Further helping demonstrate the seriousness of the prosecutor purge scandal, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has published an op-ed in USA Today, which denies nearly all of the assertions those of us who’ve been following the scandal know to be true.
Gonzales calls the controversy “an overblown personnel matter,” and, once again, insists that the U.S. Attorneys in question were fired for “reasons related to policy, priorities and management.”
The Justice Department, out of respect for these individuals, would have preferred not to talk publicly about those reasons, but disclosures in the press and requests for information from Congress altered those best-laid plans. Although our reasons for their dismissal were appropriate, our failure to provide those reasons to these individual U.S. attorneys at the time they were asked to resign has only served to fuel wild and inaccurate speculation about our motives. That is very unfortunate because faith and confidence in our justice system are more important than any one individual.
We have never asked a U.S. attorney to resign in an effort to retaliate against him or her or to inappropriately interfere with a public corruption case (or any other type of case, for that matter). Indeed, during the last six years, the department has established an extremely strong record of rooting out public corruption, including prosecuting a number of very high-profile cases.
Like me, U.S. attorneys are political appointees, and we all serve at the pleasure of the president. If U.S. attorneys are not executing their responsibilities in a manner that furthers the management and policy goals of departmental leadership, it is appropriate that they be replaced.
Perhaps Gonzales hasn’t been keeping up on the details of the controversy. If he were, he’d know that this defense doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Gonzales tries to suggest he’s the good guy here by keeping the rationale for the purge secret. Apparently, he didn’t want to embarrass the prosecutors.
But how, then, does Gonzales explain the fact that the Justice Department told Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), in writing, that Carol Lam was doing a fine job “prosecuting border cases — even though they’ve since said that the reason for Lam’s firing was her poor performance on border cases”?
How, then, does Gonzales explain the fact that at “least three of the eight fired attorneys were told by a superior they were being forced to resign to make jobs available for other Bush appointees, according to a former senior Justice Department official knowledgeable about their cases.”
Gonzales argues today that the Justice Department’s purge never had anything to do with public corruption cases. How, then, does Gonzales explain the series of coincidences connecting the fired U.S. Attorneys with the corruption cases they just happened to be involved with? Gonzales goes on to argue that the DoJ never “inappropriately interfered,” but there’s that pesky phone call from a senior Justice Department official that the prosecutors perceive as possible amounting to “obstruction of justice.”
“An overblown personnel matter”? Please. “The whole series of events has been remarkable and unprecedented,” said Mary Jo White, who served for nine years as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York during the Clinton and Bush administrations. “It’s not a matter of whether they have the power to do it; it’s a matter of the wisdom of the actions taken. It shows a total disregard for the institution of the U.S. attorney’s offices and what they stand for.”
Josh Marshall, who deserves enormous credit for the fact that this scandal has reached this point, summarized the big picture.
Let’s be clear. The DOJ needn’t establish a lengthy or any paper trail to justify firing a US Attorney. Maybe they didn’t like the way she prosecuted gun crimes. Or maybe her bosses at Main Justice just didn’t like how she went about her job. Maybe they just plain didn’t like her. That’s fine. And while it would be irregular to fire a US Attorney in the middle of a president’s term for no evident wrongdoing, it would not in itself be improper. None of the USAs, as they’re called, are irreplaceable. And they do serve at the president’s pleasure.
The issue here is different. There is a clear and growing body of evidence that at least three of these firees were canned for not allowing politics to dictate their prosecution of political corruption cases. Or, to put it more bluntly, for not indicting enough Democrats or indicting too many Republicans. Which is to say they were fired for not perverting justice.
In the face of that evidence the administration has come up with a series of changing and often contradictory alternative explanations, which range from the frivolous to the ridiculous.
The administration isn’t at war with the fired attorneys or Congress. They’re at war with the obvious.
This is a scandal with limitless potential.