Following up on an item from this morning, this McClatchy article reported that Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, told one of the fired U.S. attorneys that if the purged prosecutors “continued to criticize the administration for their ousters, previously undisclosed details about the reasons they were fired might be released.” We’ve learned quite a bit about this since.
Bud Cummins, the Arkansas U.S. Attorney fired to make room for a Karl Rove acolyte, was the prosecutor who spoke directly to Elston and he relayed the details of the conversation to the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning. As he told lawmakers, Elston’s remarks “might have been a threat, might have been a warning, might have been an observation, a prediction — you can characterize it; I’m going to leave that to you.”
He also said the he believed a “message had been delivered,” which he felt compelled to share with his colleagues (other purged prosecutors). In fact, he added, “I almost felt like it had been delivered for a purpose — for me to share it.” In other words, as Cummins perceived it, Elston made an implicit threat, which Cummins was supposed to pass along, so that all the fired U.S. Attorneys received the same threat.
In talking to McClatchy, John McKay, one of Cummins’ colleagues got the message. “I took it to mean that negative, personal information would be released,” the prosecutor said. “That if we made public comments or if we were to testify in Congress, that the gloves would come off and the Department of Justice would make us regret that we were talking.”
Now, obviously, this is rather scandalous. But there’s another point that was raised this afternoon: it might also be criminal.
During his questioning, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked all four prosecutors that if they were told by a witness in an ongoing invsetigation that he had received a call similar to the one Bud Cummins got from Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, what would they think? All four said that they would investigate to see whether obstruction of justice or witness tampering had occurred.
Yep.
This was the key exchange from the hearing:
Whitehouse: I’d like to ask you to put your U.S. Attorney hat back on. You’re still in office. And think of a significant grand jury investigation that you led as U.S. Attorney in your district.
And consider that a significant witness in that grand jury investigation has just come into your office to relate to you that prior to his grand jury testimony, he was approached about his testimony with exactly, or essentially exactly, the words Mr. Elston approach you. What would your next step be as a U.S. Attorney?
Cummins: Well, I think I know where you’re driving with that question. I’ll answer it, but I’d like to maybe qualify it. We take intimidation of witnesses very seriously in the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorneys’ offices so we would be very proactive in that situation.
McKay added that, as a U.S. Attorney, he would assign the matter to a prosecutor and federal agents. Iglesias and Lam agreed.
In other words, we have four Bush-appointed prosecutors who believe a top Justice Department official committed a crime by threatening these prosecutors.
For the Bush gang, this is going to get worse before it gets better.