Three weeks ago, Paul McNulty, the deputy attorney general, testified under oath to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the U.S. Attorneys purged from their positions “had been urged to leave because of poor performance.”
The claim looks less credible all the time.
Internal Justice Department performance reports for six of the eight United States attorneys who have been dismissed in recent months rated them “well regarded,” “capable” or “very competent,” a review of the evaluations shows.
The performance reviews, known as Evaluations and Review Staff Reports, show that the ousted prosecutors were routinely praised for playing a leadership role with other law enforcement agencies in their jurisdictions.
The reviews, each of them 6 to 12 pages long, were carried out by Justice Department officials from 2003 to 2006. Each report was based on extensive interviews, conducted over several days with judges, other federal law enforcement agencies and staff members in each office.
Over the weekend, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has taken the lead in investigating the prosecutor purge controversy, said the reviews reinforce the worst suspicions about the Justice Department’s conduct. “As we feared, the comprehensive evaluations show these U.S. attorneys did not deserve to be fired,” Schumer said. “To the contrary, they reveal they were effective, respected and set appropriate priorities.”
In an almost-entertaining twist, the DoJ has responded by telling the New York Times that the comprehensive performance evaluations weren’t comprehensive enough, because they “did not provide a broad or complete picture of the prosecutors’ performance.” Apparently, the fired U.S. Attorneys were busy tackling issues like political corruption, while the Bush gang’s “departmental priorities” were elsewhere. Apparently, that’s grounds for an unprecedented (and unjustified) purge of U.S. Attorneys.
In an NYT op-ed, Adam Cohen explained that the purge is “another shameful example of how in the Bush administration, everything — from rebuilding a hurricane-ravaged city to allocating homeland security dollars to invading Iraq — is sacrificed to partisan politics and winning elections.”
U.S. attorneys have enormous power. Their decision to investigate or indict can bankrupt a business or destroy a life. They must be, and long have been, insulated from political pressures. Although appointed by the president, once in office they are almost never asked to leave until a new president is elected. The Congressional Research Service has confirmed how unprecedented these firings are. It found that of 486 U.S. attorneys confirmed since 1981, perhaps no more than three were forced out in similar ways — three in 25 years, compared with seven in recent months. […]
Three theories are emerging for why these well-qualified U.S. attorney were fired — all political, and all disturbing.
1. Helping friends. Ms. Lam had already put one powerful Republican congressman in jail and was investigating other powerful politicians. The Justice Department, unpersuasively, claims that it was unhappy about Ms. Lam’s failure to bring more immigration cases. Meanwhile, Ms. Lam has been replaced with an interim prosecutor whose resume shows almost no criminal law experience, but includes her membership in the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.
2. Candidate recruitment. U.S. attorney is a position that can make headlines and launch political careers. Congressional Democrats suspect that the Bush administration has been pushing out long-serving U.S. attorneys to replace them with promising Republican lawyers who can then be run for Congress and top state offices.
3. Presidential politics. The Justice Department concedes that Mr. Cummins was doing a good job in Little Rock. An obvious question is whether the administration was more interested in his successor’s skills in opposition political research — let’s not forget that Arkansas has been lucrative fodder for Republicans in the past — in time for the 2008 elections.
Given the Bush gang’s operation, you need not choose among the theories — all three can be true.