The US Attorney Purge story has gone into a semi-eclipse in the mainstream media. And it will probably stay there until the 17th when Alberto Gonzales goes up to the senate to beg, probably in vain, for his job. Indeed, on this weekend’s Sunday shows, 
a number of guests blithely reassured viewers that there was no evidence of wrongdoing in the whole scandal — see Woodruff and O’Beirne on Meet the Press.
But outside of the media’s view another chapter of the story is unfolding.
We know about the US Attorneys who were purged, i.e., the ones who didn’t get the message and resign and got the call on December 7th telling them to pack their bags.
But there were others.
These are cases in which sitting US Attorneys resigned under quetionable circumstances in late 2005 or early 2006 and then were replaced by young DOJ staffers who Attorney General Gonzales appointed using the Patriot Act provision. The names of at least some of these resigned USA were showing up on a list of potential firees at Main Justice. And there’s also at least some overlap with the states from which GOP officials were sending complaints about ‘voter fraud’ to Karl Rove.
Rove, of course, wanted results. And it’s no accident that almost all of the states in question were key swing states.
The details are murky. And we’re still looking in to several of these cases. But it looks more and more like the 8 Attorney Purge was just a new chapter in a longer running story — and the hold the White House political office had over the Justice Department through President Bush’s footman Alberto Gonzales is and was at the center of every part of the story.
