Your daily drivetime update on the US Attorney Purge
- Well all righty then. President Bush will fight any attempt to subpoena his aides about the US Attorney Purge, and he will take it to court if he has to. A small editorial from me: although we are on opposite sides of this issue, I am grateful to President Bush for recognizing the need to address this Constitutional Crisis now, as opposed to in another investigation further down the road. Regardless of the outcome of this public debate, better to get it out in the open and address it than kick it down the road for another issue, another year, another Presidency. This assumes that he's not just blustering, and won't back down, say, around 4:45 PM EDT Friday afternoon by allowing them to testify. Personally, I also think that will happen, but for the moment, thank you President Bush for forcing the country and this Congress to deal with this Constitutional Crisis.
- Speaking of said subpoenas, the House Judiciary Committee voted to authorize issuing subpoenas to Karl Rove, his deputy Scott Jennings, former WH Counsel Harriet Miers, Deputy WH Counsel William Kelly, and Attorney General's Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson (h/t TPMMuckraker). The Senate Judiciary Committee is still set to vote to issue subpoenas tomorrow, and that's when we'll see just how far the Administration is willing to go with their Executive Privilege.
- Apparently, there is an 18 day gap in the document dump on Monday, and it's a pretty key gap. SnowJob doesn't know anything about it, though he's sure there's a good explanation. TPM has more, but h/t to whoever initially found that in TPM's research thread on the document dump.
- Speaking of SnowJob, Glenn Greenwald points out that he had a strong opinion about Executive Privilege back when Clinton invoked it. Money quote:
Taken to its logical extreme, that position would make it impossible for citizens to hold a chief executive accountable for anything. He would have a constitutional right to cover up...Most of us want no part of a president who is cynical enough to use the majesty of his office to evade the one thing he is sworn to uphold -- the rule of law.
Nice editorial you got there, SnowJob. You sound pretty outraged- outraged!- at a President hiding behind Executive Privilege.
- Somebody's finally starting to ask questions about other suspicious hiring & firing. Nonpartisan group Democracy 21 (who?) writes a letter asking for more information about the DoJ's investigation of Jack Abramoff (h/t TPMMuckraker). Text of the letter here.
- Fired New Mexico US Attorney David Iglesias writes an editorial in the NY Times, and it's pretty damning. Tomorrow we'll learn from Robert Novak that his wife is a covert CIA agent...
- Fired Arizona US Attorney Paul Charlton asked the DoJ for guidance on questions regarding his investigation of Republican Rick Renzi (h/t hungrycoyote or TPMMuckraker, I'm not sure which). We are all speculating, but I think ALL of these firings merit a much, much closer look, along with closer looks at who WASN'T fired, and who has been fired over the past few years.
- And here's another USA to look at- former Western North Carolina US Attorney Robert J. Conrad, Jr (h/t a gnostic). He was replaced before he could interrogate former Republican Congressman Charles Taylor about his role in a bad loan scam at the bank he owns.
FWIW, Mr. Conrad has denied any political interference in the investigation, but that's almost not the point. The mere fact is that these "wild" claims of political interference in local investigations and prosecutions are more credible today than they were prior to the USA Purge. Degrading the credibility of the DoJ hurts America, and that's exactly what the Bush Administration has done here.