This has been long overdue. From Murray Waas:

In an appointment that senior Justice Department officials say demonstrates the Obama administration’s commitment to reversing the Bush administration’s politicization of the Department, a U.S. attorney fired by President Bush was reappointed to his old job on Friday.

Daniel Bogden, who was fired in the fall of 2006 by the Bush administration as the U.S. attorney in Nevada, was offered his old job back by President Obama, and was formally nominated on Friday.

Bogden’s confirmation by the Senate is all but assured: He has spent his entire adult life in government service, and as a former U.S. attorney was confirmed by the Senate previously. He was also thoroughly vetted for his new position by the White House Counsel’s office prior to his most recent nomination, even though he was vetted during his first appointment as U.S. attorney by the Bush administration. Moreover, he has the backing of both his home-state senators: Harry Reid, a Democrat, and John Ensign, a Republican. That Reid is a Senate Majority Leader, and that Reid personally suggested to the President that Bogden get his old job back probably, won’t hurt matters.

Ironically, Bogden’s formal reappointment as U.S. attorney comes exactly one day after former Bush political adviser Karl Rove gave sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the firings of Bogden and eight other U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration. A federal grand jury is currently investigating whether Bush administration officials and members of Congress obstructed justice in pressing for one or more of the firings, and also, whether they misled Congress as to why the prosecutors were fired.

Bogden’s firing in the fall of 2006 is referred to by many in the Justice Department as the firing that came about as a result of some sort of Immaculate Conception: For two years, the Justice Department’s two watchdog agencies, its Inspector General and Office of Responsibility, spent 18 months investigating the firings of the nine U.S. attorneys. When it came to Bogden, however, the investigators were not only unable to determine why he was fired, but even who ordered his firing. Every single Justice Department official and Bush administration official interviewed by investigators disclaimed responsibility for his firing. Isn't that typical Bush/Cheney dealings?

Bogden’s appointment to his old job by Obama appears to a historical first: He will be the first U.S. attorney to be appointed and fired by the same President, only to be appointed U.S. attorney again by another President. How strange it all is and I believe as time goes by we'll see a lot more of these "irregularities" pop up, don't you think?
(co-written by David Neiwert)

It took two years, but it finally happened - thanks to an agreement with the White House that deposing Rove would not infringe on executive privilege. Now everyone wants to know: What did Karl say? And don't you wish you were the fly on the wall?

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.”

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to confirm or deny that his client had appeared before the committee. Luskin said there was an agreement that the depositions would remain confidential until they were completed. However, in a court filing Monday, the Justice Department indicated that the deposition set for this week would be the committee's last.

Conyers’ panel had first subpoenaed Rove in 2007 as part of its probe into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. But the Bush White House, citing executive privilege, refused to make Rove or White House Counsel Harriet Miers available for any deposition.

"Senator, that I don't recall remembering." With those six words uttered during the furor over his purge of U.S. prosecutors, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales likely etched his epitaph. But as it turns out, "hypothetical" may be the most important word Gonzales ever spoke to Congress. New revelations this week suggest that in the spring of 2002 then-White House Counsel Gonzales personally approved the use of waterboarding, months before the Justice Department's infamous Bybee memo blessed the practice. By labeling such questions "hypothetical" during his 2005 confirmation hearings, Attorney General Gonzales may well have committed perjury.

As NPR reported this week, Gonzales apparently played a central role in authorizing the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques months before the August 2002 Bybee memo defined torture as "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." In April and May 2002, it was White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales who gave CIA interrogation contractor James Mitchell the greenlight to waterboard detainee Abu Zubaydah:

One source with knowledge of Zubaydah's interrogations agreed to describe the legal guidance process, on the condition of anonymity.

The source says nearly every day, Mitchell would sit at his computer and write a top-secret cable to the CIA's counterterrorism center. Each day, Mitchell would request permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques on Zubaydah. The source says the CIA would then forward the request to the White House, where White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would sign off on the technique. That would provide the administration's legal blessing for Mitchell to increase the pressure on Zubaydah in the next interrogation.

But that's not what Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee during his January 2005 confirmation as Attorney General.

Continue reading »

Murray Waas has a fascinating piece in the new Atlantic about Dan Bogden, the onetime U.S. Attorney from Nevada who got shoved out by the Rove Crew:

A Justice Department official told me that the idea of hiring Bogden back is in fact a real possibility, and said that the White House counsel’s office has been quietly vetting his background in anticipation of his possible reappointment—not a difficult task, considering that he has been employed by the government for the majority of his adult life.

If Bogden is reappointed as U.S. attorney, his supervisor will be one of the authors of the Justice Department’s report on the U.S. attorney firings that praised Bogden and severely criticized the Bush administration appointees who fired him. Last Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder reassigned H. Marshall Jarrett, the head of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility, to head the executive office of U.S. attorneys, where he will oversee the nation’s 94 U.S. attorneys. By naming Jarrett to his new position, a senior Obama administration official told me, “I think this administration is sending a message that the era of politicization of the Department should be long due over.” The same official told me: “The continued service of Dan Bogden might hopefully send the same message.”

Slowly but surely, the men whose careers were ruined by Rove and the Gang are being restored, at least incrementally. David Iglesias, the fired New Mexico U.S. Attorney, has been working on Guantanamo cases for the Navy's JAG unit.

John McKay, the fired U.S. attorney from Washington state, is now working for Getty Images.

I wonder if Karl Rove will have any comment about this anytime in the near future on Fox News. I suspect he's too busy bashing Obama, however.

Murray Waas reports that Rove is apparently being cooperative with investigators in both the U.S. attorneys case and the Gov. Don Siegalman case:

Karl Rove will cooperate with a federal criminal inquiry underway into the firings of nine U.S. attorneys and has already spoken to investigators in a separate, internal DOJ investigation into the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, his attorney said in an interview.

Rove previously refused to cooperate with an earlier Justice Department inquiry into the firings. The Justice Department's Inspector General and its Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) said in a report released last September detailing their earlier probe of the firings of the U.S. attorneys that their investigation was severely "hindered" by the refusal by Rove and other senior Bush administration officials to cooperate with the probe.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, said that Rove, however, will cooperate with a federal criminal probe of the firings being led by Nora Dannehy, the Acting U.S. Attorney for Connecticut who was selected by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey to lead the investigation. Dannehy has recently empaneled a federal grand jury to hear evidence in the matter.

Luskin told me that Rove had earlier not cooperated with the Inspector General and OPR probe into the firings because "it was not his call... it was not up to us decide." Luskin said that Rove was directed by the Bush White House counsel's office not to cooperate with the Inspector General and OPR.

Murray has more here.

DOWNLOAD (78)

PLAY (79)

That subpoena from John Conyers seems to be making Karl Rove a little more ... clenched these days. Appearing with the ever-friendly Bill O'Reilly last night, he dismissed the possibility he would even consider appearing for the legal summons:

Rove: I have been directed, again on January 16, by the outgoing president's legal counsel, not to respond to a subpoena, exerting privilege on behalf of the former president and his close aides.

O'Reilly: So you're not even going to show?

Rove: No, and --

O'Reilly: What if they hold you in contempt of Congress?

Rove: Look, this issue is -- let's step back for a minute. This issue of whether or not I should show up -- I've never exerted any personal privilege, I've never said I have a personal right not to show up.

O'Reilly: No, but you're a counselor to the president, it's executive -- I got all that. But let's go beyond the argument. I know your argument. Say Conyers says Mr. Rove is in contempt of Congress. What happens then?

Rove: Well, look, this issue is before the United States Circuit Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. Rep. Conyers could have waited until they resolved the issue one way or the other, gave guidance to him and gave guidance to the former president and to the current president. But instead, he decided to go forward with this -- I don't know if I want to call it a witch hunt, I don't think of myself as a witch, but I'm certain -- this is a guy who went to the cloak room and said, 'Somebody has to get his --' and then filled in a crude way to describe my posterior. He's sort of like Captain Ahab and I'm the whale.

Well, we know President Obama isn't keen on Conyers proceeding, but this indeed isn't just about petty revenge, as O'Reilly and Rove want to pretend. There are in fact much bigger issues at stake here:

PLEASE NOTE: C&L realizes that Karl Rove is not well-liked here for a great many reasons. Remember that wishing physical harm on anyone when you leave a comment here is against the commenting policy and will be deleted. You folks know better. - Sitemonitor

Continue reading »

There certainly were a lot of disturbing questions raised by Colorado U.S. attorney Troy Eid's refusal to prosecute three white-supremacist tweakers caught conspiring to assassinate Barack Obama before this year's Democratic National Convention in Denver. (Brad Jacobson and Nicole also reported on this.)

Now, as Jacobson reports at Raw Story, those questions are taking on a serious cast:

Interviews with numerous legal experts suggest that Colorado US Attorney Troy Eid misled reporters and diverged from state law when declining to prosecute any of the three men arrested in Denver for threatening to assassinate Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

Eid, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006, declined to prosecute the three men on charges of threatening to assassinate Barack Obama during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, saying that the suspects were "just a bunch of meth heads" and their words failed to meet the legal standard for "true threat."

... But multiple legal experts interviewed by RAW STORY -- including criminal and constitutional law scholars, former Assistant US Attorneys and Denver-area defense lawyers also familiar with Colorado state law -- agreed that voluntary intoxication is not exculpatory and that such a claim, especially for a prosecutor, is unorthodox. While it may be presented in an effort to reduce a sentence after a conviction, experts say it is normally the domain of defense counsel.

"It's very unusual," says Scott Horton, a Columbia Law School professor who also writes for Harper's Magazine. "Basically, you have a US Attorney trotting out the sort of arguments that defense counsel makes on a plea for reduced sentencing."

Legal experts say that Eid's definition of true threat directly conflicts with the statue covering threats to presidential candidates, 18 U.S.C. 879, which defines the threat as "whoever knowingly and willfully threatens to kill, kidnap, or inflict bodily harm upon a major candidate for the office of President or Vice President, or a member of the immediate family of such candidate."

Be sure to read the whole thing.

There should be a congressional investigation of Eid's misfeasance in this case, because it sends a chilling message: If you're a white supremacist who wants to target Obama for assassination -- as a number of them appear to be doing -- Bush's Justice Department will give you a slap on the wrist and look the other way should you get caught.

I doubt that was what they intended, but that has been the end result.