Bingo I think we

Bingo! I think we have our 9th fired US Attorney — and one replaced in short order by one of the Bush DOJ’s prime ‘vote fraud’ scammers.

As noted earlier, there are a handful of other US Attorneys who resigned in 2006 under what now appear suspicious circumstances, especially given who subsequently replaced them.

Two cases in particular are those of Thomas Heffelfinger in Minnesota (replaced by Rachel Paulose) and Todd Graves (replaced by Bradley Schlozman). Recently we learned that Heffelfinger and Graves both showed up on the DOJ firing lists not long before they resigned. Heffelfinger pretty categorically denied being fired, all the smoke notwithstanding. Graves gave a cryptic quote suggesting something might have been up.

Now, the prime reporter on this slice of the US Attorney Purge story has been Dave Helling at the Kansas City Star. Tonight, with his colleague Steve Kraske, Helling has a big scoop. It’s oddly buried in the piece which is unfortunately behind a subscription wall. So bear with me.

The first revelation in the story is that staffers for Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO), though supposedly not the senator himself, approached the Bush administration in 2005 and suggested that it might be wise to remove Graves from his post after his four year term expired because of his wife’s involvement in a controversial ‘fee office’ patronage scheme in Missouri. The fee office story is a whole complicated can of worms in itself. But for present purposes it appears that these concerns had nothing to do with Graves’ resignation in March 2006. Graves says no. Bond’s office says no, etc.

But here’s the key. The article says that Bond did become directly involved in Graves’s situation in early 2006. Bond’s spokesman Shana Marchio said in a statement: “Senator Bond … upon (Graves’) request personally called the White House to gain Todd extra time to wrap up case work before his departure.”

Now, though it’s not said directly, I think there’s no way to interpret this statement other than to conclude that the White House and/or the Justice Department fired Graves and Bond, at Graves’s request, tried to intercede on his behalf for a little more time.

A bit further down in the piece there’s this …

A person in Bond’s office who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the discussions said the White House rejected Bond’s efforts on Graves’ behalf because of “performance” concerns. E-mails from the Justice Department and the White House have used similar language in discussing the other U.S. attorneys who were fired.

Okay, I think we now know that Todd Graves was fired. The on and off the record statements out of Bond’s office don’t allow any other conclusion. I suspect the article does not state the fact directly because Graves himself wouldn’t cop to it directly. But he did say this …

Graves said he doesn’t know why he would have been a target for removal, but he suggested his “independence” may have played a role.

“When I first interviewed (with the Department)…I was asked to give the panel one attribute that describes me,” Graves said. “I said independent. Apparently, that was the wrong attribute.”

As I said, I think we now know that Graves was the ninth fired US Attorney. There were already eight. And I strongly suspect there are more. But Graves stands out because of the man who replaced him, Bradley Schlozman, who we profiled in Tuesday’s episode of TPMtv. Schlozman’s entire tenure at DOJ has been dedicated to turning back the clock on minority voting rights in the United States and more broadly to suppressing Democratic vote turnout. And there’s evidence that Graves was sacked because he wouldn’t do Schlozman’s bidding in pushing his voter suppression agenda in western Missouri.

Gonzales goes to the Hill Thursday and Schlozman follows on May 15th. Graves’s firing deserves much more scrutiny.