As many of you who haven't been living in a cave already know, Minneapolis' US Attorney Tom Heffelfinger abruptly resigned shortly before Alberto Gonzales purged eight other US Attorneys, and suspicion was strong that Heff -- whose replacement, Rachel Paulose, used to work for Gonzales and Deputy AG Paul McNulty, the purge's trigger man -- was himself the first purge victim, though he currently denies it.
Well, it turns out that Tom Heffelfinger's former aides and at least one of the new hires just couldn't hack the Federalist Society Princess for more than a month. They quit their management jobs instead, though they're still at the office in lower-level positions.
Check it out at the St. Paul Pioneer Press: http://www.twincities.com/...
The FOX 9 (KMSP) story is actually better: http://tinyurl.com/...
(This is what ran 50 min. ago on the air)
A 2nd FOX story is here: http://tinyurl.com/...
More stories will be added below the jump as they appear.
This rapidly-breaking story is rating big-time coverage in our local media.
When even the local FOX News affiliate is reporting on what an obnoxious Bush tool Paulose is, it's a big story. (One reason FOX 9 covered this is perhaps because Heffelfinger had a lot of friends over FOX 9. But I don't think that the same held true for the PiPress.)
The opening grafs of the PiPress story read thus:
Four top assistants to Minnesota U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose resigned their management posts today after expressing frustrations with her management style and priorities, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The attorneys will keep jobs in the office, but no longer will have supervisory duties, the sources said.
"This is a decapitation of the office," said a source with knowledge of the office. "I've never heard of anything like this. People work all their lives to be at these high levels in the office. This is an extraordinary event."
The attorneys who gave up their leadership posts are Paulose's first assistant U.S. attorney John Marti, chief of the criminal division James Lackner and chief of the civil division Erika Mozangue. Acting administrative officer Tim Anderson also stepped down from his leadership role, sources say.
The Minneapolis Tribune's now weighed in: http://www.startribune.com/... (though they're only saying three aides are quitting their management jobs, rather than the four every other news outlet's mentioned).
As has local ABC affiliate KSTP-TV: http://www.kstp.com/...
From the KSTP story: "Sources said Paulose's style of management has already sent several other attorney's out the door from an office historically viewed as one of the more stable in the country."
11:41 PM CDT update: WCCO-TV's added their voice, and their story might be the most damning. Here's how it starts (emphases mine):
The four top administrators in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota have resigned their administrative positions. According to highly placed sources, the administrators have quit in protest over the job being done by Rachel Paulose, the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota.
The resignations came in the aftermath of the controversial firing of eight U.S. Attorneys across the country.
The Bush Administration did not want to see this happen and in an eleventh hour attempt to prevent it, sent a top justice official to Minneapolis Thursday to mediate the situation. The mediation failed.
04/06/07 @ 9:06 AM CDT update: Josh Marshall is now on the case, here and here.
After talking with a few friends in judges' offices and the like, the growing consensus seems to be that the Heffelfinger retirement was the road-testing of the plan to replace all the 93 USAs.
The thinking is that it worked like this: They picked Paulose not just because she was a hyper-partisan, hyper-loyal Bushie, but also because she worked in Gonzales' AG office under McNulty, the guy who would later pull the trigger on the purges. She was there when Gonzales' office had Specter insert the provision removing Senate confirmation of US attorney appointments; she was in fact there for the whole of the planning of the purge. Heffelfinger was targeted because while he didn't put party over country and Bush over party 100% of the time, they guessed that he was still a loyal enough Republican that he wouldn't break the GOP omerta. They figured that if they could get away with forcing Heffelfinger to step aside for Paulose -- whose real-world experience with the law was at best selective, to put it charitably -- they could then get rid of Carol Lam and David Iglesias and all the other US Attorneys, especially those with the distressing (for the Bush Junta) habit of putting the law first.
And it would have worked too, if not for us meddling kids.
9:45 am CDT update: One of my buddies who works with lawyers and judges and such informs me that one of the quasi-official officers of the court that my buddy knows -- who is a high muckety-muck in the NRA (but who fortunately for us is a low muckety-muck legally) and has guzzled the GOP and religio-racist right Kool-Aid -- is of course Blaming The Media (yes, even FOX 9 TV!) for daring to talk about this. Said person has been sputtering crap about it being "Pelosi's fault" and that it's "a conspiracy to remove all God-fearing people from the government" (Paulose being given to spouting Bible verses at odd moments), and how "we need to get rid of Congress" -- thus proving that when push comes to shove, the cons really can't handle the truth or democracy.
10:45 am CDT update: Here's the PDF of Paulose's résumé, if you're interested. Thanks to Tom and to all the other folks who sent it or posted it in the links!