The appointment of Rachel Paulose to be the U.S. attorney for Minnesota continues to be a source of puzzlement. Stung by the resignation of four of the top administrators in her office, Paulose agreed to an interview with the Star Tribune and professed to have been completely out of the loop on the U.S. attorney purge:
“These wild conspiracy theories are just that — totally off base,” Paulose said in her first interview on the subject. “No one communicated to me–in any form–about any plan to remove any U.S. attorney.”
So how did a 33-year-old Republican lawyer go, in less than two months, from private practice in Minnesota to senior counselor to the deputy attorney general in Washington and then back to Minnesota as an interim U.S. attorney? Here’s Paulose’s version of what happened, as reported by the Star Tribune:
In January 2006, she was recruited for a job as senior counselor to the deputy attorney general, working primarily on health care policy.
Paulose said she never met Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty until she applied to work for him. Nor was she close to Gonzales, adding that they have never had a one-on-one meeting.
She says Monica Goodling, the Justice Department’s former liaison to the White House, is a friend. Goodling invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination and refused to testify before a Senate committee investigating the replacement of U.S. attorneys.
But they didn’t meet until January 2006. Neither Goodling nor anyone else ever told her about a plan to replace U.S. attorneys, Paulose said.
Six weeks after starting her job in Washington, Minnesota U.S. Attorney Thomas Heffelfinger resigned, and Paulose was quickly appointed as his interim replacement. A lifelong Republican, she said she was as surprised by the appointment as anyone, noting that she had signed a year’s lease for an apartment in Chevy Chase, Md.
Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., submitted the names of two candidates to replace Heffelfinger. His staff said Paulose was not one of them. Clayton Robinson, a longtime friend of Coleman’s who now oversees criminal cases in Ramsey County, said he interviewed for the U.S. attorney job in March 2006, but was told several weeks later that the administration was looking elsewhere.
Coleman eventually embraced Paulose’s nomination, largely based on recommendations from respected lawyers, and the Senate confirmed her in December.
It’s quite a remarkable run, especially since Paulose didn’t have the support of Coleman, who as the state’s sole Republican senator would usually play a pivotal role in selecting his state’s U.S. attorney.
There’s more to this. There has to be. Paulose has laid down quite a marker though: She was as surprised as anyone when she was appointed interim U.S. attorney. Keep that marker in mind as this story unfolds.
