LAT: Ousted U.S.A. Wonders Whether GOPer Probe Led to Firing

From The Los Angeles Times:

Still uncertain exactly why he was fired, former U.S. Atty. H.E. “Bud” Cummins III wonders whether it had something to do with the probe he opened into alleged corruption by Republican officials in Missouri amid a Senate race there that was promising to be a nail-biter.

Cummins, a federal prosecutor in Arkansas, was removed from his job along with seven other U.S. attorneys last year.

In January 2006, he had begun looking into allegations that Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt had rewarded GOP supporters with lucrative contracts to run the state’s driver’s license offices. Cummins handled the case because U.S. attorneys in Missouri had recused themselves over potential conflicts of interest.

But in June, Cummins said, he was told by the Justice Department that he would be fired at year’s end to make room for Timothy Griffin — an operative tied to White House political guru Karl Rove.

In an interview Thursday, Cummins expressed disgust that the Bush administration may have fired him and the others for political reasons. “You have to firewall politics out of the Department of Justice. Because once it gets in, people question every decision you make. Now I keep asking myself: ‘What about the Blunt deal?’ “

A couple points to be made about this, one that adds credence to Cummins’ charge, and one that doesn’t.

To bolster Cummins’ claim that powerful people didn’t like what he was up to (and somehow the Times doesn’t mention this), Blunt is the son of Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), who was the #3 in the House Republican leadership at the time of the firing.

But there’s another point to be made, and that’s that Cummins was already on Kyle Sampson’s hit list as early as February, 2005.

Now, as with San Diego’s Carol Lam, who was also on that early target list before her probe of Duke Cunningham got going, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Cummins’ probe of a powerful Republican didn’t end up being the driving force behind the firing.

But above all, Cummins’ public allegation shows how dire the administration’s predicament is. Cummins is a dyed in the wool Republican; he even once ran for the House as a Republican in the nineties. When he was pushed out of office, like a loyal Republican, he freely cooperated with installing his successor (Karl Rove’s former aide Tim Griffin). And as the scandal gained steam, he held back from expressing suspicions or making allegations — though he drew the line at allowing the Justice Department to smear his fellow U.S. attorneys. Loyalty has its limits (for people of integrity, at least).

Now look where he is: publicly musing that he was pushed out because he didn’t roll over when his fellow Republicans pressured him on an investigation.