It seems like the most straightforward and elementary angle to the entire purge scandal: why were the prosecutors fired? The administration’s answer to this question has evolved over time, but as the LA Times notes today, the Justice Department’s memos show “performance issues were being detailed after the fact in order to justify the terminations.”
Senior Justice Department officials began drafting memos this month listing specific reasons why they had fired eight U.S. attorneys, intending to cite performance problems such as insubordination, leadership failures and other missteps if needed to convince angry congressional Democrats that the terminations were justified.
The memos, organized as charts with entries for each of the federal prosecutors and labeled “for internal DOJ use only,” offer new details about disputes over policy, priorities and management styles between the department and several of its U.S. attorneys.
Now, call me old fashioned, but it appears the Justice Department’s process is backwards. Officials fired eight U.S. Attorneys and then wrote memos with reasons why.
As Paul Kiel put it, “Among the documents last night are some showing that the ‘performance related’ reasons for firing eight prosecutors were the result of an ongoing collaboration at Justice. In other words, the officials appear to have brainstormed on the reasons they had fired the eight.”
Kevin Drum explained this well in a terrific post. “All we have is a summary document from after the purge, where DOJ apparatchiks are tripping over themselves trying to figure out just what those reasons were,” Kevin wrote. “But of course, that doesn’t make sense. If they had really had firm, irreproachable reasons for firing the ‘USA-8,’ they would have just dug up the old memos that spelled out those reasons and transferred them to the summary sheet. Or maybe just released the original memos themselves. Instead they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.”
It’s worth remembering, the after-the-fact explanations for the purge offer reasons with varying degrees of legitimacy. The LA Times article, for example, notes that in San Francisco, where Kevin Ryan was fired, “the office has become the most fractured office in the nation, morale has fallen to the point that it is harming our prosecutorial efforts and [Ryan] has lost the confidence of many of the career prosecutors who are leaving the office.” If accurate, that sounds like a fairly compelling explanation.
But therein lies the point — the administration may have had legitimate grounds for dismissal for a couple of the purged prosecutors, but that only helps highlight the weak reasoning for the others. Kevin broke them down into three categories.
* Strong: Chiara, Ryan, Cummins. The first two seem to have had serious morale/management issues that had previously required on-site visits to address. Cummins was planning to resign eventually anyway.
* Middling: Charlton, McKay. In both cases, EOUSA managers appeared to be unhappy about “insubordination” and working “outside of proper channels.” It’s not clear what the problems were, but these are at least colorable stories.
* Weak: Bogden, Iglesias, Lam. In the first two cases, virtually no reasons are given at all. “Lack of energy” and “Underperforming generally” is the best they could come up with. In Lam’s case, they complained about “time management” and then tossed in some items about illegal immigration and gun prosecutions that were pretty plainly bogus.
Wouldn’t you know it? Even after the fact, the five with the weakest explanations are the same five who, it just so happens, were either pursuing charges against Republicans or not pursuing charges against Democrats. They also happen to be the five whose dismissals prompted Justice Department officials to lie to Congress.
No, nothing suspicious here at all.