2005, but the Abramoff scandal goes back to around August of 2004. And let us not also forget that there was an investigation looking into the Valerie Plame affair, and the intelligence failures leading up to the Bush administration's war in Iraq. These were the scandals that were battering the Bush White House at that time--the convergence of the second factor to contribute to the attorney purge. Now the Bush administration probably couldn't do anything regarding the investigations into the intelligence failures, but they could slow down the investigations into the corruption cases against the GOP congressional officials by purging the U.S. attorney's office. Even better yet, if you can selectively target certain attorney's offices with Bush loyalists, you can use them in future investigations against the Democrats--say, putting a Bushie into a U.S. attorney's office in Arkansas to look into any dirt that can be found and used against Senator Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential elections. And by stacking the U.S. Attorney's Office with even stronger Bush loyalists, gives the Bush administration even greater control of the Justice Department, and what investigations to pursue or abandon. It was complaints by state Republican officials, and the continuing GOP "culture of corruption," that prompted this idea of an attorney purge in the Bush White House.

Who first thought this attorney purge up? My guess is that Karl Rove first brought up the idea of a complete attorney purge, replacing them with Bush loyalists. This is speculation so far. But what is really important here is that an exchange of emails took place between Rove, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and White House counsel Harriet Miers. This genesis of replacing all of the U.S. attorneys started in 2005, and was refined to selectively replace the eight U.S. attorneys near the end of 2006. What this scandal really shows is that the Bush administration systematically planned to politicized the entire U.S. Attorney's Office, and use that office for long-term Republican political goals. The Bush administration fired U.S. Attorney Carol Lam as a possible means to shut down the Duke Cunningham corruption investigation. The administration forced Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummings out to give the slot to Rove operative Timothy Griffin. U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias was fired because he didn't pursue a corruption case against a state Democratic legislator hard enough to hand down indictments before the 2006 midterm election. The U.S. attorney for Washington state, John McKay was removed because he would not "convene a federal grand jury to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the [2004 governor's] race." There was even some speculation that Karl Rove was involved in a lawsuit contesting the election. The U.S. Attorney for Arizona, Paul Charlton, was forced to resign after "butting heads" with the Bush Justice Department over death penalty cases. But there is more here on Charlton. Apparently Charlton was also conducting two investigations into land deals involving Republican Representative Rick Renzi. So there are crass political reasons for the Bush White House to remove these attorneys. Even better yet, a small provision that was slipped into the Patriot Act allowed President Bush to appoint interim attorneys for an indefinite period of time and without Senate confirmation. It is a beautiful scam for the Bush White House to take complete political control of the U.S. Attorney's Office.

And it almost worked.