Why is this not called Attorneygate?

I've been silent on the firing of the 8 US Attorneys last December. Well no more.

Andrew Sullivan quotes a lawyer as saying: "The key is crude political direction of the prosecutorial service - go get Democrats, and do it in a way to get maximum electoral benefit; lay off the corrupt Republicans; use your prosecutorial authority for voter suppression projects targeting minorities."

The Daily Kos has details of how one of the attorneys, John McKay, may be have been dismissed because the didn't investigate the 2004 Washington Governor election which was one of the closest in US history. It was hotly contested and did go to trial.

Well we learned last Tuesday when 2 of the 6 of the fired attorneys testified to Congress "that GOP lawmakers or staffers had made improper telephone calls asking about ongoing criminal investigations. A third prosecutor said a Justice Department official warned him two weeks ago that he and his colleagues should keep quiet or risk retaliation." One example is Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) is alleged to have "pressured a New Mexico prosecutor to bring indictments against a Democrat just before the November elections" and has hired a attorney to represent him.

You know how the Bush administration says they won't comment about an ongoing investigation when it comes to the Libby trial? We learn todaythat Bush told Gonzales that he received complaints about the prosecutors not investigating voter fraud. So you don't talk to the press, you talk to the prosecutors. But it's deeper than that. In Feb 2005 Harriet Miers suggested firing all 93 US attorneys (this was 8 months before Bush nominated her to the Supreme Court). Apparently that's common when the office of the President changes parties, but it's unusual to do so mid-term. Gonzales and Rove dismissed the idea as impractical.

According to the Washington Post: "The aide in charge of the dismissals -- [Gonzales'] chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson -- resigned yesterday, officials said, after acknowledging that he did not tell key Justice officials about the extent of his communications with the White House, leading them to provide incomplete information to Congress." Already a coverup. And yes, apparently Rove was involved in firing the attorneys.

I can't find the transcript (though I've seen the video) but this Washington Post article tells how on January 18, 2007, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the fired U.S. attorneys: "I would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons or if it would in any way jeopardize an ongoing serious investigation. I just would not do it." He said the changes were for performance reasons.

And yet the New York Times finds that "Internal Justice Department performance reports for six of the eight United States attorneys who have been dismissed in recent months rated them 'well regarded,' 'capable' or 'very competent.'"

Last Friday Paul Krugman in The New York Times basically said Gonzales lied to Congress: "But it's already clear that [Gonzales] did indeed dismiss all eight prosecutors for political reasons -- some because they wouldn't use their offices to provide electoral help to the G.O.P., and the others probably because they refused to soft-pedal investigations of corrupt Republicans."

Krugman goes on to point out that the real question is what about the US attorneys who didn't get fired what did they do to curry favor? "Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny."

There were election tampering charges against Republicans with phone jamming in the NH 2002 elections that I wrote about last may and last August. The Daily Kos points out that US attorney Thomas Colantuono took "more than a year before the FBI questioned their top/only suspect" but "just before the 2004 elections, he moved fast to block Democrats from questioning phone-jamming suspects".

Oh and another detail in all of this is that the Patriot Act added another provision that the Attorney General can name interim replacement US attorneys without Senate confirmation, thereby bypassing Congress. Nice.

I think the important point is this. Bush has the right to fire these attorneys for any reason. As I just heard on NPR, these are political appointments, but there are not political jobs. The problem is, that Bush, the guy who called himself "the uniter", believes that he only needs to protect the rights of Republicans and should only prosecute Democrats. He's ignoring his oath to serve the whole nation and protect the Constitution.