The New York Times follows on the heels of the Washington Post, with a heavily reported piece trying to make sense of the U.S. attorney purge, and like the Post comes up short.
While The Times piece claims to “provide new details and a fuller picture of the events behind the dismissals,” it is really a scatter-shot of speculation about what prompted the firings:
[S]ome prosecutors believe they were forced out for replacements who could gild résumés; several heard that favored candidates had been identified.
Other prosecutors may have been vulnerable because they had had run-ins with the Justice Department, not over corruption cases against Republicans, but on less visible issues.
Paul Charlton in Arizona, for example, annoyed Federal Bureau of Investigation officials by pushing for confessions to be tape-recorded, while John McKay in Seattle had championed a computerized law enforcement information-sharing system that Justice Department officials did not want. Carol C. Lam of San Diego, who successfully prosecuted former Representative Randy Cunningham, had drawn complaints that she was not sufficiently aggressive on immigration cases.
In other words, the prosecutors, and by extension The Times, don’t really know why they were fired, but they have some guesses, which coming from loyal Republicans tend toward the benign, with the exception of New Mexico’s David Iglesias.
Oddly, The Times lets stand a Justice Department assertion that none of the firings were prompted by politics: “Justice Department officials deny that the dismissals were politically motivated or that the action resulted from White House pressure.”
That’s simply not true in the case of the removal of Bud Cummins in Arkansas, which Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty has already conceded in congressional testimony was done in order to provide a post for Karl Rove aide Timothy Griffin. The piece notes then-White House counsel Harriet Miers’ intervention with DOJ officials on Griffin’s behalf, but makes no mention of McNulty’s testimony.
The Times also makes no mention of the Patriot Act provision that allows the Attorney General to appoint interim USAs for indefinite terms, an essential ingredient to the purge story that is inextricably wrapped up in politics.
There is one interesting tidbit in the piece that deserves further exploration: “The White House eventually approved the list and helped notify Republican lawmakers before the Dec. 7 dismissals, officials said.”
Which lawmakers were notified? Those in the home states of the purged USAs? Those on the judiciary committees? What were they told by the White House and DOJ? How does that square with what the White House and DOJ are saying now?
Maybe The Times can turn its reporting guns on those questions.
