The Simmering US Attorneys Scandal

This is something else I mentioned in passing last week, but Murray Waas is doing some excellent reporting on the US Attorneys investigation coming out of the Justice Department, and he's alleging that it's starting to reach the inner circle:

The Justice Department investigation into the firings of nine U.S. attorneys has been extended to encompass allegations that senior White House officials played a role in providing false and misleading information to Congress, according to numerous sources involved in the inquiry.

The widened scope raises the possibility that investigators will pursue criminal charges against some administration officials, and recommend appointment of a special prosecutor if there is evidence of criminal misconduct.

The investigators have been specifically probing the role of White House officials in the drafting and approval of a Feb. 23, 2007 letter sent to Congress by the Justice Department denying that Karl Rove (President Bush's chief political adviser at the time) had anything to do with the firing of Bud Cummins, a U.S. Attorney from Arkansas. Cummins was fired in Dec. 2006 to make room for Tim Griffin, a protégé and former top aide of Rove's.

The February 23 letter stated, "The department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin," and that the Justice Department was "not aware of anyone lobbying, either inside or outside of the administration, for Mr. Griffin's appointment."

Federal investigators have obtained documents showing that Kyle Sampson, then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and Chris Oprison, then an associate White House counsel, drafted and approved the letter even though they had first-hand knowledge that the assertions were not true. The Justice Department later had to repudiate the Sampson-Oprison letter and sent a new one informing Congress that it could no longer stand by the earlier assertions.

That's a thin strand on which to hang an entire probe of politicization from the White House to the Justice Department. And that IG report as well as the report from the Office of Professional Responsibility cannot remand anyone to a grand jury, nor can they punish anyone outside of DoJ officials. So a special prosecutor is absolutely needed to determine wrongdoing, though they can recommend a criminal investigation.

But if the report is strong enough about the cover-up as it is about the underlying crimes, that could create a lot of pressure within the next Administration.

This takes us to Congress' investigation of the same matters, and the Bush Administration's continued invocation of executive privilege despite being smacked down in the contempt court case by a conservative judge and told that Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten must testify (and Karl Rove, in a separate complaint, as well). Waas, in a separate post at Crooks and Liars, argues that it would be in the Republican Party's best interest for Rove and Miers and Bolten to testify before the fall elections:

At some point long before the election, the Justice Department will release its long-awaited investigative report on the firings of the U.S. attorneys. And as I reported tonight at Huffington Post, a good portion of that report is going to be about the role of senior White House officials in shaping misleading testimony and correspondence about the firings to Congress.

Besides the report on the U.S. attorney firings, the Justice Department’s Inspector General is also readying a release for public release sometime probably long before election day about the politicization of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division under the Bush administration.

Not only is that report virtually certain to be scathing, but relations between investigators and former Bush appointees in the Civil Rights Division have become so contentious that prosecutors have had to resort to using a grand jury to compel testimony, because many of the former Justice Department attorneys have refused to voluntarily be interviewed by the Inspector General.

Also what might not be a good omen for what might be in that report is that a federal grand jury is reportedly considering criminal charges against one former senior Bush administration appointee in the Civil Rights Division, Bradley Schlozman [...]

So at a minimum, the Justice Department is likely to release two devastating reports on the Bush administration this fall or even earlier. Worse, we might also learn that Justice’s Inspector General has sought either a criminal probe of some officials or even a special prosecutor. (The Inspector General does not have prosecutorial powers [...]

The continuous claims of executive privilege– whatever the motive for them being invoked– are going to appear more and more to the public part and parcel of a cover up. That is inevitable as the U.S. attorney report becomes public, and the report on the politicization of the Civil Rights Division is made public, as well as whatever else the public learns about these issues through leaks from the federal grand jury, the House Judiciary Committee’s ongoing probe, and sleuthing by folks like Josh Marshall.

I really don't think this holds. I don't recall the President being particularly concerned with the fate of the Republican Party - if he was then he could have done about a thousand things differently throughout the second term. And while the US Attorneys scandal has captured the imagination of the blogosphere I haven't seen it become very widespread beyond that. Indeed, the Monica Goodling report on illegal hiring practices barely registered a blip. What Waas is reporting is more damaging - senior DoJ officials lying to Congress because they were misled by Rove himself - but it's still complex and labyrinthine and there's a certain Presidential election sucking up a lot of oxygen. I think this investigation is still crucially important - particularly for the future, as a President Obama should be encouraged to appoint a special prosecutor - but I don't really see it being an electoral issue except in a few key districts. Marcy Wheeler seems to agree.

That said, there's some very juicy stuff here.

And the probe by the Justice Department's IG and OPR and firings of nine U.S. attorneys is only one of three internal DOJ investigations that have the potential of morphing into criminal probes of the Bush administration--and even the appointment of a special prosecutor. DOJ's IG is probing whether former Attorney General Gonzales testified truthfully to Congress about the administration's warrantless electronic eavesdropping program. A probe by OPR is investigating whether government attorneys acted within the law in authorizing and overseeing the eavesdropping program [...]

Apparently, advances in the investigations have been spurred by key emails that the Bush administration has withheld from Congress--claiming executive privilege--and that have now been obtained by DOJ investigators.

Among other things those documents show that Oprison, the associate White House counsel, knew that Rove was involved in the US Attorney firing when he reviewed drafts of the letter and approved final language claiming Rove was not involved [...]

Sampson also played a central role in the drafting of a January 31, 2007 letter from acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling to Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) implying that the White House had never contemplated using an obscure provision in the USA PATRIOT Act to install Griffin as a U.S. attorney without Senate confirmation.

Gonzales and Sampson later changed course completely--when confronted with evidence to the contrary--and testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Bush administration did indeed consider using the PATRIOT Act to install Griffin as a federal prosecutor.

These are real crimes and the senior staff is right to be nervous. When Bush leaves office, his leverage in keeping a lid on these investigations immediately begins to dissipate. This is why they're all so interested in pre-emptive pardons.