{"id":12553,"date":"2007-08-15T15:15:03","date_gmt":"2007-08-15T19:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/12553.html"},"modified":"2007-08-15T15:15:03","modified_gmt":"2007-08-15T19:15:03","slug":"how-many-us-attorneys-were-fired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/how-many-us-attorneys-were-fired\/","title":{"rendered":"How many U.S. Attorneys were fired?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s been a little while, but the last time we checked in with the purge scandal, about a month ago, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked the AG how many U.S. Attorneys he’d fired during his tenure. He said he didn’t know<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After acknowledging the nine we know about from the purge, Gonzales said, “I’m not aware, sitting here today, of any other U.S. Attorney who was asked to leave — except there were some instances people were asked to leave, quite frankly, because there was legitimate cause.” (Given that he’d just named nine other U.S. Attorneys who’d been fired, it sounded like he was conceding that they’d been fired for illegitimate<\/i> causes.)<\/p>\n

He added, “Senator, there may have been others [fired prosecutors]. I would be happy to get back to you with that kind of information about who has left. But I don’t know the answer to your question. But I can certainly find out.”<\/p>\n

Since Gonzales was a little confused, and wasn’t able to answer the question, Feinstein waited for additional information. She didn’t hear back. So, Feinstein followed up with the Justice Department, asking officials to fill in the blanks. It’s not a trick question: beyond the nine we already know about, how many U.S. Attorneys have been fired during Gonzales’ tenure.<\/p>\n

The good news is, Feinstein finally heard back from the Justice Department. The bad news is, DoJ officials have decided not to cooperate with the request.
\n
\nPaul Kiel reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“We believe that information responsive to Senator Feinstein’s question was provided to the Committee in the course of the staff’s confidential, transcribed interviews of Department officials,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski wrote to Feinstein in a letter last week.<\/p>\n

But if her question was answered, Sen. Feinstein must have missed it. The Justice Department’s reply is “wholly unsatisfactory,” Feinstein says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course it is. Feinstein, who has oversight jurisdiction over the Justice Department, has a simple, factual question. It’s hard to screw up — count the number of fired U.S. Attorneys and share the number with the senator. Indeed, it’s worth remembering that the DoJ doesn’t actually have a choice here — officials can either provide Feinstein with an accurate answer, they can provide her with an inaccurate answer, or they can claim executive privilege.<\/p>\n

These clowns have decided to look behind Door #4 — pretend that Gonzales deal with the unanswered question when he said, “I don’t know the answer to your question.”<\/p>\n

Remember, these are the top law-enforcement officials in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s been a little while, but the last time we checked in with the purge scandal, about a month ago, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked the AG how many U.S. Attorneys he’d fired during his tenure. He said he didn’t know. After acknowledging the nine we know about from the purge, Gonzales said, “I’m not […]<\/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-12553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12553","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=12553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}