Rove was Deposed today!

That's right! News we missed because the MSM was busy showing the "Memorial Service" for Michael Jackson, more newsers by Sarah Palin, and the swearing in of Al Franken as the 60th Dem Senator.

Politico reporting today:

Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove was deposed Tuesday by attorneys for the House Judiciary Committee, according to Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), the panel’s chairman.

Rove’s deposition began at 10 a.m. and ended around 6:30 p.m, with several breaks, Conyers said.

Conyers would not comment on what Rove told congressional investigators, what the next step in the long-running Judiciary Committee investigation would be or whether Rove would face additional questioning.

“He was deposed today,” Conyers said in an interview. “That’s all I can tell you.”

Remember the firings of the nine US Attorneys? Conyers finally got Rove to tell what he knows. (I cannot recall?)

There's not much more to the story except that Rove was deposed. Meier was deposed in June. Hopefully we'll be hearing something soon.

THURSDAY FUN AHEAD

OFFICIAL HEARING NOTICE / WITNESS LIST:

July 26, 2007

NOTICE OF COMMITTEE HEARINGThe Senate Committee on the Judiciary has scheduled a hearing on “Preserving Prosecutorial Independence: Is the Department of Justice Politicizing the Hiring and Firing of U.S. Attorneys? – Part VII” for Thursday, August 2, 2007 at 10:00 a.m. in Room 226 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building.

By order of the Chairman

Witness List

Hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on “Preserving Prosecutorial Independence: Is the Department of Justice Politicizing the Hiring and Firing of U.S. Attorneys? – Part VII”
Thursday, August 2, 2007Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 22610:00 a.m.

Karl Rove
The White House

J. Scott Jennings
The White House

DATE: August 2, 2007
TIME: 10:00 AM
ROOM: Dirksen-226
»
Fernando's blog

Inbetween the Doan hearing info - Breaking News

From Think Progress with updates:

BREAKING: Top White House Officials Subpoenaed Over Attorney Scandal
Former White House counsel Harriet Miers and former top Karl Rove aide Sara Taylor, who served as White House political director before resigning last month, have been issued subpoenas over their connections to the U.S. attorney scandal.


UPDATE: These are the first subpoenas delivered to the White House regarding the attorney firings. The House Judiciary Committee issued the subpoena to Miers, and the Senate Judiciary Committee issued the subpoena to Taylor. Emails showing Taylor and Miers deeply involved in the Justice Department’s response to the scandal were released last night.

UPDATE II: The AP reports, “The Senate Judiciary Committee’s subpoena for Taylor compels her to testify on July 11, while the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena for Miers compels her testimony the next day.”

UPDATE III: CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin reports, “The White House has made clear it will cite executive privilege for conversations that took place within the White House on the U.S. attorney matter, and if the people with those conversations happen to have subsequently left the White House, that doesn’t matter. They’re still going to cite executive privilege, and these people are not going to be allowed to testify anytime soon, it appears, if the White House remains as it has been. … Even if they want to testify.”

UPDATE IV: Statement from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI):

Let me be clear: this subpoena is not a request, it is a demand on behalf of the American people for the White House to make available the documents and individuals we are requesting to help us answer the questions that remain. The breadcrumbs in this investigation have always led to 1600 Pennsylvania.

Statement from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT):

The White House cannot have it both ways — it cannot stonewall congressional investigations by refusing to provide documents and witnesses, while claiming nothing improper occurred. … Some at the White House may hope to thwart our constitutional oversight efforts by locking the doors and closing the curtains, but we will keep asking until we get to the truth.

UPDATE V: In Leahy’s letter to Fielding today subpoenaing White House documents, he expresses his frustration that the White House continued to offer only “off-the-record interviews” related to the U.S. attorney investigation. ThinkProgress has obtained a copy of White House counsel Fred Fielding’s June 7 letter to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, reiterating the White House’s narrow offer HERE.

UPDATE VI: Subpoena for Harriet Miers is HERE.

Another White House Staff Memeber packing her desk

Sara Taylor, who has been with the Bush WH since the beginning, is leaving for the private sector. Here's the Washington Post article about her, then I'll follow up with more from Think Progress.

Another Top Bush Aide Makes an Exit

By Michael A. Fletcher
Monday, May 28, 2007; Page A15

As the Bush administration inches closer to its concluding months, more top aides are headed out to the private sector. Sara M. Taylor, the White House political director and microtargeting guru who has been with George W. Bush from the outset of his first presidential campaign, is the latest staff member to leave the president's employ.

Taylor, 32, was one of the first people put on the payroll of the Bush campaign, trekking through snowy Washington to interview with Karl Rove and Bush, who was then governor of Texas. Taylor worked on the 2000 campaign, and later became a political aide in the White House.

In 2004, she worked on Bush's reelection campaign, where she helped refine the emerging political art of microtargeting. Working with Alex Gage of TargetPoint Consulting, Taylor was among those who helped use sophisticated analysis of consumer data to enable the Bush campaign to target potential voters even when they resided in Democratic-leaning voting districts.

The campaign developed lists of potentially sympathetic voters, based in part on computer analysis of people's spending habits. Those voters were then targeted for direct mail and other advertising. The data-mining techniques are credited with giving Republicans a decisive turnout advantage in the 2004 election; they are now commonly practiced by Democrats as well.

And now from Think Progress:

Justice Department Officials Confirm White House Instigated Plan To Bypass Senate On U.S. Attorney

Both Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his former chief of staff Kyle Sampson approved a plan to bypass the Senate and install Karl Rove-protege Tim Griffin as U.S. attorney in Arkansas.

But according to Karen Tumulty of Time, private testimony by Sampson reveals that the idea was “instigated” by the White House:

In private testimony that is being released this afternoon by the committee, Alberto Gonzales’s former Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson told investigators that Gonzales himself initially resisted the idea of bypassing the Senators from Arkansas to install Karl Rove protege Tim Griffin as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Pressure to do it, he suggested, was coming from officials at the White House–specifically, White House political director Sara Taylor, her deputy Scott Jennings and Chris Oprison, the associate White House counsel. Sampson described himself and Goodling as “open to the idea,” which is not the same as instigating it.

Taylor reports directly to Rove. In a Dec. 19, 2006 e-mail, Sampson said that getting Griffin “appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc.”

And on another matter:

Rice, RNC subpoenas approved.“By 21-10, the House oversight committee voted to issue a subpoena to Rice to compel her story on the Bush administration’s claim, now discredited, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.” The oversight committee “also issued subpoenas for the Republican National Committee for testimony and documents about White House e-mails on RNC accounts that have apparently gone missing.” In the Senate, the Judiciary Committee “approved - but did not issue - a subpoena on the prosecutors’ matter to Sara Taylor, deputy to presidential adviser Karl Rove.”

So I see another subpoena coming for Sara Taylor and there could be another 5th Amendment invocation, and possibly, just possibly another request for immunity.

Taking the Fifth and asking for Immunity...

This time it is from a former Rove aide that used to work for Jack Abramoff. Her name is Susan Ralston.

Here from the Committe on Oversight and Reform:

Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Administration Oversight
Former Rove Aide Testifies to Committee but Refuses to Answer Questions Related to Abramoff Contacts with the White House

At a deposition earlier this month, Susan Ralston, the former executive assistant to Karl Rove, responded to questions in a number of areas but would not answer questions about White House contacts with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and her lawyer said Ms. Ralston would assert her Fifth Amendment privilege if compelled to testify. In a memo, Chairman Waxman explains the Committee will seek testimony from Mr. Abramoff’s former lobbying associates and former and current Administration officials before considering Ms. Ralston’s request for immunity.

This will be another interesting hearing.

By any other name....

Greg Palast says it and Truthdig's Marie Coco is saying it and I've said it! The replacement of US attorneys was a consorted effort to fix the elcetions.

Here's Thruthdig's Marie Coco's article:

Watergate Without the Break-In
Posted on May 16, 2007
By Marie Cocco

WASHINGTON—It is time to stop referring to the “fired U.S attorneys scandal” by that misnomer, and call it what it is: a White House-coordinated effort to use the vast powers of the Justice Department to swing elections to Republicans.

This is no botched personnel switch. It is not even a political spat between the fired U.S. attorneys and Bush administration officials who deemed some of them insufficiently zealous in promoting the department’s law enforcement priorities. Connect the dots and you see an insidious effort to corrupt the American electoral system. It’s Watergate without the break-in or the bagmen.

The emerging picture is one in which widespread Republican claims of “voter fraud”—unsubstantiated in virtually every case examined closely by law enforcement officials, local journalists, state elections officials and academics—were used to stymie Democratic-leaning voter registration groups and create a taint around Democrats. The Justice Department’s own statistics show that only a handful of people were convicted of voting illegally since it began a “voter integrity” initiative in 2002. Its top election crimes official, a career prosecutor, has told the U.S. Election Assistance Commission that the proportion of “legitimate to illegitimate claims of fraud” hasn’t changed.

The “voter fraud” claims that White House political adviser Karl Rove promoted before last year’s congressional elections were in battleground states such as New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with closely contested races. He also has complained about alleged fraud in hotly competitive states such as Washington, Florida and Missouri. Curiously, states where elections often are decided by wide margins—New York, for instance—don’t turn up on his lists.

According to McClatchy Newspapers, Rove pressed Justice officials about voter fraud probes in October. Complaints from Republican activists wound up in the hands of Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and a key figure in the imbroglio. Five of the 12 U.S. attorneys who were canned or targeted for removal were singled out for alleged laxity in pursuing voter-fraud prosecutions, The Washington Post has reported.

The Justice Department’s power to prosecute was expected to be put to use in carrying out a partisan witch hunt. Yet even this picture is incomplete.

The shenanigans involving U.S. attorneys must be seen alongside the parallel campaign to turn the department’s voting-rights section into a rubber stamp for Republican efforts to enhance the voting power of their loyalists while diminishing that of Democrats.

Greg Palast wrote a new chapter for his book "Armed Madhouse" all about this issue. He's called it "The Scheme to Swipe 2008". What does Greg base this statement on? He's got the emails! Karl Rove's emails!!!

Palast: I know because I have Karl Rove’s emails. No kidding. He and his team aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. They sent copies of their plans to GeorgeWBush.ORG instead of GeorgeWBush.COM addresses — and, heh heh, they ended up in my in-box. Who says this job ain’t fun?

Palast goes on to say it is not the voting machines that would lose the election.

A quote from his book:

"Beginning on January 1, 2006, the HAVA (Help America Vote Act) Law gave Secretaries of State the right--in fact, required them--to reject any registering voter whose exact name and "identity numbers" (driver's license, Social Security, Passport numbers) did not match up against a state "verification" list."

He goes on to say that it may sound arcane, but consider this...

"When HAVA gave state politicians this power to reject registration forms nationwide, the official hacks told one in three Americans to 'get lost'".

It was the plan, Rove's plan, to make this a one party system with the Republicans forever running this country.

Monica Goodling....Wildcard?

Gonzales seemed very cocky the last time he appearedin front of the House Judicial Committee. So did the republican members of this committee. Although the Dems were pressing for answers to their questions, several of the Repubs were asking him about completly different matters.

I think they forgot about Monica! And now that she has immunity she is compelled to testify.

From Law.com:

All Eyes on Monica Goodling
With Gonzales testimony complete, Capitol Hill probe to shift gears
Jason McLure
Legal Times
May 14, 2007

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales emerged mostly unscathed from last week's face-off with Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee over his role in the U.S. Attorney firings. And with Republicans on the committee offering Gonzales near-universal support, the tone on Capitol Hill shifted from "Gonzales is going" to "Gonzales is staying."

But there's one big wild card that's yet to be thrown into play, and that's Monica Goodling, Gonzales' former White House liaison. Last week, Chief Judge Thomas Hogan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia approved a House request to grant limited immunity to Goodling in exchange for her testimony.

Goodling, who resigned her post April 7, previously told the committee that she would assert her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. She now has the opportunity to shed light on her key role in a firing process that has remained shrouded in mystery, despite the release of thousands of Justice Department e-mails and the testimony of a number of top officials. According to congressional staffers, Democrats hope to have her testify publicly before Memorial Day.

"She's worked very hard," says John Dowd, a lawyer for Goodling at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. "She'll do her level best to be candid and forward in her testimony."

That promise isn't likely to reassure Gonzales or other Bush administration officials involved in the dismissal of at least eight U.S. Attorneys. Democrats contend that the prosecutors were fired to shield Republicans targeted in public corruption probes or to punish those U.S. Attorneys who failed to push voter fraud investigations.

And though there may be a feeling that Gonzales has at last stemmed the tide against him, it looks premature to declare victory before Goodling says what she knows about the attorney general's and the White House's involvement in the firings.

"Before people get too cocky about the attorney general surviving, [they] need to sit back and await that event," says a senior administration official close to the investigation.

Will Monica bring down this White House? Something about that name!!

WaPo: Voter Fraud Complaints from GOP reason for US Attorneys Dismissal

Since the year 2000 the Democrats have been complaining about voter fraud and voter irregularities. Many proven cases went unheaded or covered up by the republican run local governments. So the republicans decided that they were going to complain about voter fraud to take the heat off their party.

However, the republicans were using the US attorneys to do their bidding to try to find Democrats that were guilty of voter fraud. This meant that they had to put the heat on the US attorneys to find and prosecute this fraud. In some cases, such as the one in Wisconsin, a person was prosecuted for voter fraud with trumped up charges and the case was overturned.

Heres what the Washington Post has discovered about this issue:

Voter-Fraud Complaints by GOP Drove Dismissals

By Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, May 14, 2007; A04

Nearly half the U.S. attorneys slated for removal by the administration last year were targets of Republican complaints that they were lax on voter fraud, including efforts by presidential adviser Karl Rove to encourage more prosecutions of election- law violations, according to new documents and interviews.

Of the 12 U.S. attorneys known to have been dismissed or considered for removal last year, five were identified by Rove or other administration officials as working in districts that were trouble spots for voter fraud -- Kansas City, Mo.; Milwaukee; New Mexico; Nevada; and Washington state. Four of the five prosecutors in those districts were dismissed.

It has been clear for months that the administration's eagerness to launch voter-fraud prosecutions played a role in some of the firings, but recent testimony, documents and interviews show the issue was more central than previously known. The new details include the names of additional prosecutors who were targeted and other districts that were of concern, as well as previously unknown information about the White House's role.

The Justice Department demanded that one U.S. attorney, Todd P. Graves of Kansas City, resign in January 2006, several months after he refused to sign off on a Justice lawsuit involving the state's voter rolls, Graves said last week. U.S. Attorney Steven M. Biskupic of Milwaukee also was targeted last fall after complaints from Rove that he was not doing enough about voter fraud. But he was spared because Justice officials feared that removing him might cause political problems on Capitol Hill, according to interviews of Justice aides conducted by congressional staff members.

"There is reason for worry and suspicion at this point as to whether voting fraud played an inappropriate role in personnel decisions by the department," said Daniel P. Tokaji, an election law specialist at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law.

The behind-the-scenes maneuvering to replace U.S. attorneys viewed as weak on voter fraud, from state Republican parties to the White House, is one element of a nationwide partisan brawl over voting rights in recent years. Ever since the contested 2000 presidential election, which ended in a Florida recount and intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court, both political parties have attempted to use election law to tip close contests to their advantage.

And this is where Rove steps in:

Rove, in particular, was preoccupied with pressing Gonzales and his aides about alleged voting problems in a handful of battleground states, according to testimony and documents.

Last October, just weeks before the midterm elections, Rove's office sent a 26-page packet to Gonzales's office containing precinct-level voting data about Milwaukee. A Justice aide told congressional investigators that he quickly put the package aside, concerned that taking action would violate strict rules against investigations shortly before elections, according to statements disclosed this week.

That aide, senior counselor Matthew Friedrich, turned over notes to Congress that detailed a telephone conversation about voter fraud with another Justice official, Benton Campbell, chief of staff for the Criminal Division. Friedrich had asked Campbell for his assessment of Rove's complaints about problems in New Mexico, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, according to a congressional aide familiar with Friedrich's remarks.

The notes show that Campbell also identified Nevada as a problem district. Daniel G. Bogden of Las Vegas was among the nine U.S. attorneys known to have been removed from their jobs last year.

Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School who runs an election law blog, said that "there's no question that Karl Rove and other political operatives" urged Justice officials to apply pressure on U.S. attorneys to pursue voter-fraud allegations in parts of the country that were critical to the GOP.

Hasen said it remains unclear, however, "whether they believed there was a lot of fraud and U.S. attorneys would ferret it out, or whether they believed there wasn't a lot of fraud but the allegations would serve political purposes."

According to Lorraine Minnite, a political scientist at Barnard College who co-wrote a recent study of federal prosecution of election fraud, the states in which U.S. attorneys were dismissed, or put on a tentative firing list, include five of nearly a dozen states that Rove and other Republicans last year identified as election battlegrounds.

It's a good thing that red lights started flashing and buzzers went off when these mostly qualified US attorneys were fired. Again this administration and Rove in particular have tried to stack the deck for the republican agenda.

And then there were nine!

Number nine. Todd Graves, US attorney from Kansas City, Mo., was asked to step down from his job by a senior Justice Department official in January 2006, months before eight other federal prosecutors would be fired by the Bush administration.

From the Washington Post:

Graves said he was told simply that he should resign to "give another person a chance." He said he did not oppose the department's request, because he had already been planning to return to private practice. He did appeal to Missouri's senior senator to try to persuade the White House to allow him to remain long enough to prosecute a final, important case -- involving the slaying of a pregnant woman and kidnapping of her 8-month fetus. Justice officials rejected the request.

The former prosecutor's disclosure, in an interview on the eve of a second appearance today by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales before lawmakers investigating the firings, means that the administration began moving to replace U.S. attorneys five months earlier than was previously known. It also means that at least nine prosecutors were asked to resign last year, a deviation from repeated suggestions by Gonzales and other senior Justice officials in congressional testimony and other public statements that the firings did not extend beyond the eight Prosecutors already known to have been forced out.

snip

Graves said he received a telephone call shortly after New Year's Day 2006 from Michael A. Battle, then director of the department's Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. Graves said Battle told him that department officials wanted to change leadership in the Kansas City office, emphasizing "there are no performance issues."

The characterization -- that Graves was being moved out simply to give someone else a turn -- is practically identical to the explanation that Bud Cummins, the former U.S. attorney in Little Rock, has said he was given last June, when he, too, was asked to leave. He was replaced by a former aide to President Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove. The seven other U.S. attorneys were dismissed on a single day in December.

Graves said his conversation with Battle "made clear to me the fact I was getting a push." "I felt like I was no longer welcome in the department,"
he said. "It wasn't like I was trying to hang on."

I wonder if there are more out there. More from Graves:

The brother of Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), Todd Graves is a former state prosecutor and was a GOP candidate for state treasurer. The Bush administration installed him as the chief federal prosecutor for western Missouri in 2001.

The same month he was asked to step down, Graves's name was included in a Jan. 9, 2006, list assembled by Gonzales's then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, of seven U.S. attorneys the administration was considering forcing from their jobs. That April, Sampson sent another e-mail noting that two of the prosecutors on that list had already left. Three names, including Graves's, were redacted when Justice officials released the January list.

Graves said yesterday that he never knew he was on the list and was not
given a specific reason he was asked to leave.

During the spring of 2005, an aide to Bond urged the White House to replace Graves, because the prosecutor's wife and brother-in-law recently had been given state patronage contracts to run private offices for driver's licenses and other motor vehicle services. A spokeswoman for Bond confirmed that interaction but said Justice officials later told the senator's staff that the contracts issue was not why the administration wanted him to leave.

Graves acknowledged that he had twice during the past few years clashed with Justice's civil rights division over cases, including a federal lawsuit involving Missouri's voter rolls that Graves said a Washington Justice official signed off on after he refused to do so. That official, Bradley J. Schlozman, was appointed as interim U.S. attorney to succeed Graves, remaining for a year until the Senate this spring confirmed John Wood for the job. Wood was a counselor to the deputy attorney general and is a son of Bond's first cousin, although the senator's spokeswoman, Shana Marchio, said Bond did not recommend him for the job.

UPDATE: Alberto Gonzales, today, said to the committee that they should move on and focus on issues other than the US attonrneys firings and he would investigate the matter. Conyers to Gonzales:
"My hope is that the members will focus their questions today on the US Attorneys and related matters". Conyers also suggested that the White House had tried to create "a bigger Republican farm team" full of "loyal Bushies" within the Justice Department. The Michigan Democrat warned that there was a "cover up" going on.

"One asks whether the administration is trying to cover up two simple truths: who created the list, and why?" he asked, referring to the list of US Attorneys that were fired by the Justice Department.


UPDATE II: Murray Waas:

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin's appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove's role in supporting Griffin.

In one of the letters that Sampson drafted, dated February 23, 2007, the Justice Department told four Senate Democrats it was not aware of any role played by senior White House adviser Rove in attempting to name Griffin to the U.S. attorney post. A month later, the Justice Department apologized in writing to the Senate Democrats for the earlier letter, saying it had been inaccurate in denying that Rove had played a role.

Brad Berenson, an attorney for Sampson, said in an interview that his client did not intend to mislead Congress. Sampson, he said, signed off on the February 23 letter based on representations made by the White House that it was accurate.

The withheld e-mails show that Sampson's draft was forwarded for review to Chris Oprison, an associate White House counsel, who approved the language saying that Justice was not aware of Rove having played any role in supporting Griffin. But an earlier e-mail from Sampson to Oprison that has already been made public indicates that the two men discussed Rove and then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers as being at the forefront of Griffin's nomination.

Gonzales and the White House are trying to weasle out of this, with the help of the GOP members of the committee and the House, by trying to make it a non-issue but as more is revealed, they don't seem to have a leg to stand on.

Newsweek: Confirmes DOJ investigating Monica Goodling

Yep! It's true. The Department of Justice is investigating one of their own.

From Newsweek:

Justice confirmed it's investigating whether Goodling improperly assessed the political loyalties of applicants for career assistant U.S. attorney posts. Two government officials (not ID'd when talking about an ongoing probe) told NEWSWEEK the inquiry began after Jeff Taylor, the interim U.S. attorney in D.C.,
complained that Goodling tried to block the hiring of a prosecutor in his office for being a "liberal Democratic type." Justice e-mails show Goodling also played a pivotal role in selecting which U.S. attorneys were fired. When the e-mails surfaced in March, a distraught Goodling went to see veteran DOJ official David Margolis and "bawled her eyes out," saying, "All I ever wanted to do was serve this president," and "everything is unraveling," according to Margolis's confidential testimony to congressional investigators (as described by a congressional aide, anonymous when talking about nonpublic matters). Her lawyer, John Dowd, refused to comment, saying Goodling, who has since resigned, has invoked her right to remain silent. The House Judiciary Committee is seeking to force her testimony by granting her immunity. Investigators believe Goodling, who served as DOJ's liaison to the White House, is key to their big fish: Karl Rove.

Just a thought...is the Justice department's investigation because Monica invoked the 5th amendment? Do they want to get to her first, before the House and Senate have her testify?
Yes, it's true! I do not trust the DOJ.

Rove, White House, Politicizing Fed Agencies

One Party Country? The architect of evil put a plan into action to do just that. He visited all the Federal Agencies along with Ken Mehlman devising this plan that goes directly against the Hatch Act.

It's happening and has been happening since Bush took office. Think Progress has a great post that explains alot. Along with a new book called One Party Country.

Are you ready to believe that Bush wanted to be Emporer? At the least a dictator. He even admited that.

Gonzales testimony of "I don't recall" leaves questions unanswered.

Hours and hours of testimony from Gonzales and other DOJ officials and the main question has yet to be answered. The question? Who in the Bush White House conceived the plan to fire these attorneys? Gonzales seems to know little of what is happening in his department, so the Senators say all signs seem to point to someone in the WH.

David Iglesias puts forth his advice to congress, from McClatchey Newspapers:

David Iglesias, the former New Mexico U.S. attorney and one of the eight fired last year, said investigating the White House's role is the logical next step - one that would follow existing clues about Rove's involvement.

"If I were Congress, I would say, `If the attorney general doesn't have answers, then who would?' There's enough evidence to indicate that Karl Rove was involved up to his eyeballs."

Iglesias said another clue that the White House may have been the driving force is the relative lack of Justice Department documentation for the firings in the 6,000 pages of documents turned over to Congress.

"If you want to justify getting rid of someone, you should have at least some paper trail," Iglesias said. "There's been a remarkable absence of that. I'm wondering if the paper trail is at the White House."

Even if Gonzales decides to step down - he says he won't despite widespread Republican disappointment with his performance - Democrats say they'll continue their probe into whether politics inappropriately influenced the firings.

"The arrow points more and more to the White House," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "The one thing I can assure you of: This is not over, far from it."

That's why some Republicans think Gonzales should stay on the job.

snip

Rove has acknowledged passing along complaints to the Justice Department, and a former Rove aide was chosen to replace one of the fired U.S. attorneys. E-mail traffic between Gonzales' chief of staff, who's since resigned, and a Rove deputy, reveals another connection.

Another e-mail released as part of the investigation shows a Rove deputy kept Rove abreast of turns in the controversy via Rove's Republican Party e-mail account rather than Rove's White House e-mail address.

The White House isn't authorizing Rove to testify publicly or to testify privately but with a transcript.

And when Congress told the Republican National Committee to turn over all pertinent e-mails, the administration instructed the RNC to give the e-mails to the White House, not to Congress. That standoff appears headed to court.

It always seems to come back to Rove!

CREW asks Fitzgerald to re-open the Plame investigation

Raw Story reports, with the news of the missing emails from the WH, and the admission by the Lawyer of the RNC that there are 4 years of Rove's emails missing from the RNC-issued email accounts, CREW, Citizens for Responsible Ethics, has asked Patrick Fitzgerald to re-open the Plame Investigation into Rove's role in the identity leak. Again, another by-product of the DOJ investigation of the firings of the US Attorneys. Four years of emails missing or deleted by Rove. And not from the WH emails....but from the RNC email account. The web is definately tangled.

Rove's attorney denies that Rove intentionally deleted these emails. And Leahy and his committee are now asking for the emails to be investigated. Leahy said:

"They say they have not been preserved. I don’t believe that!” Leahy shouted from the Senate floor. “You can’t erase e-mails, not today. They’ve gone through too many servers. Those e-mails are there, they just don’t want to produce them. We’ll subpoena them if necessary.”

When the Plame trial against Scooter Libby ended with a conviction, Patrick Fitzgerald was asked if any further investigation was planned, he said "If new information comes to light, of course we'll do that."

So Melanie Sloan of CREW, in light of the missing emails and what they might contain has urged that Fitzgerald "should immediately reopen his investigation into whether Rove took part in the leak as well as whether he obstructed justice in the ensuing leak investigation."

Here is CREW's press release:

Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to reopen his investigation of Karl Rove's role in disclosing Valerie Plame Wilson's status as a covert CIA operative in light of recent revelations about missing White House email.

Press reports indicate that Mr. Rove uses a Republican National Committee (RNC) email account for 95% of his communications. In addition, the RNC's counsel has admitted that all of Mr. Rove's emails prior to 2005 have been destroyed. Moreover, the White House has admitted that - as CREW reported yesterday - five million emails are missing from the White House servers. All of this raises serious questions about whether Mr. Rove knowingly destroyed evidence relevant to the Special Counsel's inquiry and whether Mr. Fitzgerald received all relevant documents.

Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, said today, "It looks like Karl Rove may well have destroyed evidence that implicated him in the White House's orchestrated efforts to leak Valerie Plame Wilson's covert identity to the press in retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson." Sloan continued, "Special Counsel Fitzgerald should immediately reopen his investigation into whether Rove took part in the leak as well as whether he obstructed justice in the ensuing leak investigation."

CREW serves as legal counsel to Joe and Valerie Wilson in their civil suit against Karl Rove, Vice President Dick Cheney, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Richard Armitage.

WH say no Rove , no emails

The White House Counsel Fred Fielding sent a letter to Conyers and Leahy saying they won't budge on their decision to not allow Rove and the other WH aides to testify under oath. He's also trying to head off Conyer's attempt to get the emails about the US attorneys firing from the RNC.

Politico has the story:

White House Counsel Fred Fielding, in a letter today, told Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary committees, that the White House has not budged in its refusal to allow the panels to question several White House aides, including Karl Rove, about what they know regarding the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys, moving the two sides closer to a constitutional battle over the scandal.

Fielding also appears to be trying to head off an attempt by Conyers to obtain e-mails and documents from the Republican National Committee regarding the firings. Roughly 50 White House officials, including 22 curent aides, used e-mail accounts controlled by the RNC to send messages, including some related to the prosecutor firings, and Conyers asked RNC Chairman Mike Duncan to turn over those records today.

Fielding also said that "it was and remains our intention to collect e-mails and documents from those [RNC-controlled] accounts as well as the official White House e-mail and document retention systems" as part of a broader deal with the two committees on staffer testimony.

Fielding has offered to allow Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and other Bush aides to be questioned by committee investigators, but only behind closed doors, and not under oath. Fielding also won't allow any transcript of those interviews to be made. Conyers and Leahy have rejected the offer as woefully inadequate, and while both committees have authorized subpoenas for Rove, Miers and the others, only Conyers has issued up until now and those were for documents only.

Conyers immediately countered Fielding's letter, dismissing it as an attempt by Fielding to extend executive-privilege protection to e-mails sent by White House officials on RNC servers, which Conyers suggested was legally suspect.

The utter arrogance of this administration is unbelievable. It seems we do have an emporer and his Richelieu.

Poll shows Americans want Gonzales to resign

This is an LA Times/Bloomberg poll. In this poll, 53% of those polled think Gonzales should resign. But surprisingly 74% of Americans want Gonzales aides including Karl Rove to testify under oath. And this is surprising, "Even among Republicans, 49% said the aides should testify; 43% said they should not."

Here's more from the LA Times:

Respondents were divided along party lines as to whether Gonzales should resign. Among Democrats, 68% said he should do so; among Republicans, 33% said he should depart.

Independents tip the balance -- 57% said they supported calls for his resignation while 22% said he should stay.

On another issue, the poll found that Americans are also split along partisan lines over pending congressional legislation that would provide new funding for the war in Iraq, but require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from the country.

Asked whether Bush should accept or veto a bill that included a timetable, 48% said he should sign such a measure while 43% said he should reject it. A significant majority of Democrats -- 74% -- backed signing the bill; an even bigger majority of Republicans, 80%, supported a veto.

The poll found that Americans have grown more pessimistic since the beginning of the year.

About two-thirds, 66%, said the country is "seriously off on the wrong track," up from 61% in a Times/Bloomberg Poll in January.

Well there you go. All down party lines. But it is hartening to see where the majority is.

And here's another surprise:

An overwhelming majority of Americans, 73 percent, said Bush's plan for Iraq has made the situation there worse or has had no effect on the country's stability. Just 27 percent said setting a timetable for withdrawal helps U.S. troops on the ground, and 15 percent said it would have no effect.

Another by-product of the US Attorneys firing, Dems are looking into alternate email system for White House aides

And it could be much more trouble for Karl Rove. Seems the RNC gave Rove and his people laptops and other communication devices to use along with the goverment-issued equipment. This can be and has been a major problem.

The system was put in place because the RNC thought it would be a way to avoid the charges that the government equipment was being used for political purposes as were the charges (brought by the republicans, by the way) in the Clinton admin.

Here's more from the LA Times:

Now, that dual computer system is creating new embarrassment and legal headaches for the White House, the Republican Party and Rove's once-vaunted White House operation.

Democrats say evidence suggests the RNC e-mail system was used for political and government policy matters in violation of federal record preservation and disclosure rules.

In addition, Democrats point to a handful of e-mails obtained through ongoing inquiries suggesting the system may have been used to conceal such activities as contacts with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who was convicted on bribery charges and is now in prison for fraud.

Democratic congressional investigators are beginning to demand access to this RNC-White House communications system, which was used not only by Rove's office but by several top officials elsewhere in the White House.

The prospect that such communication might become public has further jangled the nerves of an already rattled Bush White House.

Some Republicans believe that the huge number of e-mails — many written hastily, with no thought that they might become public — may contain more detailed and unguarded inside information about the administration's far-flung political activities than has previously been available.

"There is concern about what may be in these e-mails," said one GOP activist who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject."The system was created with the best intentions," said former Assistant White House Press Secretary Adam Levine, who was assigned an RNC laptop and BlackBerry when he worked at the White House in 2002. But, he added, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

Now comes Rep. Waxman:

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, last week formally requested access to broad
categories of RNC-White House e-mails.

Waxman told the Los Angeles Times in a statement that a separate "e-mail system for high-ranking White House officials would raise serious questions about violations of the Presidential Records Act," which requires the preservation and ultimate disclosure of e-mails about official government business.

Waxman's initial request to the RNC seeks e-mails relating to the presentation of campaign polling and strategy information to Cabinet agency appointees. He is also expected to ask for e-mails relating to Abramoff's activities, which Waxman is also investigating.

And here is why I say it is a by-product of the firing of the US attorneys:

The private e-mail system came to light in the U.S. attorney controversy because one of Rove's deputies used an RNC-maintained e-mail domain — gwb43.com — to communicate with the Justice Department about replacing one of those prosecutors.

snip

Waxman focused on the e-mails after a hearing last month examining a presentation of campaign forecasts and polling data made by a Rove deputy to top appointed officials of the Government Services Administration, some of whom believed they were being instructed to help GOP candidates.

White House staff arranging for the GSA briefing by a Rove deputy, Scott Jennings, used the gwb43.com e-mail domain name. That caught the attention of Waxman's investigators, who had previously examined e-mails from Abramoff to Rove's executive assistant, Susan B. Ralston, to object to an impending Interior Department decision. The decision, he wrote, was "anathema to all our supporters it's important if possible to get some quiet message from the WH [White House] that this is absurd."

Ralston used outside accounts — including at rnchq.org — to communicate with Abramoff and his partners. One e-mail from an Abramoff associate said that White House personnel had warned "it is better to not put this stuff in writing in [the White House] … e-mail system because it might actually limit what they can do to help us, especially since there could be lawsuits, etc."

Abramoff's response, according to a copy of his e-mail released by Waxman's committee, was: "Dammit. It was sent to Susan on her rnc pager and was not supposed to go into the WH system." Ralston later resigned in connection with the lobbying scandal.

Ahh! Abramoff too? The web widens!

More Lies

Tim Griffin, the replacement for Bud Cummings, one of the fired US Attorneys, has put up a web site where he says he has prosecuted 40 cases while in the Army. This has been disputed by....The Army!

Here the rest of the story from Consortium News:

Did Rove's Protégé Puff Up Résumé?

By Richard L. Fricker April 3, 2007

Little Rock’s interim U.S. Attorney J. Timothy Griffin – already at the center of a firestorm over whether the White House has put politics ahead of prosecutorial integrity – made claims about his experience as an Army lawyer that have been put in doubt by military records.

The 38-year-old Griffin claims on his official Web site that he prosecuted 40 criminal cases while at Ft. Campbell, where he was stationed from September 2005 to May 2006. But Army authorities say Ft. Campbell’s records show Griffin only serving as assistant trial counsel on three cases, none of which went to trial.

Griffin didn’t agree to be interviewed about his claim of 40 criminal prosecutions versus the Army’s confirmation of three cases, all of which were settled as plea bargains. But Cherith Beck, a Griffin spokeswoman, suggested that Griffin’s higher number might refer to all cases he worked on in any capacity.

“Just wanted to clarify, make sure you had an understanding that prosecuted means it’s a case he handled while he was there; it doesn’t mean that it went to trial necessarily,” Beck said. “Prosecuted means he handled those cases in one form or another.”

Griffin’s prosecutorial experience at Ft. Campbell is important in evaluating Griffin’s fitness to serve as the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Arkansas since the bulk of Griffin’s legal career has been in political operations, such as opposition research on Democrats or work as a Republican staffer on Capitol Hill.

Seeking to burnish Griffin’s prosecutorial credentials, his backers also have cited a letter of recommendation dated Aug. 13, 2002, from then-Little Rock U.S. Attorney H.E. “Bud” Cummins III praising Griffin’s nine months of work as one of his assistants.

The article goes on to say:

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, a senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, hailed Griffin as “a person with Prosecutorial experience who the attorney – who the U.S. Attorney who was going to be removed said was his right-hand man and one of the best prosecutors he had.”

In an e-mail to me, however, Cummins disputed Hatch’s characterization of the letter.

“I don’t see here where I referred to him as my ‘right arm,’” Cummins said. “I don’t know where they are getting that. Tim [Griffin] worked hard and did a good job organizing the launch of what became a very successful PSN [Project Safe Neighborhoods] program. But the great success was at least equally due, if not a great deal more, to the efforts of virtually every prosecutor in the office after his departure.”

False Talking Points

Cummins noted that Hatch also made disparaging remarks about Carol Lam, the U.S. Attorney in San Diego who was another of the eight federal prosecutors fired last year because the White House and Justice Department didn’t rate them highly on lists that included an assessment of whether they were “loyal Bushies.”

“I imagine Senator Hatch will be very upset with the person or persons that fed him all the wrong information,” Cummins said in the e-mail. “I know he doesn’t want to put HIS credibility at risk, too. Sounds like he was provided talking points by someone as reckless with the facts as other previous occurrences in this saga.

“I have lost count of the public statements they have made that are simply wrong, or at least obviously deceptive. It smacks of desperation. You wonder if the bosses know the underlings are composing talking points for them with such little regard for the facts.”

You can read the rest here.

The lies continue to pour out from this admin and all that work for and with them.

Fired US Attorney, Bud Cummins is not happy!

Bud Cummins, at first, was not really joining the others. When he spoke on TV of the firings, he soft soaped the Bush admin and the DOJ. Not any more!!!

From the Times Record:

Fired federal prosecutor Bud Cummins took strong exception Thursday to testimony by a former Justice Department official about the firings of Cummins and seven
other U.S. attorneys.

Cummins objected to the testimony of Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in Sampson’s appearance Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sampson told senators he believed each of the federal prosecutors fired late last year by the Justice Department was replaced because of problems related to his or her performance in office.

“If they’re starting to say that I had performance problems, then I have the same gripe the other seven have, because it’s a lie,” said Cummins, a Republican Bush appointee who was removed as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas and replaced by Tim Griffin, former assistant to White House political adviser Karl Rove.

Cummins said if he were to comment further on Sampson’s testimony, “I’d need a censor.”

Sampson appeared to contradict the previous testimony of Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, who told senators in February that Cummins was removed to make room for Griffin and not because of performance-related problems.

However, Sampson also said he believes the distinction between “political” and
“performance-related” reasons for removing a U.S. attorney is an artificial distinction.

While Sampson was testifying Thursday in Washington, Cummins spoke and answered questions at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock. He also met with reporters after his talk.

Cummins said in his Little Rock speech he was “astounded” by Sampson’s suggestion that political success and success as a prosecutor are one and the same.

snip

He acknowledged that U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and can be removed for any reason. But he said he is troubled by evidence suggesting some prosecutors were pressured about specific cases, including David Iglesias of New Mexico, who has said he felt “leaned on” by Republican members of Congress concerning the investigation of a local Democrat.

Nothing could have a more chilling effect on prosecutors than knowing that pursuing the wrong case or resisting pressure to obtain an indictment means that “you’re going to be gone,” Cummins said. Cummins said he never would have come forward to talk about his firing if Justice Department officials had not stated that at least some of the fired U.S. attorneys were removed for performance-related problems.

Ahhh! The worm is turning. It's like watching a soap opera! But much more important. Stay tuned,

Top Rove aide soon to step down, faces subpoena

Again Raw Story has the story.

Key Rove aide fingered in US Attorney investigation to step down; Could face subpoena

Multiple sources reported today that a top aide to President George W. Bush's key adviser Karl Rove will soon step down from her job in the White House. The aide, Sara M. Taylor, was identified in yesterday's hearing with a former top Justice Department official as seeking the resignation of a US Attorney in Arkansas. She could still face a subpoena, RAW STORY learned.

Last week, the House and Senate Judiciary Committees authorized subpoenas of Scott Jennings, a deputy to Taylor, who is a top aide to Karl Rove. A House Judiciary Committee aide told RAW STORY she could still face a subpoena today.

"The people for whom subpoenas were authorized were a result of the document review, and it could be could be that Jennings' name was more prevalent," said a House Judiciary Committee aide. "Other subpoenas can be authorized or issued should any other names come up."

Taylor and Jennings were both fingered yesterday by Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, as playing key roles in the elevation of Tim Griffin, a top staffer in the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign and a Army Judge Advocate General, as the interim US Attorney for Arkansas in place of Bud Cummins.

Much more at Raw Story.

"Thank You Karl"

What's this? An email thank you note. To who? From who? And sent where? About what?

To: Karl Rove

From: Pete Domenici's Cheif of Staff, Scott Jennings

Sent to: Rove's political email account

Re: “Thanks for everything,” Here's the name of the replacement for David Iglesias.

From Neesweek:

Did Karl Rove have a hand in replacing the fired U.S. attorney in New Mexico? An overlooked e-mail may provide a clue.

March 28, 2007 - New Mexico Republican Sen. Pete Domenici’s chief of staff sent a cryptic thank-you note to Karl Rove just as the senator was recommending replacements for David Iglesias, the fired U.S. attorney in New Mexico, according to internal White House and Justice Department documents.
“Thanks for everything,” Domenici chief of staff Steve Bell wrote Rove and two other White House officials, including Rove’s political deputy, Scott Jennings, in a Jan. 8, 2007 e-mail that forwarded the name of a candidate to replace Iglesias.

Buried in Justice Department documents released two weeks ago, the Bell e-mail was not initially noticed by congressional investigators because it was sent to Rove’s political e-mail account—not his more clearly recognizable White House e-mail address.

It is not clear from the content of the e-mail what Bell was thanking Rove for. But the thank-you note is the first indication that Rove himself may have been involved in replacing Iglesias. It is the dismissal of Iglesias—fired after Domenici complained about his handling of a local corruption investigation—that has raised the most serious questions of political interference in the U.S. attorney controversy.

So when asked what this email was all about...here's what the answer was:

Asked about the e-mail today, and why Bell was thanking Rove, Domenici’s press secretary, Chris Gallegos said: “We’re not going to have anything to say about that e-mail.” He added that Bell “did not want to discuss a private communication.” White House press spokesman Tony Fratto said the e-mail was "interpreted" by the three White House officials who recevied it as a thank you for considering the names of Domenici's candidates for replacing Iglesias—not for their help in removing Iglesias. Did Rove in fact intervene to have Iglesias removed? Fratto replied: "We're not commenting on that" because of general White House policy not to talk about "internal White House communications."

Hmmm! Internal White House communications? Was this not sent to Rove's Political email address? That is not an internal White House communication.

The e-mail continued: “To repeat [name blanked out] is our overwhelming choice and will take the job …” It was then that Bell added, “Thanks for everything.”

What makes this stand out is that Iglesias was not even on the original list to fire until Domenici complained. And who then put him on the list. Kyle Sampson. We'll find out tomorrow when Kyle Sampson goes in front of the Senate hearing.

To be continued!