The Rachel Maddow Show: House Releases New Evidence in U.S. Attorney Scandal
By Heather Thursday Aug 13, 2009 6:00am
Rachel reports on the latest revelations to come out of the U.S. Attorney firings scandal.
Maddow: In 2006, nine U.S. federal attorneys, prosecutors, were surprisingly and suddenly fired by the Department of Justice under George W. Bush. U.S. Attorney Paulson Charlton of Arizona was fired while he was in the midst of building a case against Republican Congressman Rick Renzi for an allegedly illegal land swap deal that would eventually lead to a 35-count indictment, including charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and extortion.
And in San Diego, U.S. Attorney Carol Lam had spearheaded the corruption investigation that brought down Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham, who eventually pled guilty to accepting at least $2.4 million in bribes. The "Dukester" is still doing more than eight years in prison for that.
And then there was U.S. attorney David Iglesias. And Mr. Iglesias' dismissal really caught people's attention and the House Judiciary Committee has been looking into his case and the cases of the eight attorneys for more than two years now.
Well, today, that committee released emails and transcripts of closed-door testimony by Bush's White House counsel, Harriet Miers, and Bush's political guru, Karl Rove. Ms. Miers testified that the White House, specifically Karl Rove and his staff, were intimately involved in the decision-making process about whether or not the supposedly independent U.S. attorneys, the supposedly apolitical prosecutors, were going to be allowed to keep their jobs.

Finally Karl Rove and Harriet Miers will testify, under oath, about their roles in the USA attorney firing scandal.






