D. Kyle Sampson, the recently-resigned chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, wrote a memo to his White House cohorts shortly before the prosecutor purge, telling them to “prepare to withstand political upheaval.”
At least he got that right.
After another day of scrutiny of internal communications, new and juicy tidbits about the purge scandal continue have been revealed — all of which is producing a “political upheaval” for which the administration is clearly not prepared.
Just weeks after President Bush was inaugurated for a second term in January 2005, his White House and the Justice Department had pretty much settled on a plan to “push out” some of the nation’s 93 U.S. attorneys. But which ones?
D. Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, came up with a checklist. He rated each of the prosecutors with criteria that appeared to value political allegiance as much as job performance.
He recommended retaining “strong U.S. attorneys who have … exhibited loyalty to the president and attorney general.” He suggested “removing weak U.S. attorneys who have … chafed against administration initiatives.”
It all comes back to who was willing to “play ball.” U.S. Attorneys’ offices are supposed to be free of political influence, but the emails show what we suspected all along — the Bush gang objected to federal prosecutors who failed to exhibit sufficient “loyalty to the president and attorney general.” USAs were ranked, and those who insufficiently politicized their offices were sacked.
But let’s also not overlook the importance of the administration’s dishonesty here. The documents published yesterday, the Wall Street Journal noted, “show an orchestrated effort to fire several U.S. attorneys, counter to Mr. Gonzales’s previous assertions that the firings weren’t instigated by the White House. The emails released yesterday appear to conflict with statements Mr. Gonzales and other top Justice Department officials made to members of Congress in testimony and letters explaining the prosecutor dismissals.”
The emails also reveal yet another peek into the machinations of the White House political operation. In one communication, the Bush gang discussed contingency plans for how to “quiet” prosecutors who complained about having been fired without cause. In another, officials were told to just “run out the clock” if lawmakers raised objections.
I’ll get into some of the specific cases as the day goes on, but I wanted to add that the New York Times’ editorial today gets the big picture right. “This disaster is just part of the Bush administration’s sordid history of waving the bloody bullhorn of 9/11 for the basest of motives: the perpetuation of power for power’s sake,” the NYT explained.
It also argued for expanding the scope of the investigation.
The Justice Department has been saying that it is committed to putting Senate-confirmed United States attorneys in every jurisdiction. But the newly released documents make it clear that the department was making an end run around the Senate — for baldly political reasons. Congress should broaden the investigation to determine whether any other prosecutors were forced out for not caving in to political pressure — or kept on because they did.
There was, for example, the decision by United States Attorney Chris Christie of New Jersey to open an investigation of Senator Bob Menendez just before his hotly contested re-election last November. Republicans, who would have held the Senate if Mr. Menendez had lost, used the news for attack ads. Then there was the career United States attorney in Guam who was removed by Mr. Bush in 2002 after he started investigating the superlobbyist Jack Abramoff. The prosecutor was replaced. The investigation was dropped.
In mid-December 2006, Mr. Gonzales’s aide, Mr. Sampson, wrote to a White House counterpart that using the Patriot Act to fire the Arkansas prosecutor and replace him with Mr. Rove’s man was risky — Congress could revoke the authority. But, he wrote, “if we don’t ever exercise it, then what’s the point of having it?”
If that sounds cynical, it is. It is also an accurate summary of the governing philosophy of this administration: What’s the point of having power if you don’t use it to get more power?
Stay tuned. Plenty more on this story is on the way.