The Justice Department sent Congress a new batch of documents about the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys. The documents show Justice Department and White House staffers planning the firings and trying to control the subsequent fallout.
Some of the newly released documents are repeats, like the letter in which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, responds to a suggestion from White House counsel Harriet Miers that all 93 U.S. attorneys be fired.
NPR now has new information about that plan. According to someone who's had conversations with White House officials, the plan to fire all 93 U.S. attorneys originated with political adviser Karl Rove. It was seen as a way to get political cover for firing the small number of U.S. attorneys the White House actually wanted to get rid of. Documents show the plan was eventually dismissed as impractical.
The Justice Department documents released today include a spreadsheet ranking all 93 prosecutors. The chart ranks them on whether they have Hill experience, campaign experience, and — in the last column — whether they're members of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.
You can listen to the NPR news report here.
The NPR story actually makes a lot of sense here. Karl Rove wants to replace a small number of U.S. attorneys, that he feels are not loyal to the Bush administration, with Bush loyalists. Rove was receiving complaints from state Republican leaders about U.S. attorneys on a multitude of political subjects. Rove is President Bush's political officer. His job isn't to create and support policies that reflect the will of the American people, but rather to create and support policies than reflects the will of the Republican Party, and ultimately the President, who is the leader of the Republican Party. And if Karl Rove receives complaints from state Republicans on U.S. attorneys, who were originally selected by President Bush, then what is the easiest way to remove such complaints by the state Republicans than to remove the attorneys who were targeted by these complaints? However, to remove a small number of attorneys might cause some suspicion by the Democrats, the news media, or the bloggers. Therefore, Rove's original plan was to fire all 93 U.S. attorneys as cover for his outing the targeted eight U.S. attorneys. But in firing all 93 U.S. attorneys, the Bush administration would have run into a huge problem in finding enough Bush loyalists to fill all 93 positions. So the Rove plan was scaled back to firing only the eight targeted U.S. attorneys. And here is where I believe that Rove miscalculated. First, I believe that Rove, the Bush White House, and the Department of Justice felt that this was a non-story--that it would blow over in a few days and not become the scandal that it is now. There was a lot of hubris in the Bush White House, and Rove, in pushing for this attorney purge without looking at the long-term political worst-case scenario. The second miscalculation was that Rove believed the Republicans could maintain control of Congress in the 2006 elections. With GOP control of Congress, the Bush administration could fire these attorneys, give their PR-spin, and make sure that the GOP rubber-stamped Congress would not engage in any investigations into this scandal. But the Republicans lost control of Congress to the Democrats, and with that, subpoena power. This brings up an interesting question. Once the Democrats gained control of Congress, why didn't Rove and the Bush White House drop the plan for the attorney purge? Did they still have too much hubris in believing that this purge story would just blow over, and the new Democratic congressional leadership would not use their subpoena powers to investigate this purge? The third reason is that I believe that Rove and the Bush White House were so far along with their planned purge, that they didn't want to drop all that work in setting up the purge--even after the results of the 2006 midterm elections. In this case, it is not just the Bush administration's hubris, but also the Bush administration's complete failure to adapt to a changing political environment. This is an administration that can not compromise on political issues, that can not adapt to rapidly changing political situations. The change in control of Congress from the Republicans to the Democrats should have given the Bush administration some pause in adapting their attorney purge plan to reflect this change in congressional control, or even to abandon the purge plan altogether. Instead, the Bush administration went full steam in purging the attorneys in January 2007.
And the Bush administration is embroiled in a huge scandal here.
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