Of the new purge revelations, perhaps even more startling than learning about Alberto Gonzales’ mendacity — after all, is that new? — were emails between Tasia Scolinos, a senior public affairs specialist at the Justice Department, and Catherine Martin, a White House communications adviser.
First, the notion that the prosecutors were fired for performance reasons should probably be dropped from the Bush gang’s talking points.
The e-mails also show that administration officials struggled to find a way to justify the firings and considered citing immigration enforcement simply because three of the fired prosecutors were stationed near the border with Mexico. While the e-mails don’t provide evidence of partisan motives for the firings, they seem to undercut the administration’s explanation that the prosecutors were dismissed for poor performance.
“The one common link here is that three of them are along the southern border so you could make the connection that DOJ is unhappy with the immigration prosecution numbers in those districts,” Tasia Scolinos, a senior public affairs specialist at the Justice Department, told Catherine Martin, a White House communications adviser, in an e-mail.
“Which ones are they?” Martin replied.
These clearly aren’t the comments of officials talking about actual reasons for the firings; these are the comments of spinners trying to rationalize after the fact. Indeed, it’s rather transparent. “You could make the connection…”? Didn’t Scolinos mean, “We acted because…”?
Another Scolinos email highlights the extent to which the administration was walking into a minefield without a map.
Scolinos was clearly unprepared for the furor that resulted from the dismissals.
“I think most of them will resign quietly – they don’t get anything out of making it public,” she told Martin. “I don’t see it as being a national story – especially if it phases in over a few months.”
Their e-mail exchange on Nov. 17, 2006, offered little hint of the firestorm that’s now fueling talk of Gonzales’ resignation and threatens a legal showdown between Congress and the White House.
It seems to me there’s a subtle undertone to the email — an acknowledgement that the purge was wrong, but optimism that they wouldn’t get caught.
But even taken at face value, Scolinos reflect a breathtaking cluelessness, which her colleagues clearly shared. As Kevin Drum put it the other day:
They genuinely didn’t expect this to blow up in their faces. They thought everyone would buy their story that this was a routine housecleaning and then move on. They simply haven’t figured out that, given their track record over the past six years, no one is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt anymore. Even their own supporters are barely willing to defend them. But they still don’t get that.
The Bush gang has been getting away with so much for so long, the inevitable arrogance blinded their judgment. They no longer worried about getting caught, because they grew accustomed to accountability-free politics.
Oops.