Why did the Bush administration purge 10 U.S. Attorneys before the scheduled end of their appointment? The more we learn about this, the more suspicious it looks. Fortunately, there’s a Democratic Senate now, and the story has caught lawmakers’ attention.
We learned last week that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is “transforming the ranks of the nation’s top federal prosecutors by firing some and appointing conservative loyalists from the Bush administration’s inner circle.” In nearly every instance, the new U.S. Attorneys have “few, if any, ties to the communities they’ve been appointed to serve, and some have had little experience as prosecutors.” In an interesting twist, we learned over the weekend that the pressure to replace the prosecutors “did not come from the people who would know about the U.S. Attorneys’ job performance (their supervisors at the Justice Department), but rather from power players in the White House or Republican Party.”
With 10 individual cases making one larger controversy, crafting an easy-to-understand narrative can be tricky. It’s probably best to stick to just one of the 10, to highlight the broader problem. In this burgeoning scandal, the one to watch is H. E. “Bud” Cummins, who appears to have been fired for no reason — except to help a Karl Rove acolyte.
A top Justice Department official said on Tuesday that one of several United States attorneys forced from their jobs last year was dismissed without a specific cause in order to give the job to a lawyer with close political ties to the White House.
One disputed case involves H. E. Cummins III, a United States attorney in Arkansas who was asked to step down last summer although his office had increased drug and firearms prosecutions and he had helped organize a multiagency counterterrorism council.
To temporarily replace Mr. Cummins, the Justice Department named J. Timothy Griffin, a former military and civilian prosecutor who was a political director for the Republican National Committee and who once worked as a deputy to Karl Rove, the senior White House political adviser.
Asked to explain why Griffin had to replace Cummins, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty had a little trouble.
At the hearing, Mr. McNulty was asked by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, whether it was accurate to say that Mr. Cummins had not done anything wrong to justify his removal. Mr. McNulty replied, “I do not dispute that characterization.”
Had Mr. Cummins ever received a poor performance evaluation, Mr. Schumer asked.
Mr. McNulty answered, “I’m not aware of anything negative.”
Mr. McNulty said that because the attorneys are presidential appointees, they can be replaced at any time without a specific reason. He said about half of the 93 prosecutors appointed to their jobs by Mr. Bush in his first term had already left voluntarily. Mr. McNulty said the appointment of Mr. Griffin was a chance for “a fresh start with a new person.”
For McNulty to suggest that Cummins’ dismissal was routine is simply wrong. The Bush administration fired him late on a Friday afternoon, the week before Christmas. Cummins admittedly did not intend to stay on through 2008, but even he was “caught off guard” when his replacement was announced out of the blue.
For that matter, Griffin’s, Cummins’ successor, most notable public service has been serving as an aide to Karl Rove. He doesn’t have extensive experience as a prosecutor, and he doesn’t have much of a background in Arkansas. The Justice Department official’s explanation for all of this left the Senate Judiciary Committee unconvinced.
Fortunately, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) seems to have really sunk his teeth into this one.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the firings “reek of politics” and warned McNulty that the panel would consider issuing subpoenas for job evaluations of the fired prosecutors unless the Justice Department agrees to hand them over. Justice officials said they will work to accommodate the request.
“What happened here doesn’t sound like business as usual,” Schumer said. “Even the hiring and firing of our top federal prosecutors has become infused and corrupted with political, rather than prudent, considerations.”
Stay tuned.