It’s still not clear what specifically prompted the resignations of four of the top administrators in the office of U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose in the Twin Cities, but this incident, reported in the Star Tribune, gives a sense of Paulose’s management priorities:
Paulose ordered that an internal memo be prepared for high-ranking Justice Department officials who would be coming to Minneapolis from Washington to highlight the office’s high-profile cases, the attorneys said.
Paulose instructed the head of the narcotics section, Andy Dunne, to state in the memo that prosecutors had won convictions that ended drug dealing by St. Paul’s Latin Kings gang, they said.
Dunne was told by Paulose to say that the Latin Kings were the biggest gang in St. Paul and that the office’s recent convictions would stop the so-called Latin King Nation, the attorneys said.
But Dunne told Paulose he couldn’t abide by the request, one of the attorneys said, and when he refused, Dunne was forced to give up his position as chief of the narcotics section. Dunne would not comment Friday.
But let’s not get lost in the vagaries of Paulose’s management style. The significance of the Paulose case is two-fold. First, her appointment is symptomatic of the Bush Justice Department’s preference for “loyal Bushies” over strong, independent, well-qualified prosecutors. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the circumstances of Paulose’s appointment may shed new light on the U.S. Attorney purge–namely, was her predecessor on the original list of USAs to be forced out (and what does that say about who was targeted for removal) and was the plan initially to appoint Paulose via the Patriot Act provision that allowed the attorney general to circumvent the Senate confirmation process (despite the Administration’s denials that it had any plans to bypass the Senate).
Or as the Star Tribune‘s Nick Coleman puts it:
Paulose was picked by Gonzales to replace former U.S. Attorney Thomas Heffelfinger, a mainstream Republican who resigned unexpectedly, possibly just evading the ax (circumstances suggest that his name was on the original “hit list” of attorneys targeted for replacement, as I explained last week). At the time she was picked, Paulose was an aide to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who has admitted giving false testimony to Congress about “Purge-gate,” the scandal over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.
Paulose worked with those involved in “Purge-gate” at the time the plans were hatched. KSTP reported that Monica Goodling, who resigned Friday as the White House liaison for the Department of Justice, was supposed to have been a part of Paulose’s semi-regal investiture ceremony at the University of St. Thomas law school. But Goodling stayed away. Later, she invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to appear before a Senate committee.
Even if Paulose is just a bit player in the purge drama, she knows all the main characters and keeps popping up in pivotal scenes.
