For an “overblown personnel matter,” the U.S. Attorney scandal sure has produced a lot of Justice Department resignations.
A Justice Department official who was considered as a possible replacement for one of several fired United States attorneys has resigned. The official, Rachel L. Brand, the assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy, will step down July 9, the department said. The statement did not give a reason for her departure, but Ms. Brand is expecting a baby soon. She was a member of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s leadership team.
When officials were planning to fire prosecutors in San Diego, San Francisco, Michigan and Arkansas, Ms. Brand was named as a possible replacement for Margaret Chiari in Michigan, according to documents released as part of a Congressional inquiry.
Brand is the seventh senior aide to Gonzales to resign in the past few months.
She’s also the latest to depart late on a Friday afternoon, a time the White House routinely uses (abuses) to hide embarrassing news. For those keeping score at home, Brand joins William Mercer, the former Acting Associate Attorney General; Michael Elston, former chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty; and Monica Goodling, Gonzales’ former White House liaison, as top DoJ officials who stepped down by way of The Late-Friday-Media Trick.
It’s going back a ways, but almost exactly a year ago this week, the Bush gang announced that disgraced GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff had far more access to the White House than they’d previously let on. They divulged the information, of course, late on a Friday afternoon.
At the time, it led me to put together a list.
* In 2004, [tag]Bush[/tag] released documents relating to his National Guard service (or lack thereof) five times. In each instance, he waited until late on a Friday afternoon.
* When the Justice Department launched a criminal investigation into the Valerie Plame scandal, the announcement came late on a Friday night.
* When Bush circumvented the Senate to appoint Bill Pryor and Charles Pickering to the federal bench, he waited for late-Friday afternoons.
* Bush agreed to testify before the 9/11 Commission, so long as Dick Cheney would be there by his side. He announced his intentions on a late-Friday afternoon.
* When Bush’s Commerce Department announced that household incomes had declined for three years in a row and 1.7 million people had fallen into poverty, they released the data on a late-Friday afternoon. (It was the first time any administration had released the annual data on a Friday.)
* Many suspected that the Bush administration would eliminate requirements on the nation’s dirtiest coal-fired power plants and refineries to make anti-pollution improvements as they upgrade facilities, but when the announcement finally came, it was released on a late-Friday afternoon.
* When the administration said it wanted to remove Clean Water Act protections from up to one-fifth of the nation’s streams, ponds, lakes, mudflats, and wetlands, it said so late on a Friday afternoon.
* Bush fired Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, and Army Secretary (and former Enron executive) Thomas White on late-Friday afternoons.
* When John Ashcroft’s Justice Department had to tell administration officials to preserve papers related to Enron, they waited to issue the directive until late on a Friday afternoon.
* The White House announced its opposition to an investigation into Karl Rove’s work with companies in which he held stock on a late-Friday afternoon.
* The Pentagon waited until shortly after the network news broadcasts had ended on a Friday afternoon to announce the results of its investigation into the mishandling of the Quran at Guantanamo Bay.
* Rumsfeld announced his intention to hide unseen Abu Ghraib photos on a Friday afternoon.
Those were just some of the highlights, and that doesn’t include any from the last 12 months.
These guys just don’t have any shame.