US Attorney Update

Too much for paragraphs, I'm going to bullet points:

• McClatchy has confirmed that as many as 12 US Attorneys were targeted in the initial effort to fire federal prosecutors. The others were Steven Biskupic in Wisconsin (who may have saved his job by indicting Georgia L. Thompson), Todd Graves in Missouri (who ended up resigning), Thomas Heffelfinger in Minnesota (resigned) and Thomas Merino in Pennsylvania (still on the job). Both Graves and Heffelfinger were replaced by two of the most partisan operatives in the whole Justice Department.

• James Comey's testimony to the House Judiciary Committee last week was pretty damaging. He called the fired attorneys "some of the best" prosecutors in the system. He also claimed that he didn't know about the firings, despite being the deputy attorney general when discussions were in place. We still don't know who directed this effort.

• But we're getting closer, with this report showing that Karl Rove was involved in coaching Justice Department officials on their testimony to Congressional committees. Oddly, his point in that coaching was that the officials needed to provide a concrete reason for the firing of the various attorneys. This was probably what made the scandal even worse, as the reasons were quickly shown to be bogus. If the Justice Department simply said that the prosecutors lost the confidence of the President, it would be hard to argue. But by giving specifics that could be rebutted, the scandal spun out of control. And Rove's supposed to be the Boy Genius? Dan Froomkin has more.

• Pulitzer Prize winner Charlie Savage has a good rundown of Bradley Schlozman's role in the scandal, his baseless voter fraud investigations in Missouri, his work to suppress voting rights in the Civil Rights Division, etc. Not much of this is new, but for those who want to catch up, it's a great way to understand Schlozman and his importance. He essentially proves the point that the Justice Department had a specific concern to use their power to help ensure Republican electoral successes. Actually this McClatchy article moves the story forward, showing that Congress is investigating Schlozman's hiring practices while in the Civil Rights Division (it appears to be based on how Republican the applicants were). Incidentally, the Civil Rights Division doesn't have any black people in it.

• The US Attorney in Washington State, John McKay, may have been fired because he was investigating the murder of his former colleague Tom Wales. Wales was a major proponent of gun control legislation, and his murder is still unsolved, though two and two can be put together...