‘He’s gone’

March 11, 2007

On Friday, Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, told McClatchy’s Ron Hutcheson, “It would be enormously problematic if, in fact, the Justice Department or the White House were trying to use U.S. attorneys for political purposes.” Hutcheson added that many in Washington “want to know whether Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political adviser, played a role in the firings.”

With this background in mind, I think this may qualify as “enormously problematic.”

Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state’s U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.

In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

“Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?” Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.

“He’s gone,” Rove said, according to Weh.

“I probably said something close to ‘Hallelujah,'” said Weh.

As recently as a few days ago, administration officials said the White House’s involvement in the prosecutor purge was limited to approving the Justice Department’s list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired. Weh’s account suggests what most reasonable people had assumed all along — that Karl Rove was helping pull the strings.

Keep in mind, late last week, Rove said the purge was “normal and ordinary.” We know this is patently false, but in light of this new information, is Rove seriously arguing that it’s “normal and ordinary” for top White House officials to coordinate with a state GOP leader over firing a federal prosecutor for refusing to politicize his office?

To provide additional context, David Kurtz added that “the White House involvement in this purge hasn’t been a mystery for more than a month.”

Here’s what the Washington Post reported in early February:

One administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in discussing personnel issues, said the spate of firings was the result of “pressure from people who make personnel decisions outside of Justice who wanted to make some things happen in these places.”

Hmmm. People outside of DOJ who make DOJ personnel decisions? That’s a one-item list: the White House. Yet, as late as Friday, even the esteemed Dan Froomkin said, “Just how closely was the White House was involved in these firings remains a mystery.”

Fair enough, but the Rove revelation adds a degree of specificity that was unavailable before now.

This is going to get worse for the Bush gang.

The Bush Crime Family simply does not care about “normal and ordinary” things. Karl Rove can say, and mean, “He’s gone” with the same calm, untroubled assurance that Vito Corleone could. That’s why according today’s GOP the usual rules of respect, debate and decorum is so silly. If you want to stay sane, you must think of the Bush Crime Family just like any run-of-the-mill gangsters: essentially thieves, liars and thugs.

  • “This is going to get worse for the Bush gang.” Absolutely. This goes deep and wide in the administration. Add in the statistical analysis that came out this week that US Atys have been prosectuting local Dems by an overwhelming margin over local reThugs. Add in the observattion from Talking Points and others: “If they fired these 8 USAs for not playing political ball, that would mean that the USAs in place who have not been fired have been doing BushCo’s bidding.”

    This is really no different than having the mob infiltrate the police or district attorney’s office. It’s a criminal enterprise.that has infiltrated every level of our government. The msm is finally paying attention, the public seems concerned and, with even modestly vigorous investigative reporting, there will be a new story every few days that will engage people with the impacts of this enterprise locally, regionally, and nationally.

    This is bad enough and venal enough that even the go-along reThugs in the House and Senate have to back away.

    Good.

  • I notice that Ed Stephan and I were thinking and writing almost simultaneously along the same lines – the Bush Admin is a crime family. They should be prosectued as such.

  • This USA purge is looking worse and worse for Bush and gang. I suspect that this was what Rove was doing to keep the Repub majority forever (by hook or by crook–mostly crook)

    To follow up on what Ed and wvng say. It would be nice to see them RICO the Bush Crime Family. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on RICO prosecutions are because I’m thinking 1940s.

  • Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

    Weh will claim that “late 2006” was after December 7, and that all the mounting evidence of improper influence should be considered individually and not together.

  • What’s really interesting to know, as Josh Marshall said a few days ago, is this: what about all the US Attorneys who didn’t get fired? Are the ones who were fired just those who still had a conscience and weren’t merely party thugs? What about all the “indictments” and “investigations” of Democrats that have been announced just before elections in 2002, 2004 and 2006, only to be dropped afterwards?

    I’ve now come to the conclusion that the reality of the Republicans is not only worse than we think, it’s far worse than we can imagine. Think of trying to be a normal, ordinary German, attempting to make sense of the Nazis. I have several friends who flew in the Luftwaffe in WW2 and over the years when this subject has come up, they have said words to the effect “no one could imagine what was really happening.” I now think they were telling the truth, when I contemplate our own fascist coup d’etat.

  • RSA (#6) – you are very prescient. From TPM, here’s what Weh told the AP after the McClatchy piece came out:

    Weh told The Associated Press later Saturday that “Rove has little or nothing to do with this.”

    “This is a personnel action, firing an incompetent United States attorney who should have been fired” earlier, Weh told the AP. “He absolutely was a disgrace to the Department of Justice.”

    He said his conversation at the White House with Rove came “after the fact, after the termination had occurred.”

    “When I talked to Karl it was at a White House briefing for state party chairmen after a reception the day before,” Weh told the AP. “The termination had already occurred.”

    Yep, it was after December 6, folks, nothing to see here, move along.

    Those who believe that are graciously invited to step out onto the far end of the Santa Monica Pier, stare out over the ocean, and watch the sun rise in the west. It WingerWorld, it could happen, right?

  • Iglesias, McKay, Lam and the others forgot that all the organs of the State, including the office of United States Attorney, are tasked with protecting and promoting the unique role of the Party as the Vanguard of the Revolution.

    Sailing the seas depends on the Helmsman, and Mr. Rove correctly detected a lack of committment to him in young Mr. Iglesias & Co, as evidenced by their failure to complete work norms.

    They were fired for failing to have correct orientation towards the greater struggle, and the role of legal cadres within that struggle.

  • “Ive now come to the conclusion that the reality of the Republicans is not only worse than we think, it’s far worse than we can imagine.” Tom Cleaver @ 7

    I’ve come to the same conclusion. So many behaviors that I would consider unthinkable the right not only thinks of but acts out — and when caught, pretend to justify or deny. I’ve also come to believe that there must be a fundamental difference in the “right” and “left” brains (or personalities) that makes this possible. If that is in fact the case, the rational dissonance we see among the American public, elected officials and the media is not going to abate any time soon.

    The other day, I saw an interview with a Russian woman who lost numerous family members during Stalin’s various purges. Despite her own experience, she cried at the news of his death. Such is the power of propaganda, that an individual can deny his or her own horrific experiences in favor of an externally created and controlled alternate reality.

    While the lawlessness we’ve witnessed recently in the US are in no way comparable to the scale of crimes committed by a Hitler or a Stalin, there is a similarity in the willingness of large segments of the population to favor myth over reality, in the process, emboldening the purveyors of propaganda to ever greater excesses.

  • “In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.”

    I had assumed that the rest of the conversation (“he’s gone”, from Rove) meant that the exchange was after Dec 7 or, at least, after the decision to can Iglesias had already been made. The “he’s gone” is too definitive to be something like “consider him gone, my friend”

    What puzzles me is that Weh was willing to, openly (almost brazenly), tell all to a newspaper. He didn’t hide behind “a party official who spoke on condition of anonymity”.

    Why did he come ou in the open? It’s not that this tidbit reflects well on either of them. Was he pissed off with Rove for not making Iglesias “gone” the first time around (a year earlier)?

    And, some parallel questions: why *didn’t* Rove get Iglesias canned in ’05, when Weh first bitched about him? Why wait till after the November corrections of ’06? Was the canning (in ’05) of the guy (sorry, I forget the name) in Maryland, who was digging into Ehrlich a toe-dip to see if there’d be a fallout? Was that the reason they waited? And when there was no outcry from anyone — DoJ, Congress or public (and there might have been, since those were their own guys, not some Dems) — they got overconfident and did the wholesale slaughter?

    So many questions, so few answers…

  • Congress is ignoring its duties by not impeaching both Cheney and Bush. But isn’t it about time that the entire ongoing criminal enterprise came crashing down due to RICO prosecutions? In what way is Karl Rove not exactly like a Capo? The only real question is whether Bush or Cheney is the Boss of Bosses. But, other than that, this seems like a pretty clear case of organized crime.

  • Last year after the NSA domestic spying story broke I was adamant that we on the left shouldn’t make the scandal about the possible political use of the information gained from such spying. My reasons were two fold. First the fact that BushCo had admitted to broking the FISA law was all that we really needed. Second, we had no evidence to suggest that the information was used for political purposes. Therefore if we made the domestic spying scandal about political abuse it could play into BushCo’s hand. Rather than having to defend themselves against breaking the law, they could defend against a charge for which there was no evidence.

    These recent revelations about the willingness of BushCo to abuse DOJ for political ends changes the landscape with regard to the NSA domestic spying scandal. This provides the evidence of an MO which suggests that NSA may have been used for domestic political purposes. Congress must begin to look at the NSA for possible political abuses.

  • Can you say Treason boys and girls?
    How about “Repressive regime that would make Stalin smile”?

    Good.

    “He absolutely was a disgrace to the Department of Justice.”

    Yes! I agree completely! Alberto V05 Gonzales certainly is a disgrace…oh, Waaah wasn’t talking about him, was he?

    If these guys are just going to ignore reality and laws, why can’t they go all the way and decide some of the biggies don’t apply to them? Frinstance, the laws of physics. Like the law of gravity. While they’re some place like the viewing deck of the Empire State Building…

  • Wow! Republicans were using federal officals offices for illegal activities at the direction of Rove. Bush must have had to order a whole bunch of Medals of Freedom to give them to all these people.

  • RICO will never work, so long as Abu Gonzo is AG. Abu knows this; Rove knows this; Cheney and Bush know it, too. And unless something of a very extraordinary nature occurs, the status-quo policy of this heinous administration will continue through the ’08 election cycle—because there will continue to be at least 34 GOP Senators who, having their necks under the same guillotine blade as the WH, will vote against impeachment proceedings.

    There simply must be something more than just the delusional embracing of this assault upon the Republic, the People, and the Constitution. Even a simplistic smattering of common sense should tell these imbecilic twits that their day of reckoning with the righteous wrath of a nation so foundationally violated can only be held off so long as they retain power.

    Thus, the two-pronged query:

    (1) What have these “Unilateral Executive” types tucked away for the eventual rainy day that can propel their chokehold, indefinitely, upon these United States that will supercede the will of the electorate?

    …and…

    (2) What, if such a power grab takes place, will that “electorate” be willing to do about it?

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