Lawbreaking has become so widespread in the rogue administration we've become desensitized to serious nature of the crime of obstruction of justice. Firing federal prosecutors who are investigating your fellow party members for criminal behavior shakes the entire foundation of our justice system. It now appears that our President engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct justice with Alberto Gonzalez and at least one and probably more co-conspirators.
The Bush cover story on the firing is that the 7 fired prosecutors were not doing enough to prosecute voter fraud (presumably by Democratic Party members). I will attempt to unravel the substance of Bush's entire cover story by looking at the actual number of FEC complaints filed by all parties in the 2006 Election.
White House Said to Prompt Firing of Prosecutors
By David Johnston and Eric Lipton
New York Times
WASHINGTON, March 12 — The White House was deeply involved in the decision late last year to dismiss federal prosecutors, including some who had been criticized by Republican lawmakers, administration officials said Monday.
Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not aggressively addressing voter fraud, the White House said Monday.
Senator Pete Domeninci Republican of New Mexico, was among the politicians who complained directly to the president, according to an administration official.
The president did not call for the removal of any specific United States attorneys said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. She said she had "no indication" that the president had been personally aware that a process was already under way to identify prosecutors who would be fired.
But Ms Perino disclosed that White House officials had consulted with the Justice Department in preparing the list of United States attorneys who would be removed.
Within a few weeks of the president’s comments to the attorney general, the Justice Department forced out seven prosecutors. Previously, the White House had said that Mr. Bush’s aides approved the list of prosecutors only after it was compiled.
The role of the president and his advisers in the prosecutor shakeup is likely to intensify calls by Congress for an investigation. It is the worst crisis of Mr. Gonzales’s tenure and provoked charges that the dismissals were a political purge threatening the historical independence of the Justice Department.
Today's New York Times article is the most serious charge of criminality involving the President and the Attorney General to date. If the Times article is accurate then the President and Attorney General have been directly linked to a conspiracy to obstruct justice for the first time.
At least 3 of the 7 fired prosecutors were working on cases directly related to wrongdoing by high ranking Republican party members.
The White House cover story is that the prosecutors weren't doing enough about fraud by voters. What fraud by voters? I'm going to review the substantiated complaints filed by the FEC from the 2006 election and prove that Mr. Bush's bullshit story about voter fraud was not the mitigating circumstance that led to the firings of the prosecutors.
First and foremost: we do not have a problem with voters misrepresenting themselves in order to vote multiple times in an election in the year 2006. Dead people voting and people voting multiple times is a Republican myth.
Out of all the 256 complaints that were filed with the FEC after the 2006 election only one incident involved in fraud by a voter:
Salt Lake County- After seeing Stealing America Vote by Vote - a documentary film about election fraud in the 2004 presidential election - a Salt Lake County man says he wondered whether the new electronic voting machines being used today would allow him to vote twice. He voted early on Friday, then says he went to his precinct today to test his theory, and found he was able to vote twice.
The other 255 complaints involved unrelated malfeasance or complaints about malfunctioning voting machine. Go to the database and see the facts for yourself: Voters Unite
Pete Domenici who by White House accounts, initiated the voter fraud complaints doesn't even have a reason to be concerned about fraud by voters in New Mexico. Of the sum total of only 3 formal complaints filed with the FEC in the 2006, none had to do with fraud by voters. If Mr. Domenici is so damned convinced that there's fraud by voters, why aren't there any complaints filed with the FEC that document the alleged incidents of fraud by voters?
One of the three incidents is a complaint filed against Mr. Domenici's own state Republican Party. There was a complaint filed against Mr. Domenici's own statewide Republican Party for calling up registered Democratic voters and informing them of incorrect polling place changes. There wasn't a single formal complaint related to New Mexico voters attempting to vote fraudulently.
Let's set aside the GOP hype and look at each and every incident of alleged malfeasance nationwide in the 2006 Election to see if there is any truth to the stories of massive voting fraud by the Democrats:
1. Colorado (Montrose County)- In violation of state law, county election officials did not perform pre-election testing. Appropriate testing is likely to have detected a ballot programming error affecting write-in selections. Nor did the county submit a security plan before the election, as required by a court order.
2. Colorado (Denver)- Denver. Investigation reveals that Denver election officials passed up the tested e-poll book software used by Larimer County, which would have handled the load of a heavy turnout on election day. Instead they hired Sequoia to develop the software they were not experienced to do. Sequoia officials claim no knowledge of having developed the software. Democratic Party officals agree with the investigator's estimate that 20,000 voters were disenfranchised on Election Day. Turnout was 68,000.
3. Utah (Utah County)- Without understanding the differences in database formats, county IT personnel used the current version to program the Diebold touch screen memory cards and and a backup version to program the memory card encoders. The formats were slightly different. "That mismatch prevented a ballot from being called up on the touchscreen voting machines, said Diebold spokesman David Bear." Apparently, the county officials didn't test the system before using it, or the mismatch would have been detected. Voters were left waiting in long lines, and some were turned away from the polls.
4. Pennsylvania (Centre County)- Office of Elections told poll workes to begin voting on two machines without printing the zero tapes that show no votes are already cast, because the iVotronic that prints the zero tapes was not working.
5. Georgia (Bibb County)- Malfunctioning Diebold machine taken out of service, put back into use when lines get long. The machine was initially shut down, but when long lines started to develop during the day, it was brought back into use, she said. Voters were told to be careful selecting their candidates and to review their ballots, she said, adding that she didn't think any voters cast incorrect ballots.
6. Indiana (Marion County)- Marion County. Thousands of votes are missing on 66 missing memory cards (e-ballot boxes). Marion County Clerk Doris Anne Sadler (R) says this occurs every election. "Usually it doesn't make a difference in the outcome of an election, so no one pays attention to that. But in this case it could make or break a candidate's position," she said. So far 23 cards have been found. [Imagine that! A Republican election official acknowledging that thousands of votes are missing in every election and no one pays attention to it.]
7. Texas (Bexar County)- Polling places were moved at the last minute -- as far as eight miles away.
8. Arizona (Tuscon)- Hispanic voters intimidated with man carrying a gun, and others with video cameras.
9. Illinois (Cook County)- Registration rolls incorrectly showed two voters had already voted. Another had registered when he renewed his driver's license and was not on the rolls, could not vote.
10. Maryland (Prince George County)- Inaccurate sample ballots describing Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Senate candidate Michael S. Steele as Democrats were handed out to voters in at least four polling sites in Prince George's County election day morning .
11. Ohio (Cuyahoga County)- Voter's name wasn't on the rolls, even though he had a card telling him his polling place. County officials determined that he was classified as an inactive voter, even though he voted in the May primary.
12. Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)- Voters were interfered with and told who to vote for.
13. Pennsylvania (Allegheny County) Charges of voter intimidation at three or four polling sites in the North Hills, including one in Franklin Park. Voters said a Republican group set up tables outside the site and were "interrogating" voters before they went in, asking whether they had proper identification. The judge issued a countywide order for all such activity to cease. She also sent sheriff's deputies to patrol the sites in question.
14. Utah (Utah County)- Voters were turned away from the polls when the machines used to program Diebold voter access cards malfunctioned.
15. Utah (Daggett County)- More voters were registered than the population in 2005, according to the census. (Dagget County is overwhelmingly Mormon and Republican).
16. Indiana- Rep. Julia Carlson's Congressional ID card was insufficient identification. "The law compels voters to show an ID, issued by Indiana or the federal government, with a photograph and an expiration date. Carson's card was for the 109th Congress, but did not say when the session ends."
17. Tennesse(Shelby County)- Several electronic voting cards, used to cast ballots on Diebold touch screens, are missing from a polling place in Memphis. The ballots were in the custody a member of the Shelby County Republican Party. Once cast, an illegal vote made with the reprogrammed Smartcard would be indistinguishable from a legally cast vote
18. Pennsylvania (Statewide)- Repeated "robo" phone calls made to voters about Lois Murphy, Democratic challenger to incumbent GOP Rep. Jim Gerlach, causing voters to become annoyed with Murphy. But the calls were made by the National Republican Congressional Committee.
19. California (Statewide) Orange County- GOP congressional candidate is alleged to have sent a letter threatening Hispanic immigrant voters with arrest. County GOP called for his withdrawal.
20. New Mexico (Statewide)- State Republican Party calls voters and tells them of incorrect polling place changes.
21. Texas (Hill County)- Two citizens who monitored recounts claim to have observed a pattern that indicates that every 10th vote on the iVotronic voting machines flipped votes from Democratic to Republican candidates.
That's the entire extent of the complaints related to fraudulent practices filed nationwide with the FEC after the 2006 Election. The remaining 234 complaints were about machine malfunctions, ballot printing errors, and ballot design. Where are all those complaints about voters committing the fraud in elections?
So why would Bush be ordering the firing of Justice Department attorneys on the basis of "doing nothing" about fraud by voters when there was only a single complaint of a voter attempting to vote twice in the entire nation in the election of 2006? Bush wanted those prosecutors fired for something other than lax enforcement of voting laws against fraudulent voting...if you're catching my drift.
You can't investigate and indict a perfectly legal voter for fraudulent voting in the absence of any complaint of fraudulent conduct by the voter. This clearly establishes that White House cover story of "voter fraud" story amounts to little more that ex-post-facto spin by the White House media relations department.
Most of the voting fraud in the 2006 Election appears to have been perpetrated by Republican Party officials. But Mr. Bush was drawing in a bead on election fraud by the Democrats, not Republicans by firing these 7 prosecutors.
It's a very serious matter for a presidential administration to draw up a politically motivated "hit list" of federal prosecutors for the Attorney General to fire. There are any number of competent attorneys who would say the act of drawing up a hit list of prosecutors to be fired and then firing them is,in and of itself, obstruction of justice, regardless of any expressed intent by Mr. Bush or Mr Gonzalez.
I even saw Mr. Gonzalez testify under oath, last Friday at a congressional hearing that he had nothing to do with the firings but the New York Times article states:
Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not aggressively addressing voter fraud, the White House said Monday.
If the Times story is accurate Mr. Gonzalez has already committed an act of perjury before Congress because the article clearly states that Mr. Bush and Mr. Gonzalez cooked up this whole plan to fire prosecutors.
The Republican excuses and equivocations for Bush's rogue administration have become laughable. It's just another brick in the Bush administration's wall of denial. It's going to be a long, long time before people get stupid enough to elect another Republican president again.