I guess dignity just ain’t Paul Wolfowitz’s bag.
Now comes word that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson — yes, in case you were wondering, that’s the Treasury Secretary of the United States, not the Treasurer or Treasury Secretary of the World Bank or anything — has come out in favor of giving Paul Wolfowitz more time to defend himself against conflict of interest charges.
No less shocking than Paulson’s entry into this increasingly pitiful spectacle is the fact that Paulson’s spokesperson is named Brookly McLaughlin.
Given the depths of corruption and bad acts we’ve seen of late, giving a fat raise to a girlfriend or boyfriend who works at your shop isn’t the worst kind of corruption there is. But it falls short, I guess you might say, of best practices. I knew this thing was heading toward some sort of increasingly bizarre and baroque anti-accountability fugue when Wolfowitz a few days ago tried to turn the tables on his accusers and claim that they were in fact the bad actors but he was willing to assume they were acting in good faith when they did wrong.
Wolfowitz now appears to be filled with contempt for the board of the institution, which was supposed to be his vehicle for a world-historical mulligan, since they are unwilling, as my friend Sidney Blumenthal recently put it, to overlook his corrupt dealings for the greater good of his crusade against corruption.
When you think about it, on a few different levels, Wolfowitz is sort of an Austin Powersian sort of figure. And as Austin might say, taking responsibility just ain’t Paul’s bag, baby.
Since Alberto Gonzales is now among the political undead — not alive, but unvanquishable in his own liminal existence — I guess it can’t be called a death of a thousand cuts. But there’s still something almost lyrical in the campaign of leaks congressional investigators are putting in his path.
As you know, Gonzales is returning to Capitol Hill on Thursday to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. Time now reports that Kyle Sampson told congressional investigators “three times in as many minutes that Gonzales was angry with McNulty because he had exposed the White House’s involvement in the firings had put it’s (sic) role “in the public sphere,” as Sampson phrased it, according to Congressional sources familiar with the interview.”
The earlier story was the Gonzales was upset with McNulty’s testimony because he’d conceded that there was no reason for Bud Cummins’ removal other than the desire to replace him with someone else.
I’m very curious to see how this goes on Thursday (and of course we’ll be bringing you wall to wall coverage). The real work of investigations usually takes place in private staff interviews. The public ones, especially the televised ones, get too wound up in theatrics and drawn out verbiage. Not enough pointed question and follow-up.
But Alberto Gonzales has been caught in so many lies at this point — lies from his own mouth and others on his behalf from staffers — that I’m not sure how he’d get out of the hearing room in one piece if the members of the committee really went for a pointed examination.
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: âSenator Bond ⦠upon (Gravesâ) 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 Bondâs office who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the discussions said the White House rejected Bondâs efforts on Gravesâ behalf because of âperformanceâ 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 doesnât know why he would have been a target for removal, but he suggested his âindependenceâ may have played a role.
âWhen I first interviewed (with the Department)â¦I was asked to give the panel one attribute that describes me,â Graves said. âI said independent. Apparently, that was the wrong attribute.â
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.
Today’s Must Read: Republicans get huffy at federal investigators for investigating them.
A key snippet from today’s piece in The Hill about the DeLay portion of the Abramoff investigation …
One source familiar with the investigation said federal officials have given immunity to at least one senior member of DeLayâs political circle who may now be cooperating with investigators. Former associates of the majority leader say investigators are apparently attempting to indict DeLay for corruption by proving that Buckham sought to influence him with unearned payments to his wife.
That circle isn’t that big. Especially when you take out the folks who’ve already pleaded out. Any ideas?
Last night, a bunch of longtime Al Gore loyalists held a much-ballyhooed reunion dinner that had stirred speculation about a Gore run in 2008 even before it took place.
A source who was at the dinner tells us what happened.
As noted below, we now know that there were not 8 but 9 US Attorneys fired last year by the Department of Justice — the earliest, Todd Graves in Kansas City, way back in March 2006, right after the passage of the revised USA Patriot.
Now, there’s a lot more we want to know about what happened here. And our reporters at TPMmuckraker are working the story as we speak to bring you more.
But here’s one nugget that’s really got me interested. By his own account, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) has known Graves was fired since March 2006. Meanwhile the Senate Judiciary Committee has been investigating the firings story for three months.
Graves’s ouster is highly relevant to that investigation. Did Bond not share this information with the Committee? If not, why not? Did committee investigators know conclusively, as Bond did, that Graves was fired. And have they spoken to him since the news broke last night?
We’ve just gotten the latest statement out from fired US Attorney Todd Graves. Speaking of his forced resignation, Graves says how it is “far better to take a graceful exit than to do something that you should be ashamed of.”
And yeah, we’re curious too.