The DOJ just released a 400 page report entitled An Investigation into the Removal of 9 U.S. Attorneys in 2006
I'm sure this report will be dissected, however, I jumped to the conclusion which noted:
The most serious allegation that we were not able to fully investigate related to the removal of David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, and the allegation that he was removed to influence voter fraud and public corruption prosecutions. We recommend that a counsel specially appointed by the Attorney General assess the facts we have uncovered, work with us to conduct further investigation, and ultimately determine whether the evidence demonstrates that any criminal offense was committed with regard to the removal of Iglesias or any other U.S. Attorney, or the testimony of any witness related to the U.S. Attorney removals.
Personally, I stopped paying attention to politics when this happened. I was sickened that the democrats in congress simply appeared to let it slide. I thought that inherent contempt should have been used.
The conclusion opens with the following:
In sum, we believe that the process used to remove the nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006 was fundamentally flawed.
I could have told you that! Of course, no one bothered interviewing me.
The report places most of the blame on Kyle Sampson's shoulders...
[W]e determined that the process implemented largely by Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to the Attorney General, was unsystematic and arbitrary, with little oversight by the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, or any other senior Department official.
I'm not sure it was unsystematic and arbitrary. I think it was based on the level of loyalty to Sampson's political party. The report is much to kind in its assessment of Sampson's actions which boil down to putting party over country.
In choosing which U.S. Attorneys to remove, Sampson did not adequately consult with the Department officials most knowledgeable about their performance, or even examine formal evaluations of each U.S. Attorney’s Office,despite his representations to the contrary.
Wasn't he under oath when he made those representations??
We also concluded that Sampson bears significant responsibility for the flawed and arbitrary removal process. Moreover, they and other Department officials are responsible for failing to provide accurate and truthful statements about the removals and their role in the process.
Again accusing officials of LYING!!! Prosecuting someone for perjury is soooooooooo 1996.
Gonzales doesn't come off smelling like a rose....
We believe the primary responsibility for these serious failures rest with senior Department leaders – Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty – who abdicated their responsibility to adequately oversee the process and to ensure that the reasons for removal of each U.S. Attorney were supportable and not improper. These removals were not a minor personnel matter – they were an unprecedented removal of a group of high-level Department officials that was certain to raise concerns if not handled properly. Yet, neither the Attorney General nor the Deputy Attorney General provided adequate oversight or supervision of this process.
Finally, the report expressly points to the lack of White House cooperation.
We believe our investigation was able to uncover most of the facts relating to the reasons for the removal of most of the U.S. Attorneys. However, as described in this report, there are gaps in our investigation because of the refusal of certain key witnesses to be interviewed by us, including former White House officials Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and William Kelley, former Department of Justice White House Liaison Monica Goodling, Senator Pete Domenici,and his Chief of Staff. In addition, the White House would not provide us internal documents related to the removals of the U.S. Attorneys.
However, none of that matters because this 400 page report (no one will pay attention to as we decided to release it in the middle of a presidential campaign and a $700 billion Wall Street bailout) will fix everything!!
We believe that this investigation, and final resolution of the issues raised in this report, can help restore confidence in the Department by fully describing the serious failures in the process used to remove the U.S. Attorneys and by providing lessons for the Department in how to avoid such failures in the future.
I do applaud the work that went into this monster of a document. The investigators obviously were up against a cement wall when it came to uncovering facts. But it is unfortuntate that during the GWB-Era, a common theme emerges....
- commit unprecedented violations of the basic rule of law
- circle the wagons and refuse to talk
- send a couple people to congress where the democrats can act all tough by asking really biting questions but fail to do much more (i.e., punish the wrongdoers)
- publicly fire the sacrificial lamb to placate democrats
- form an investigatory committee
- investigators publish a report which concludes--lots of laws were broken but there is nothing we can do about it