Favored U.S. Attorneys Pull Double DutyThe Washington Post today reports on how the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales has placed six of its 93 U.S. attorneys in top positions at the department.
The meat of the piece has to do with canned U.S. attorney David Iglesias. One of the department’s cover stories for firing him, remember, was that he was an “absentee landlord.” As department official William Moschella told Congress last month: “Quite frankly, U.S. attorneys are hired to run the office, not their first assistants.”
Well, not only are there six U.S. attorneys who are absent from their offices full-time, but one of them is Bill Mercer — the U.S. Attorney for Montana, the acting Associate Attorney General, and an architect of the purge.
Iglesias was gone from his office 45 days each year to do his Navy reserve duty. As I noted last week, the Office of Special Counsel has launched an investigation into whether Iglesias was wrongfully terminated.
But Mercer is gone all the time — giving the chief judge in his district, Judge Donald W. Molloy fits:
Molloy wrote a letter to Gonzales in October 2005 demanding that Mercer be replaced.
Molloy wrote that Mercer’s absence had led to “a lack of leadership” in the Montana office and created “untoward difficulties for the court” and for career prosecutors. The judge also questioned whether Mercer complied with residency requirements.
Gonzales wrote back the next month that Mercer was handling both jobs admirably, and suggested that Mercer’s absence would be short-lived.
Relations between Mercer and Molloy have not improved since. Molloy berated Mercer during a court hearing last year, accusing him of bringing weak cases to court to pump up statistics and telling him: “You have no credibility — none.”
“Your lawyers are not getting their briefs in on time,” Molloy said. “You’re in Washington, D.C., and you ought to be here in Montana doing your work. Your office is a mess.”
“Performance related.” Ha.
