As Greg Sargent reports at TPM Election Central, Tim Griffin is the RNC’s new hire as the opposition researcher on Barack Obama.
Griffin has a colorful past as the RNC’s director of opposition research in 2004. Here’s some video of Griffin in the RNC war room on the night of one of the Bush-Kerry debates. Griffin’s memorable line that night was that his crew of oppo researchers created the ammunition for the Bush campaign to fire. “We make the bullets,” Griffin is overheard saying.
But Griffin didn’t achieve notoriety until his role in the U.S. attorney purge scandal was revealed. After leaving the RNC, Griffin went to work in the White House as an aide to Karl Rove. With help from Rove and White House Counsel Harriet Miers, the then-34-year-old Griffin was installed as the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas in December 2006.
A total of nine U.S. attorneys were ousted to make room for naked partisans like Griffin or to remove prosecutors considered too independent by the Republican political operatives in the White House and DOJ. As the extent of the purge became known and it became clear that unqualified Griffin would never be confirmed on a permanent basis by the Senate, he withdrew is nomination. Last June, he tearily declared that public service was “not worth it,” sometimes crying as he said he had no plan to return to politics.
What a difference a year makes.
