There’s going to be a ton of news today. And we’re going to be on top of all of it. But before the deluge, let me touch again on a point I referenced last night in this lengthy post. The story emerging is that at least some of these US Attorneys were fired because they weren’t aggressive enough in investigating Democratic ‘voter fraud’. Like I said last night, I’ve been reporting on this stuff for years. And this is a horse that shouldn’t even be let out of the gate. It’s become standard operating procedure for Republican operatives to whip up charges of ‘voter fraud’. And some of them even believe it. But the claims are almost universally bogus. And the real intent in most cases is to stymie get out the vote efforts or shut down voter registration drives — mainly, though not exclusively, in minority voting precincts. Here you can see a list of TPM posts from the 2002 and 2004 cycles on bogus ‘voter fraud’ stories, mainly from South Dakota. These are made up stories, the main aim of which is to keep real voters from getting to vote. There’s no mystery why McKay and Iglesias wouldn’t bite: the stories were bogus hash-ups from Republican political operatives and as McKay said this morning, he wasn’t going to “drag innocent people in front of a grand jury.”
Washington Post reporter confirms it: Matt Drudge is the mainstream media’s assignment editor.
Gonzales cancels travel plans amidst calls for ouster.
It appears that as all the top staff at the Bush Justice Department retains criminal defense counsel for the impending investigations, the reliable right-wing mouthpieces are dragging out the ‘Clinton fired his US Attorneys’ canard to deny the obvious. First, a note to readers: if you see reporters on the cable nets repeating this mumbojumbo, let us know. (Kevin Corke from NBC seems to be one good example so far.) But let’s address why this is nothing but a smokescreen to hide the criminal conduct at the Justice Department.
First, we now know — or at least the White House is trying to tell us — that they considered firing all the US Attorneys at the beginning of Bush’s second term. That would have been unprecedented but not an abuse of power in itself. The issue here is why these US Attorneys were fired and the fact that the White House intended to replace them with US Attorneys not confirmed by the senate. We now have abundant evidence that they were fired for not sufficiently politicizing their offices, for not indicting enough Democrats on bogus charges or for too aggressively going after Republicans. (Remember, Carol Lam is still the big story here.) We also now know that the top leadership of the Justice Department lied both to the public and to Congress about why the firing took place. As an added bonus we know the whole plan was hatched at the White House with the direct involvement of the president.
And Clinton? Every new president appoints new US Attorneys. That always happens. Always. In early 1993, since the Republicans had held the White House for 12 years a few US Attorneys signalled that they might not be tendering their resignations and the new Clinton Justice Department asked for and received the resignations of all 93 US Attorneys. Eager to whip up scandal, Republicans at the time tried to make this into something untoward. Claiming this is a big deal is like grandstanding with the claim that President Bush ‘fired’ Clinton’s cabinet secretaries when he came into office in 2001. At worst, it’s the difference between giving them all several weeks to resign and just asking for their resignations on day one.
The whole thing is silly. But a lot of reporters on the news are already falling for it. The issue here is why these US Attorneys were fired — a) because they weren’t pursuing a GOP agenda of indicting Democrats, that’s a miscarriage of justice, and b) because they lied to Congress about why it happened.
Coming momentarily: Justice Department emails on Attorney Purge.
Video and transcript of the Schumer press conference: Kyle Sampson “won’t be the next Scooter Libby.”
Dem Presidential candidates blast White House over Attorney scandal.
Over at TPMmuckraker, we’re combing through the documents the Justice Department handed over to Congress today.
Here’s a good one: an email from Gonzales’ chief of staff to White House counsel Harriet Miers, with a list of the U.S. attorneys to be fired.