GOP Sen: “I Can’t Even Tell You How Upset I Am”

I’ve stopped counting how many toes the Justice Department stepped on when they purged eight prosecutors last December.

But one set of toes belongs to Sen. John Ensign (R-NV). Not only did the Justice Department go over Ensign’s head to fire Nevada’s U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden, but they apparently “misled” him as to why they were doing it.

From The Las Vegas Review-Journal:

Ensign was particularly irate over the firing of Bogden, an independent who Ensign picked in 2001 to oversee federal crime prosecutions in Nevada. Bogden, a prosecutor in the Northern Nevada office of the U.S. attorney, was nominated by President Bush and confirmed by the Senate in October 2001.

In December, the Justice Department fired Bogden over Ensign’s objections. Ensign said last month he was told the dismissal was for “performance reasons.”

Justice officials initially told Congress that was the reason. But Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General William Moschella told a House subcommittee “no particular deficiencies” in Bogden’s performance existed….

Ensign said Wednesday he was decidedly unhappy.

“What the Justice Department testified yesterday is inconsistent with what they told me,” Ensign said. “I can’t even tell you how upset I am at the Justice Department.”

Asked whether he believed he was misled, Ensign said, “I was not told the same thing that I was at the hearing, let me put it that way.”

Ensign said he pressed the topic at a meeting with White House officials Wednesday morning. He added he would be “making further inquiries.”

“I am not pleased with the Justice Department at this point,” he said. “I told the White House this morning if I could renominate (Bogden) I would.”

The Review-Journal goes on to quote a “legal source” saying “it seemed clear that the administration was preparing to ‘parachute in’ a new U.S. attorney in Nevada [after Bogden’s firing], possibly from outside the state, under the Patriot Act umbrella.”

And so it continues….

Update: I missed this in my first reading of the piece, but Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is quoted as saying that someone from the Department of Justice actually told Bogden that they were planning of taking advantage of the Patriot Act provision to avoid Senate confirmation for their choice.