Republicans are corrupt, Democrats aren’t.
That’s the fairly straightfoward message of a new Web video just released by the DCCC. No mention of Rep. Jefferson (D-LA) and frozen bricks of cash. But altogether a pretty fair characterization of the length of the GOP’s current rap sheet. Take a look.
The Bush administration hands the wingers yet another defeat in their losing battle against U.S. diplomatic engagement with Syria and Iran.
Things are getting nasty all around, it seems. Today Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) said that a State Department official had tried to block investigators’ access to a State Department analyst who’d raised alarms about the bogus Niger evidence before the State of the Union in 2003.
And Waxman has politely asked Secretary Rice not to impede the committee’s investigation of her.
Join us as we try, by process of elimination, to find a single Justice Department official who’s willing to take responsibility for the U.S. attorney firings.
As we noted last night, fired US Attorney John McKay appeared on KCTS Connects, a public affairs TV show on Seattle public television last night. We’re going to bring you some clips from it on Monday. But here’s a preview. McKay telling how it felt getting threatened not to talk about his firing and whether he thinks Alberto Gonzales told the truth in his testimony before the senate …
Thanks to TPM Readers HL and JL for getting us a copy of the video.
It’s the accountability, stupid!
We’ve just learned that the House Dem Caucus is planning a series of periodic oversight and accountability reports designed to keep you up to speed on what Dems are doing oversight-wise in Congress. We’ve got an advance look at their first installment.
As the storm broke (from Bloomberg) …
A former U.S. Justice Department official and central figure in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys tearfully told a colleague two months ago her government career probably was over as the matter was about to erupt into a political storm, according to closed-door congressional testimony.
Monica Goodling, at the time an aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, sobbed for 45 minutes in the office of career Justice Department official David Margolis on March 8 as she related her fears that she would have to quit, according to congressional aides briefed on Margolis’s private testimony to House and Senate investigators. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity.
Margolis’s description of the emotional scene in his office sheds new light on divisions that were developing in the Justice Department’s Washington headquarters as the Democratic-controlled Congress was demanding documents that might show White House involvement in the dismissals.
Another key passage …
Margolis testified in private that he tried to console Goodling and listened to her discuss her personal life, a congressional aide said. He recalled telling a colleague that he was concerned about Goodling’s emotional state, the aide said.
…
Three hours before Goodling visited his fourth-floor office, Margolis told House and Senate investigators that Sampson dropped by to say he had information Margolis needed to know, one congressional aide said.
Margolis recounted that Sampson read his e-mail exchanges with White House aides that showed the decisions on firing the prosecutors were closely coordinated with members of the president’s staff, the aide said.
Margolis recalled that he was stunned to learn the extent of White House involvement in the dismissals, congressional aides said. Margolis testified that preparation for McNulty’s Senate testimony — which took place more than a month before his meetings with Goodling and Sampson — was based on the assumption that the White House only became involved at the end of the firing process, the aide said.
That must have been quite a conversation. The clique around Gonzales has tried to portray Margolis, a career DOJ lawyer, as tightly involved in the firing decisions. But that story was slowly abandoned as more evidence came out.
Late Update: TPM Reader JM has a really good question …
I’m a long-time reader, and I enjoy your digging immensely. Here’s a question, though: Did the e-mails that Sampson read to Margolis, detailing some of the White House connections to the firing decisions, appear in any of the DoJ’s document dumps? Or can we look forward to these being “newly found” and released in a future dump (now that the committee is aware of their existence)?
There’s an interesting proposal floating around among House Democrats that would allow Dems to keep standing up to the White House on Iraq.
But it may not get very far in the Senate, however.
Not sure how many folks saw this but tucked into last night’s McClatchy piece on Rep. Doolittle (R-CA) was this passage …
Doolittle said he had information from sources he wouldn’t name that federal agents had executed search warrants recently against two other members of Congress – a Republican and a Democrat – in raids that hadn’t become public yet. He said he thought that those raids were related to the Abramoff probe.
Important to keep in mind, of course, that Doolittle is a serial bamboozler of the most egregious sort. And perhaps he’s arguing that FBI raids are actually a new congressional fad like frisbees or the Macarena. But I’m curious whether he knows something here or just more blowing smoke.
Late Update: TPM Reader DG flags this passage from a Post piece from before the fall when Doolittle was covering DeLay’s back …
A DeLay ally, Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Calif.), said Republicans “are going to have to respond in kind” by filing ethics charges against key Democrats. From now on, he said in an interview, it’s a matter of “you kill my dog, I’ll kill your cat.” Doolittle said he plans to file ethics charges against a prominent Democrat but would not name the target.
Of course, Doolittle never did anything. No idea if the FBI has raided your cat’s scratch post.