James Comey was deputy attorney general from 2003 until August 2005, and is one of the few Bush administration officials who still maintains credibility and stature within the political establishment. So when Comey appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to testify on the prosecutor purge scandal, his perspective mattered.
And as the LA Times put it, Comey’s testimony “was among the most devastating for the White House and Justice Department.”
A former high-ranking Justice Department official offered praise Thursday for most of the U.S. attorneys who were fired last year, saying he considered some of them to be among the department’s most able prosecutors.
James B. Comey, who served as deputy attorney general from 2003 until 2005, often contradicted the White House and the Justice Department, which have said the eight U.S. attorneys were fired for performance reasons. […]
Comey, a senior vice president and general counsel at Lockheed Martin Corp., said that he had had “very positive encounters” with the prosecutors and that the official explanations given for the firings were not consistent with his experience — though, he noted, he left about two years ago.
One by one, the U.S. Attorneys who the Justice Department had to fire for “performance reasons” received Comey’s praise. Arizona’s Paul Charlton of Arizona was “one of the best.” He had a “very positive view” of New Mexico’s David Iglesias. Nevada’s Daniel Bogden was as “straight as a Nevada highway and a fired-up guy.” San Diego’s Carol Lam was “a fine U.S. attorney.” When it came to Seattle’s John McKay, Comey said, “I was inspired by him.”
In other words, Alberto Gonzales, the Justice Department, and the White House fired capable U.S. Attorneys who were doing their jobs well — and they still can’t explain why.
“James Comey is a respected prosecutor who served the American people well as a U.S. attorney as well as deputy attorney general,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.). “Today, we further confirmed that the department’s stated reasons for firing the six U.S. attorneys who testified before this committee had little or no basis in fact.”
A few other purge scandal updates to consider….
* Josh Marshall published a fascinating email from a prosecutor from Washington state about the McKay purge.
Apparently during Comey’s testimony today he said that one of the reasons McKay got himself in hot water with the DOJ heavyweights was because he was pushing for additional resources to investigate the murder of Tom Wales, who was an Assistant US Attorney in Seattle. Tom Wales was shot and killed in 2001. What nobody has talked about, and what you may not be aware of, is the fact that Tom Wales was extremely active in attempting to get tighter gun control laws passed here in Washington.
Think about that for a second. A pro-gun control federal prosecutor was shot and killed. John McKay was agitating for more resources to bring his killer to justice. That pissed off DOJ, who apparently thought that McKay should spend his time going after bogus voter fraud prosecutions rather than solve the murder of a guy who was in favor of gun control. If you don’t think the fact that Tom Wales’ political views weren’t taken into consideration by the higher ups at DOJ when they decided to punish McKay for fighting to find his killer, you haven’t been paying attention to the way these guys have operated for the last 6 years. Every single thing they do is about politics, and the political views of those they help or hurt.
The bottom line of this whole McKay firing could be summed up in this way: try to catch killers, you get fired. File BS charges of voter fraud, you keep your job.
* Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty’s week just got worse.
The chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty has told congressional investigators that phone calls he placed to four fired U.S. attorneys — calls that three of the prosecutors say involved threats about testifying before Congress — were made at McNulty’s direction.
Michael Elston, the chief of staff, told congressional investigators in a closed-door session on March 30 that McNulty specifically instructed him to make the phone calls after the Justice Department’s No. 2 official learned that the fired prosecutors might testify before Congress about their dismissals.
* Monica Goodling’s attorney believes the new investigation into his client’s work “smacks of retribution.”
* And Adam Cohen has a good piece in the NYT noting the “timely job offer” extended to former U.S. Attorney Debra Wong Yang of Los Angeles, just as Yang’s corruption investigation into Republican members of Congress was heating up.
I get the sense, based on newspaper story placement and just general buzz, that the purge scandal isn’t quite as “hot” as it was a few weeks ago, when it was all-the-rage. That’s a shame and it’s a mistake for news outlets that are no longer are treating the scandal with the same intensity. Developments, like the ones yesterday, highlight that this scandal keeps getting worse — and remains a buzz-saw for the administration.