As Paul Kiel notes, one of the pieces of news from today's hearing is that James Comey asked two different USAs to resign. Comey didn't say who he had to fire. But it's clear that one of those USAs is former Maryland USA Thomas DiBiagio (DiBiagio resigned December 3, 2004, so he's the guy who resigned under Ashcroft). In an article earlier this year, David Margolis confirmed that DiBiagio was asked to step down.
The Justice Department acknowledged yesterday that Thomas M. DiBiagio, the Maryland U.S. attorney who stepped down early in 2005, was forced from office and did not, as he said at the time, decide on his own to leave for personal reasons.
But the department official who asked for his resignation dismissed DiBiagio's claim in a New York Times article yesterday that he was ousted because of political pressure over public corruption investigations into the administration of then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.
[snip]
Margolis said that he asked DiBiagio for his resignation because he had "lost confidence in his abilities" and that he was not aware at the time of any investigations involving the Ehrlich administration. "There were absolutely no political shenanigans," said Margolis, a 42-year department employee who oversees ethics matters.
DiBiagio made a half-baked attempt to yoke his fate with those who were fired last year, suggesting he was ousted because he was looking into corruption on Governor Ehrlich's Administration. But there is plenty of evidence that other things were behind the firing. First, there's the news that DiBiagio demanded at least three high-profile public corruption indictments in time for the 2004 election.
In July [2004], The Sun obtained e-mails that DiBiagio wrote to his staff asking for three "front page" indictments for public corruption or white-collar crimes by November, and complaining about the pace of cases against elected officials.
The next day, the Justice Department told him all future public corruption cases from his office must be reviewed and approved by Washington to protect the office's credibility.
And Comey was the one who publicly rebuked DiBiagio, so we know Comey was involved in this issue.
In addition, there's the evidence that Ehrlich's associates actually intervened to try to support DiBiagio.
In fact, the Republican governor's chief legal counsel, Jervis Finney, twice contacted the Justice Department to argue in DiBiagio's behalf, said David Margolis, an associate deputy attorney general. Finney contacted the department in fall 2004, not long after DiBiagio drew a rebuke for ordering his subordinates to produce "front-page"indictments, Margolis said.
Finney, he said, "called me during this process, claiming that I was being too harsh on Tom and that Tom was being railroaded by a bunch of Democrats in the U.S. attorney's office."
There's much more smoke related to DiBiagio, including accusations from one of his AUSAs that DiBiagio's attempts to force out another of his AUSAs, Jonathan Luna, contributed greatly to that Luna's stress before he died under mysterious circumstances.
The confirmation that DiBiagio is one of the two USAs about whom Comey said "it was not a close case" tells there's more story to DiBiagio's firing. After Comey rebuked DiBiagio, the latter publicly agreed to follow Comey's guidelines, so there is almost certainly something further that got DiBiagio fired.
Given that the primary known problem with DiBigio relates to the politicization of justice, it suggests Comey and Margolis may have sniffed out early plans to selectively prosecute Democrats. Which raises particularly troubling questions, given DiBiagio's attempts to investigate associates of Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and ties between an Ehrlich aide and one of the money-laundering vechicles Jack Abramoff used (hat tip Astrid).
In other words, Comey may have raised the example of the two USAs he fired to send a message about politicization he caught in the ranks of the USAs.