{"id":10174,"date":"2007-03-11T11:10:50","date_gmt":"2007-03-11T15:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10174.html"},"modified":"2007-03-11T11:10:50","modified_gmt":"2007-03-11T15:10:50","slug":"hes-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/hes-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"‘He’s gone’"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday, Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia, told McClatchy’s Ron Hutcheson<\/a>, “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.”<\/p>\n

With this background in mind, I think this<\/a> may qualify as “enormously problematic.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

“He’s gone,” Rove said, according to Weh.<\/p>\n

“I probably said something close to ‘Hallelujah,'” said Weh.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.
\n
\nKeep in mind, late last week, Rove said the purge was “normal and ordinary<\/a>.” We know this is patently false<\/a>, 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?<\/p>\n

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

Here’s what the Washington Post reported in early February:<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fair enough, but the Rove revelation adds a degree of specificity that was unavailable before now.<\/p>\n

This is going to get worse for the Bush gang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}