In a week in which each passing day has revealed more damaging details, this ABC News report from late yesterday afternoon ratchets the prosecutor purge scandal up a notch — to a level that may seal Alberto Gonzales’ fate, and implicate Karl Rove in a more serious way.
New unreleased e-mails from top administration officials show that the idea of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys was raised by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove in early January 2005, indicating Rove was more involved in the plan than the White House previously acknowledged. The e-mails also show how Alberto Gonzales discussed the idea of firing the attorneys en masse while he was still White House counsel — weeks before he was confirmed as attorney general.
The e-mails put Rove at the epicenter of the imbroglio and raise questions about Gonzales’ explanations of the matter.
Paul Kiel has published the specific email that shows that the purge idea originated with Karl Rove. The subject line read, “Re: Question from Karl Rove,” and features an exchange between Kyle Sampson, who was then at the Justice Department, discusses with then-deputy White House Counsel David Leitch the idea of replacing “15-20 percent of the current U.S. Attorneys,” because “80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc.”
“[I]f Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, then so do I,” Sampson concludes.
Sampson’s email was in response to Leitch’s relaying of Rove’s query about how the administration would handle the U.S. Attorneys. As paraphrased by Colin Newman, a legal aide in the White House counsel’s office, Rove asked “how we planned to proceed regarding US Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc.”
These new revelations appear to contradict a long list of recent claims from Gonzales and others. Gonzales said he “immediately rejected” the idea of a massive purge, but this shows otherwise. The White House argued that Rove wasn’t involved with the purge at all, but this shows otherwise. The Bush gang said the idea originated with Harriet Miers, but this shows otherwise. Gonzales said he was not aware of the purge effort launched by his deputies, but this shows otherwise.
As for the response to these reports, the Justice Department released a statement from DoJ spokesperson Tasia Scolinos:
“The Attorney General has no recollection of any plan or discussion to replace U.S. Attorneys while he was still White House Counsel. The period of time referred to in the email was during the weeks he was preparing for his confirmation hearing, January 6th, 2005, and his focus was on that. Of course, discussions of changes in Presidential appointees would have been appropriate and normal White House exchanges in the days and months after the election as the White House was considering different personnel changes Administration wide.”
First, if the man who was about to become Attorney General, and who’d been serving as White House counsel, talked with staffers about firing U.S. Attorneys en masse — an event that had never occurred — isn’t that the kind of thing that might stand out in such a person’s mind?
And second, I’ve lost count of just how many times top administration officials have been left clinging to the faulty memory defense lately. They sure are a forgetful bunch.