Is the attorney general apologizing for saying the purged U.S. attorneys were canned for “performance-related reasons”?
As I mentioned earlier, that’s what McClatchy reported yesterday, and the AP has a similar report today on what transpired during a conference call between Gonzales and all the U.S. attorneys on Friday:
During the conference call, planned as a pep talk to raise morale at a Justice Department tainted by the firings and the FBI’s misuse of the Patriot Act, Gonzales apologized for how the dismissals were handled and for suggesting there were problems with the prosecutors’ job performances.
Without more information, it’s hard to know what that means. Is he abandoning the Administration’s defense that the prosecutors were removed for legitimate job performance reasons? Or is he saying that the Justice Department did act based on performance concerns but shouldn’t have shredded the prosecutors’ reputations in the process of defending the move? Since this was a “pep talk,” I suspect it’s the latter.
Some nice press from the LA Times for TPM and TPMmuckraker’s coverage of the US Attorney Purge.
Joe DiGenova–former federal prosecutor, GOP talking head, and husband of Victoria Toensing–has become a veritable quote machine on the U.S. attorney scandal. But here’s his best yet, on Justice Department political appointees: “There are too many Stepford husbands in this administration: young men who are perfectly coiffed and have great clothes, but very few of them have ever been in a courtroom.”
Justice Department officials point fingers back and forth over who’s responsible for the lies they told Congress.
Looks like the Senate Judiciary Committee has a deal worked out for Kyle Sampson to testify voluntarily, which could be interesting in light of Sampson’s claims Friday that others in the Justice Department were aware of the White House’s role in the U.S. Attorney purge even before top DOJ officials testified to the contrary before Congress.
One thing you can say about Washington is that political courage rises in inverse proportion to the political strength of one’s opponent. As Alberto Gonzales (a.k.a., the “walking cadaver“) hemorrhages politically, everyone on the Hill is suddenly as fearless as a shark. Republicans say they never liked him, and Democrats (I presume this came from Democrats) give accounts such as this one, from Newsweek:
Recently, a trio of senatorsâSenate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy; Arlen Specter, the senior Republican on the committee, and Democrat Charles Schumerâsat down with Gonzales in his wood-paneled conference room to discuss the firings of the U.S. attorneys. Gonzales was initially combative and defensive. “Why do I have to prove anything to you?” he demanded at one point, according to a source who was in the room but does not wish to be identified revealing a private conversation. He insisted that only poor performers had been fired. “Everyone was in the bottom tier,” he said. “Everyone?” asked Schumer. What about David Iglesias of New Mexico? (The department’s internal evaluations had given Iglesias glowing marks.) Gonzales hesitated. “I believe so,” he said, but he seemed uncertain. As the meeting was breaking up, Gonzales suddenly switched tacks and seemed to want to be cooperative. “How can we make this better?” he asked. “What can we do?” According to this source, the attorney general seemed to some in the room to be genuinely befuddled.
Gonzales is getting what he deserves, to be sure, but among his opponents there were far fewer profiles in courage before he was mortally wounded.
On March 14th, we noted the major events in Carol Lam’s expanding Cunningham probe that came just before a key White House email pressing for her dismissal.
Now this from McClatchy …
Fired San Diego U.S. attorney Carol Lam notified the Justice Department that she intended to execute search warrants on a high-ranking CIA official as part of a corruption probe the day before a Justice Department official sent an e-mail that said Lam needed to be fired, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Sunday.
Feinstein, D-Calif., said the timing of the e-mail suggested that Lam’s dismissal may have been connected to the corruption probe.
Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse denied in an e-mail that there was any link.
“We have stated numerous times that no U.S. attorney was removed to retaliate against or inappropriately interfere with any public corruption investigation or prosecution,” he wrote. “This remains the case and there is no evidence that indicates otherwise.”
There’s much more here.
Today’s Must Read: illuminating the golden rule of the U.S. attorney purge scandal.
This should really, really help McCain win over all the conservatives who don’t like him.
Update: The Club for Growth has now hit back at McCain — very, very hard.