As Murray Waas wrote about yesterday, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, acting on the guidance of the DoJ Inspector General, has decided to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the USA firing scandal. Unfortunately, there will be no grand jury for Gonzo.

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Bloomberg:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey named a special prosecutor to investigate possible crimes arising from the Bush administration's firing of nine U.S. attorneys.

An internal Justice Department review of the dismissals recommended the appointment today after finding there was a possibility officials made false statements, obstructed justice or committed wire fraud. The report said the matter warranted further investigation by an attorney who has the ability to compel witnesses to cooperate.

"The Justice Department has an obligation to the American people to pursue this case wherever the facts and the law require,'' Mukasey said in a statement.

Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please...

Our very own Murray Waas has been looking into the possibility: 

I have two new stories on the Huffington Post- one this evening and one from yesterday- about the various investigations being conducted within the Department of Justice of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys and the politicization of the Department.

What is clear from both, as well as whatever scant other information we have been able to glean about what investigators are focusing on, is that they apparently are not shying away from examining the role and conduct of the White House- in either the initial White House role in firing the U.S. attorneys- or as my story tonight shows- also the role of White House officials in working with senior political Bush administration appointees to provide misleading information and testimony about the firings to Congress.

I have no inside information about whether a criminal investigation or a special prosecutor's probe will derive out of the current probes by Justice's Inspector General and its Office of Professional Responsibility. (I either don't have sources that good, or that ones that might talk to me aren't telling.)

But based on what investigators have been looking into, the possibility that a special prosecutor might be named to investigate the U.S. attorney mess might not be as remote as one might have thought.

It still appears much more unlikely than not that one would be named, but with the conduct of so many White House officials being scrutinized, the possibility for one being named for the first time appears to be a threat to the Bush administration.  Read on...

Of course, it could just be another sternly worded letter too.   However, it is becoming increasingly clear that those aspen roots are deeply, deeply tangled throughout the Bush administration and there is definitely a movement afoot to look at this much deeper than they have before.

  David Iglesias, one of the eight US Attorneys forced out of their jobs by the Bush administration for failing to pursue bogus politically-motivated prosecutions, appeared on "Morning Joe" Friday to promote his new book, In Justice, and offered his thoughts on why Karl Rove ignored a Congressional subpoena and skipped town in order to avoid testifying.

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"Which I believe is the reason why he is refusing to testify in front of the Congress. He has information that I believe would show illegal activity, interfering with ongoing federal criminal investigations. So Rove is not testifying I think basically to keep himself from being indicted."

Remember to watch Robert Greenwald's latest video and sign the petition demanding Karl Rove be held accountable.

Perhaps Turdblossom got a little nervous that Democrats might actually locate their spines and charge him with inherent contempt and have him arrested? Video and more from Alternet:

Karl Rove was scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday. He didn't show. Not only that, the Committee was told that Rove had left the country on a "long scheduled" trip.

In this video clip, Rep. Linda Sanchez explains that Rove never told them about any trip.

I don’t want to alarm anyone, but it appears the Justice Department, throughout Bush’s two terms, flagrantly and repeatedly broke the law by politicizing the hiring process. Yes, I know we knew that before, but the DoJ’s Inspector General has made it official.

Justice Department officials over the last six years illegally used “political or ideological” factors to hire new lawyers into an elite recruitment program, tapping law school graduates with conservative credentials over those with liberal-sounding resumes, a new report found Tuesday.

The blistering report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general, is the first in what will be a series of investigations growing out of last year’s scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys. It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration.

“Many qualified candidates” were rejected for the department’s honors program because of what was perceived as a liberal bias, the report found. Those practices, the report concluded, “constituted misconduct and also violated the department’s policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations.”

According to the investigation, the Justice Department began ignoring merit and making employment decisions based on politics in 2002, when then-Attorney General John Ashcroft restructured the honors program, taking decisions away from career officials in each section of the department, giving power to Bush appointees. When Alberto Gonzales took the reins, the illegalities expanded and were intensified.

If you were affiliated with the Federalist Society, you were practically a shoe-in. If Bush appointees saw certain buzz words in your c.v. — works like “environmental” and “social justice” — your application was rejected.

Leave it to Bush and his cohorts to transform the Justice Department into the Just Us Department.

Remember the U.S. Attorney purge scandal? The travesty in which the White House and the Justice Department politicized federal law enforcement? It was, for my money, among the biggest Bush-related domestic scandals of the last eight years (top three, at least).

It is not, however, quite over yet.

Justice Department lawyers have filed a grand-jury referral stemming from the 2006 U.S. attorneys scandal, according to people familiar with the probe, a move indicating that the yearlong investigation may be entering a new phase.

The grand-jury referral, the first time the probe has moved beyond the investigative phase, relates to allegations of political meddling in the Justice Department’s civil-rights division, these people say. Specifically, it focuses on possible perjury by Bradley Schlozman, who served a year as interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo.

Mr. Schlozman left the Justice Department last year after he was challenged over his hiring of conservative lawyers at the civil-rights division and his decision later as U.S. attorney to bring voter-fraud charges against members of a left-leaning voter-registration group days before the 2006 election.

Schlozman, an inept character who’s almost amusing in his clumsiness, has a very serious problem on his hands, which will not only lead to the likely criminal prosecution of a former top official in Bush’s Justice Department, but once again bring into focus how the Bush administration operated.

It’s easy to get confused over which comically corrupt Bushie is which, so let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane. It’s a funny story, actually....

Continue reading »

It makes it way too easy for someone to document their crimes.

An internet agitprop artist publishing the website "Republican Offenders dot com" has produced a list of 272 Republicans charged with criminal activity, 60 of which are pedophiles. Each name is linked to a group heading of the type of crime alleged or convicted. (Among the categories are rape, bribery and "assorted felonies".)

The list really has to be seen to be appreciated.

Howard Dean his own self could not have thought the culture of corruption ran this wide and deep. h/t Contextual Criticism.

House Democrats subpoenaed former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten to get their perspective on the U.S. Attorney purge scandal. They refused. House Democrats sought support from the Justice Department in enforcing congressional subpoenas. It refused.

Today, left with limited options, the House Judiciary Committee filed a civil suit to compel Miers’ and Bolten’s testimony. It sets up an extremely interesting legal showdown.

The lawsuit filed in federal court says Miers is not immune from the obligation to testify and that she and Bolten must identify all documents that are being withheld from Congress.

In a statement announcing the lawsuit, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said, “We will not allow the administration to steamroll Congress.”

Conyers said he is confident the federal courts will agree that the Bush administration’s claims to be immune from congressional oversight are at odds with constitutional principles.

Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich) noted, “It is extremely rare that Congress must litigate in order to enforce subpoenas and no compromise can be reached. Unfortunately, this Administration simply will not negotiate towards a compromise resolution so we must proceed.”

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino responded, “The confidentiality that the president receives from his senior advisers and the constitutional principle of separation of powers must be protected from overreaching and we are confident that the courts will agree with us.”

It probably won’t surprise you to hear that Conyers’ argument is more compelling.

The Gavel:

Today, Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers testified before the Committee on Rules in support of statutory contempt and civil litigating authority resolutions against former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten. Text of Resolution as Introduced (pdf)

Recommending that the House cite someone for contempt of Congress is a step that the Committee, and I as Chairman, take with great reluctance. Unfortunately, it is a step that is clearly necessary to preserve the role and constitutional prerogatives of Congress as an institution, in addition to getting to the bottom of the U.S. Attorney controversy.[..]:

If the executive branch can disregard Congressional subpoenas in this way, we no longer have a system of checks and balances. That is the cornerstone of our democracy, and it is our bipartisan responsibility to protect it. As our former colleague, Republican Mickey Edwards, has explained, taking action is crucial in order to defend Congress “as a separate, independent, and completely equal branch of government.”

Because the White House has refused to reconsider its confrontational position, I believe we have no choice but to bring this contempt resolution to the floor promptly and to ask that this Committee adopt a rule to facilitate doing so.

The wheels of justice are grinding, ever so slowly, but grinding nonetheless.

The scandal that forced an Attorney General to resign in disgrace hasn't generated too much attention lately, but it's still lingering.

The federal investigation into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys could jolt the political landscape ahead of the November elections, according to several people close to the inquiry.

Washington’s attention has been diverted from the scandal since the August resignation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, and has focused instead on Democrats’ efforts to hold White House officials in contempt for ignoring congressional subpoenas to testify on Capitol Hill about the firings.

But recent behind-the-scenes activity in several investigations suggests that the issue that roiled Congress in 2007 could re-emerge in the heat of the election year. Two inquiries by the House and Senate ethics committees are examining whether several congressional Republicans, including one running for the Senate this year, improperly interfered with investigations.

So many Republican scandals, so few indictments....

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The latest installment of Bushed! on Countdown takes us back to a happier time when there were only one or two scandals per week. First, the White House pressured the EPA to reduce the number of times companies had to report that they had released toxic chemicals into the environment, which, according to the GAO, will lead to 22,000 fewer reports per year and a lot less oversight. Next, it was onto today's vote by the Senate Judiciary Committee to issue contempt citations for Karl Rove and Josh Bolten for their refusal to testify on the US Attorney purge scandal and finally more Blackwater. Secretary of State Condi Rice stood up and accepted responsibility for Blackwater's slaughter of 17 unarmed Iraqi citizens -- she may have taken responsibility, but she has yet to take the fall:

Olbermann: "So you'll be resigning, then?"

  h/t Heather

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Dan Abrams continues his series on how the Bush administration (in particular, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove) has wreaked havoc on the Department of Justice with a look today at how corrupted and nastily partisan prosecutions have become, with the DoJ going after more than five times the number of Democrats as Republicans and using party and Bush loyalty as the overriding criteria for hiring attorneys.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse:

The Bush administration forgot that the sign outside says "United States Department of Justice" not "Bush Administration Department of Justice". And the cost to us has been as a country and the cost to the department in particular has been terribly high.

  If you’d given up following the Senate Judiciary Committee weighing its next move against White House aides who blew off its subpoena, you’re not alone. There was some sporadic movement on this over the summer, and then a few other issues — namely the confirmation process for a new Attorney General — put the matter on the backburner.

Well, it’s back.

A Senate chairman acknowledged explicitly on Thursday that President Bush was not involved in the firings of U.S. attorneys last winter and therefore ruled illegal the president’s executive privilege claims protecting his chief of staff, John Bolten, and former adviser Karl Rove.

Leahy directed Bolten, Rove, former political director Sara Taylor and her deputy, J. Scott Jennings, to comply “immediately” with their subpoenas for documents and information about the White House’s role in the firings of U.S. attorneys.

“I hereby rule that those claims are not legally valid to excuse current and former White House employees from appearing, testifying and producing documents related to this investigation,” Leahy wrote.

At first blush, this may sound like bad news, as if Leahy is letting the president off the hook for his possible role in a major scandal. But that’s not really what’s going on here — Leahy was rejecting the White House’s executive privilege claim, and in order to do so, he had to make clear that Rove and Bolten had not consulted with Bush on executing the U.S. Attorney purge.

In other words, Leahy effectively said, “Executive privilege pertains to matters directly involving the president and his aides. Since Bush wasn’t involved, there’s no reason Rove and Bolten can’t have a friendly chat with the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

Jim Oliphant has more on what happens next.

Via TPM Muckraker:

In written answers to questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bradley Schlozman, the former Justice Department official and U.S. attorney who's been at the center of the firings controversy, admitted that he'd once urged hiring certain prosecutors for his office based on their political affiliation. It's against civil service laws to do so.

But he had a reason, he explains (how good a reason, you can decide for yourself). When serving as the interim U.S. attorney for Kansas City, Schlozman had been unable to hire assistant U.S. attorneys on his own, as Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys are able to do. For that, he had to go through the central office, or in this case, Monica Goodling, the Department's White House liaison. He'd "heard rumors," he writes,"that Ms. Goodling considered political affiliation in approving hiring decisions for career positions." Goodling, of course, admitted in testimony to Congress that she'd made sure that only Republicans were hired for certain non-political positions.

And so, Schlozman explains, in order to "maximize the chances" of being able to hire his desired candidate, he "once noted the likely political leanings of several applicants" in a conversation with Department officials.

But there was no damage done! Schlozman adds that none of his desired candidates were hired. Read more...

Not this again...

Via The Hill:

Vice President Dick Cheney’s office on Monday responded separately from the White House to a Senate subpoena for documents on warrantless wiretapping and resurrected the controversial contention that Cheney is not part of the executive branch.. Read more...