Purging Prosecutors

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 12:26 PM

The administration's mishandling of what the blogosphere is calling Purgegate almost boggles the mind.

After all, the president is perfectly entitled to name any U.S. attorneys he wants. They are political appointees.

But the White House is not entitled to dump perfectly good prosecutors because they aren't investigating Democrats aggressively enough. And the administration isn't entitled to sully the reputations of perfectly good prosecutors by saying they are being replaced for "performance" reasons, when the actual reason is to make room for political hacks or, worse, politically compliant lawyers.

It was the administration's lack of candor that turned this into a scandal, complete with incriminating internal e-mails, the resignation of Alberto Gonzales's chief of staff, and Sen. Chuck Schumer demanding that the AG himself step down.

It didn't help, of course, that Republicans Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson waited days to admit they called the U.S. attorney in New Mexico to say, Hey, how's that investigation going , and do you think any Dems might be indicted before Election Day?

As an old Justice Department reporter, I can tell you: This thing reeks of the politicization of justice.

And how about the great judgment of would-be Justice Harriet Miers?

Here's the White House acknowledging that Bush mentioned complaints about vote-fraud investigations (which invariably means too many Democrats voting) to Gonzales, his longtime Texas pal, last October.

D. Kyle Sampson, Gonzales's staff guy, wrote of the firing of New Mexico prosecutor David Iglesias: "Domenici is going to send over names tomorrow (not even waiting for Iglesias's body to cool)." Now that's compassionate conservatism! Miers's deputy had written that Domenici's chief of staff was "happy as a clam" over the firing.

Gonzales took some press questions yesterday and tried to stick to a mistakes-were-made line while insisting he knew little about the details. He kept saying that Sampson's job was to "drive" the process. But Sampson, after all, worked for him.

The administration had considered firing all 93 U.S. attorneys after Bush's reelection. That might have been better than this hit-list fiasco.

Chicago Trib: "Gonzales has come under increasingly harsh scrutiny as new information about the politically tinged circumstances of the firings has come to light. And last week, the Justice Department's inspector general issued a scathing report documenting the FBI's abuse of surveillance powers under the USA Patriot Act, raising new questions about Gonzales' ability to lead the nation's chief federal law-enforcement agency."

NYT: "The mea culpa came as Congressional Democrats, who are investigating whether the White House was meddling in Justice Department affairs for political reasons, demanded that President Bush and his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, explain their roles in the firings."

LAT: "The documents offer an extraordinary look at political tactics within the Bush administration, and show the White House working closely with the Justice Department to justify the firings. The administration even adopted contingency plans for how to 'quiet' anyone who complained. And it was the administration that gave the final go-ahead to fire eight prosecutors, all of them Bush appointees."

WSJ: "Even some conservatives distanced themselves from him yesterday. Recent events show Mr. Gonzales is 'an echo chamber of the White House,' says Bruce Fein, former associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan. 'When the president says, "Jump," he says, "How high?" ' "

Josh Marshall, who has been bird-dogging this scandal from the start, warns of a partisan code word:

"The story emerging is that at least some of these U.S. Attorneys were fired because they weren't aggressive enough in investigating Democratic 'voter fraud' . . . It's become standard operating procedure for Republican operatives to whip up charges of 'voter fraud'. And some of them even believe it. But the claims are almost universally bogus. And the real intent in most cases is to stymie get out the vote efforts or shut down voter registration drives -- mainly, though not exclusively, in minority voting precincts."

Andrew Sullivan wants Gonzales gone:

"We now know that a political purge of U.S. attorneys was directed from the president through the attorney-general, and was enabled by the Patriot Act. The alleged reason for removing the U.S. attorneys -- which the administration took a while to come up with -- is that the U.S. attorneys were insufficiently devoted to rooting out Democratic voters' voter fraud.

"It seems to me pretty obvious that they've been caught trying to rig the justice system to perpetuate Republican control of the House and Senate. It seems to me that this originates with the president and Karl Rove. And it seems more than obvious to me that Alberto Gonzales should resign. No attorney-general with this kind of cloud over him can faintly summon public confidence as a neutral enforcer of justice."

Put David Frum down as skeptical:

"I'll give the Democrats this much on the U.S. Attorney uproar:

"If it were shown that the Bush administration had attempted to use the prosecutorial powers of U.S. Attorneys for political ends, that would be a very genuine scandal.

"But precisely because this would be a scandal, there has to be some -- you know -- proof. Heavy breathing won't do."

At Talk Left, Jeralyn Merritt provides a law lecture:

"U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. There is no reason to replace them in a non-election year, except for malfeasance. If it turns out that the fired U.S. Attorneys did nothing wrong, but were replaced anyway in a non-election year, then the Bush Administration has overstepped its bounds.

"I'm no fan of Republican U.S. Attorneys who got their job because they carried water for Bush in 2004 and had the blessing of their District's senators. That's the way the job is assigned.

"But, firing them because they didn't bring the cases the Administration wanted them to bring, or because they brought cases against Republicans or didn't bring cases against Democrats is beyond the pale.

"Once appointed, the U.S. Attorney is not supposed to be a political hack. He or she, like every prosecutor, is supposed to make decisions to ensure that justice is done. If you're skeptical the U.S. Attorney can switch horses so fast, you have a right to be.

"In a way, for people to now complain that Alberto Gonzales is a political hack isn't right. Blame the Senators who voted for his confirmation."

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff is in the no-big-deal camp, and says the same would be true had a reelected Bush cleaned house:

"It's worth noting . . . that such a mass firing would not have been unprecedented. President Clinton, through Janet Reno, fired all of the U.S. Attorneys after he was elected. Clinton used the mass firing as a means of covering up his real intention -- to fire the U.S. Attorney in his home state of Arkansas. They didn't call Clinton 'Slick Willie' for nothing."

That's not an undisputed fact, and it's SOP for U.S. attorneys to lose their jobs when the White House changes hands. That's why we have elections.

But Mirengoff writes: "This time, eight prosecutors lost their jobs. It's not implausible to think that out [of] 93 U.S. Attorneys, eight might be good candidates for replacement . . . was there a serious problem of voter fraud in the state, was Iglesias sluggish in dealing with it, and did the administration act even-handedly by insisting that its U.S. attorneys adequately deal with serious allegations of voter fraud lodged by both political parties?"

Dick Polman says Gonzales "employed all the classic defenses:

" The Passive Voice defense. He confessed that 'mistakes were made here,' the usual form of words that is meant to suggest that maybe the mistakes sort of happened by themselves, that no actual human being had specifically made them. Republicans might be well advised to remember that this was the same form of words used by Ted Kennedy right after Chappaquiddick.

" The O.J. Simpson defense. This is generally employed by someone who insists he will boldly investigate wrongdoing, when in fact all he need do is look in the mirror. Accordingly, Gonzales said that he will get out there and 'ascertain what happened here,' and 'assess the accountability.' He can actually start this task by simply reading what's already in the public record and connecting the dots . . .

" The Busy Executive defense. This is also known as the 'I'm so important, how was I supposed to know everything that was going on?' defense . . .

"Finally, The Decider defense: Gonzales vowed not to resign, and signaled that only his longtime patron could make that decision: 'I serve at the pleasure of the president.' Perhaps that's his trump card. Judging by what we have previously seen in this administration, Gonzales may well be in line for the Presidential Medal of Freedom."

Ed Morrissey may be a conservative, but raises a very salient question:

"One question that these memos raise is why it took so long to dismiss these prosecutors if they were performing so badly. Sampson compiled that ranking list two years ago this month. The effort seemed to be back-burnered until September of last year, when new rules on appointment of interim federal prosecutors made their way through Congress as part of a homeland-security bill. The new rules allow Justice and the White House to forego Senate approval on interim appointments, and the terminations commenced almost immediately after the law went into effect.

"If competence and performance were the reasons for the terminations, why did Justice wait almost two years to do anything about it?"

Are journalists starting to change their minds about whether socially liberal Rudy can win the GOP nomination? (The answer is yes, and the reason is the polls.) Roger Simon says we may be misreading the Republican electorate:

"On Monday, Giuliani was endorsed by David Vitter, a conservative Republican senator from Louisiana.

"When a reporter asked Vitter if Giuliani would be a 'tough sell' in Louisiana, Vitter replied: 'I don't think he is going to be at all, particularly post-Katrina.'

"Translation: When the next hurricane hits, people are going to want a president who knows what he is doing rather than a president who believes that abortion is murder.

"Some Republicans will not buy this. Perhaps most of them won't. After all, Republican media wizards have sold them on the opposite message for years. They have said that ideology is what really matters in elections, not competence. Ideology, Republicans have been told in election after election, is what gets people to the polls.

"Giuliani has a different message: He says he knows how to run things. He says he knows how to get the job done. He says America will be attacked by terrorists in the future and it would be a good idea to have a president who can handle that.

"He does not ignore the Republican base. He just asks it to grow up."

HuffPost's Michael Seitzman says Rudy should show real courage . . . with the press:

"It's often been said that Rudy Giuliani was one of the heroes of 9/11. Fine. I, too, joined the rest of the country in raising Giuliani on our collective shoulders in the days after 9/11. However, I've grown increasingly uncomfortable with the 'Rudy-the-Hero' industry ever since. And here's why: When Mayor Giuliani remained in downtown Manhattan after the first tower fell, when he ran toward the fire, instead of away from it, when he ran toward the victims, when he embraced the city in the hours, days, and weeks following that tragic day, did he go beyond the call of duty? Or is that kind of leadership actually, simply, the call of duty?

"We seem to be so accustomed to our politicians running away from danger, so used to our elected officials following polls instead their hearts and minds, that we fall all over ourselves the minute one of them does what we hope and vote for, the minute one of our leaders actually leads. On 9/11, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani did a stunning job as a leader on a day that we were screaming for one. But, we're still screaming for one.

"Being a leader means having that kind of courage when facing a room full of reporters, too. Instead of joking and saying, 'I disagree with myself some days,' in order to avoid the searing truth that your beliefs may keep you from winning your party's primary, I want to hear, 'This is what I believe. This is why I believe it. And if you don't want to vote for me because of it, then don't. But if you want a leader who tells you what he thinks, who doesn't run from controversy, who doesn't run from his own opinions and convictions, a leader who actually leads, then I'm your guy.' "

Finally, Mike Freeman, a former NYT sportswriter who now works for Sportsline.com, unloads (via Romenesko) on his former profession:

"Too many newspapers have become lazy; too many newspaper reporters have become lazy. No one in the industry wants to discuss this. This is not everyone in newspapers of course but almost everyone I know writing for the Internet works far longer hours and writes more than most newspaper guys I know. It is not even close. I think readers know this and appreciate the difference.

"When I was covering football in New York, there were a handful of guys who worked their [butts] off (and still do now) . . . But they were few are far between. Most guys relied heavily on the PR people and pack reporting; spent more time playing golf and in some cases chasing strippers and hookers than they did working at their jobs. Then if you didn't join in, you were ostracized, and attacked."

Chasing strippers?