I've been paying attention to this since the purge in early December. Here's a recap, if anyone is interested.
A little background: US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president but it is exceptionally uncommon to remove one during his or her term unless they are involved in corruption. When a USA is replaced for any reason, tradition holds that a list of nominees is presented to the WH by the senators representing that state (with preference given to the senator of the president's party, if there is one) and by law the nominee needs to be confirmed by the Senate within 120 days, or that was the law until last summer...
Late last summer - Either Arlen Specter or a member of his staff inserts a last-minute addition to the Patriot Act renewal at the request of the White House that allows the executive branch to bypass the normal nomination and confirmation process for US attorneys.
The Specter provision eliminates the requirement for confirmation, allowing the WH to appoint interim USA's indefinitely and without Congressional oversight. Specter later explained that his staff was told by the WH that this was needed to replace USA's in the event of a mass terrorist attack. Specter expressed outrage that it would be used by the WH for different reasons than he was told, which - you might remember - is how Specter reacted to WH mendacity on the military tribunals, torture, habeas corpus, and many other issues that came before him when he chaired the Judiciary Committee.
October 2006 - US Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias receives phone calls from two members of the New Mexico congressional delegation asking for indictments against local Democrats in a local corruption case before election day. Iglesias refuses the request. He is called on four occasions by these two members of Congress - not staffers, but the members themselves.
December 7, 2006 - Michael Battle, Director of the Executive Office of the United States Attorney at the Department of Justice, telephones at least eight US Attorneys informing them they will be required to submit their resignations at different days over the next ten weeks, with all but one required to issue their resignation in the next five weeks.
December 15, 2006 - February 24, 2007 - The resignations come out.
The eight asked to resign, their district and the dates of their resignation are:
- Bud Cummins - Little Rock (Ark.) (12/15/06)
- John McKay - Seattle (12/15/06)
- Paul K. Charlton - Arizona (12/19/06)
- David Igleslias - New Mexico (12/19/06)
- Carol Lam - San Diego (1/12/07)
- Daniel Bogden - Nevada (1/15/07)
- Kevin V. Ryan - San Francisco (1/16/07)
- Margaret Chiara - Grand Rapids (MI) (2/24/07)
Also of note is US Attorney for Los Angeles Debra Wong Yang. Wong Yang was working with Carol Lam on the Cunningham case because Representative Jerry Lewis is in her district. Wong Yang announces her resignation before the others (November 10) and leaves office on January 1 to take a position in the law firm that is defending Lewis in this investigation.
January 13, 2007 - The forced resignation of USA Carol Lam in San Diego, announced on this date, pushes the firings to the surface. Lam is the US Attorney who led the case against Duke Cunningham, a case that is ongoing with investigations into the former #3 official at the CIA (Dusty Foggo) and Brent Wilkes, a contractor suspected of giving bribes to Foggo and California representatives Jerry Lewis, John Doolittle, and Duncan Hunter. These three are without question the most powerful Republicans in California, and yes - I am including the Governator. Lewis was the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and Hunter chaired the House Armed Services Committee before the Republicans lost power in the November elections.
Lam is told to leave her office by February 15.
January 18, 2007 - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testifies under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the US Attorneys were dismissed for "performance reasons", and the firings were not politically motivated.
January 26, 2007 - The McClatchy (former Knight-Ridder) Washington bureau uncovers the names of nine USA's appointed by the Bush administration in the last year. Of note on the list is
Tim Griffin, 37, a former aide to White House political adviser Karl Rove and a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee, for the recently-vacated U.S. attorney for Arkansas. Griffin has no prosecutorial or trial experience.
Week of February 8, 2007 - Assistant AG Paul McNulty testifies that USA for Arkansas Bud Cummins was removed just to make room for Griffin.
So much for none of the dismissals being politically motivated and based wholly on poor job performance.
February 13, 2007 - On her penultimate day in office, US Attorney for San Diego Carol Lam hands down an eleven-count indictment against Dusty Foggo and Brent Wilkes for bribery, wire fraud and conspiracy, and against Foggo for improperly passing classified documents about business rivals to Wilkes. The indictment runs for fifteen pages and details ongoing investigations against other unnamed politicians, seen as a move to keep her ouster from office becoming the end of the case, too.
Also on this day, the head of the FBI in San Diego comes out and says he feels the firing of Carol Lam was political. This is the beginning of the blowback from the fired USA's and their professional supporters against the claim by Gonzales that they were dismissed because of poor job performance.
February 15, 2007 - Four top House Democrats, including Judiciary Chair John Conyers, write a letter to AG Gonzales asking him to appoint Carol Lam as a Special Prosecutor for the remainder of the public corruption investigation she started and led.
Three weeks later the DOJ will reject this request, telling the representatives through the DOJ's lobbyist "the Justice Department would not ever seek the resignation of a U.S. attorney if doing so would jeopardize a public corruption case."
On a related note, Gonzales tells a reporter for Pat Robertson's CBN about the inquiries, “I think that the American people lose if I spend all my time worrying about congressional requests for information, if I spend all my time responding to subpoenas.”
February 15, 2007 - The NY Times reports that USA for Arkansas was ousted after WH Council Harriet Miers phone Gonzales's office and asked that Rove assistant Tim Griffin be installed in the position. This story comes a week after Assistant AG Paul McNulty testified that USA Bud Cummins was removed just to make room for Griffin.
Griffin announces that afternoon that he will not seek the confirmation that is no longer required. He blames partisanship. When asked when he is leaving the job, Griffin says not leaving the job until Bush appoints another US Attorney, which Bush is not required to do.
February 27, 2007 - The DOJ turns over the performance evaluations for six of the fired USA's to the Senate Judiciary Committee. All received good marks for their job performance up to the day they were fired.
February 27, 2007 - The NY Times and Washington Post run stories that the fired prosecutors were largely willing to go quietly until Gonzales testified they were terminated for performance reasons. Outgoing AUSA for New Mexico David Iglesias takes the point on this charge, e-mailing a friend with a blog that he was fired for political reasons.
Sources close to the office of ousted USA for Seattle John McKay tell reporters they feel he was marked for termination after not bringing a grand jury to investigate vote fraud against Democrats in the 2004 governors race, like Lam and Iglesias he received excellent performance reviews and sterling endorsements from law enforcement. McKay has also gotten several high-profile terrorism convictions since 2001.
February 28, 2007 - In an interview with McClatchy, David Iglesias makes public the phone calls he received from two members of congress in October. "I believe that because I didn't play ball, so to speak, I was asked to resign."
Iglesias also tells McClatchy the two members of congress not only pressed him for indictments before the election, the politicians also tried to pry out undisclosed details about the investigation.
He does not specify that the members of congress were from New Mexico until an interview with the
Albuquerque Journal on March 1.
March 1, 2007 - After the story in the Albuquerque Journal breaks, reporters contact the five members of the NM delegation seeking comment. Three members deny any conversations with Iglesias about the investigation into local corruption in the construction of a court house.
Representative Heather Wilson (R) will not answer calls for comment, referring all questions about Iglesias to the DOJ. Senator Pete Domenici at first makes a soft denial (Following a "no comment" with "I have no idea what he is talking about.")
March 4, 2007 - After the House and Senate Judiciary Committees issue subpoenas to six former US Attorneys, including David Iglesias, Senator Pete Domenici confesses that he called Iglesias in October pressing for information about the case, and that he then called the Department of Justice to advise that Iglesias should be removed.
Rep. Heather Wilson, who was in a neck-and-neck contest last November against state AG Patricia Madrid and who would have benefited most from a federal indictment against local dems in a corruption scandal, still refuses to comment.
March 5, 2007 - One day before the House and Senate testimony of dismissed US Attorneys, the Department of Justice announces that Michael Battle, the Director of the Executive Office of the United States Attorney who made the calls telling them they would be resigning, would himself be resigning effective March 16.
Late March 5, 2007 - Representative Heather Wilson confirms she was the second member of Congress who called Iglesias. She says she was merely passing along the "concerns of a constituent" who felt Iglesias was dragging his feet in a corruption probe against a former state senator and says she was trying to help Iglesias.
Here is how these conversations were described from Iglesias's perspective in a McClatchy story last week:
Quote:
Wilson was curt after Iglesias was "non-responsive" to her questions about whether an indictment would be unsealed, said the two individuals, who asked not to be identified because they feared possible political repercussions. Rumors had spread throughout the New Mexico legal community that an indictment of at least one Democrat was sealed.
(Iglesias) "The first call was in mid-October. The caller was asking –- this was not a staff member, an actual member of Congress -- the person was asking about “I want to know if there are any sealed indictments.” And I said, “Sealed indictments? We only do that for juvenile cases or national security cases. It’s fairly unusual.” Instantly red flags went up. I didn’t want to talk about it. Federal prosecutors can’t talk about indictments in general until they’re made public. So I was evasive, I shucked and jived like Walter Payton used to for the Chicago Bears, and the call was ended rather abruptly...."
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Also, McClatchy reports that the chief of staff to the Deputy AG told one of the fired USA's "if any of them continued to criticize the administration for their ousters, previously undisclosed details about the reasons they were fired might be released."
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When Poe ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.
