Walk The Plank

I think the country is so starved for some accountability for what this Administration has done that they would greet this like it was V-J Day:

The U.S. Inspector General may recommend criminal prosecution of departed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the conclusion of an investigation, possibly as early as next month, the fired former U.S. attorney for Western Washington told a Spokane audience Friday [...]

McKay said he was summoned to Washington, D.C., in June and questioned for eight hours about possible reasons for his firing by investigators with the Office of Inspector General, who will forward their final report to Congress.

“My best guess is it will be released sometime next month,’’ and likely will include recommendations for criminal prosecutions of Gonzales and maybe others, McKay said.

Gonzales “lied about” reasons for the firings when questioned under oath in July by the Senate Judiciary Committee and now has hired a lawyer and is refusing to answer questions from the Inspector General, McKay said.

Don't get your hopes up too high, the OIG report will be in the form of a recommendation and not an indictment. But, the best course of action for all involved is if Gonzales is indicted on January 21, 2009, and he turns state's evidence and flips on the higher-ups (they don't call him Fredo for nothing). Real accountability obviously isn't about to com through the Congress; the criminal justice system is the only option left. But you have to wait until that pardon power is out of the hands of Cover-Your-Ass Boy.

As it happens I watched the excellent Frontline piece "Cheney's Law" tonight, which covered little new ground but showed pretty clearly how Gonzales was the willing dupe of Cheney and Addington inside the Justice Department. If anybody deserves to be tagged and bagged, it's him.

Marcy Wheeler has a lot more on this.

McKay says he got called to DC for an entire day of testimony. At about the same time, SJC was confirming with OIG that it was including Gonzales' "comforting" of Monica Goodling in its investigation, not to mention confirming that OIG would be able to conduct its investigation without interference. It was also ensuring that OIG would be able to investigate AGAG and other lawyers--even if they were acting "as lawyers" when they acted improperly. In other words, at about the time fired USAs were being brought back to DC to testify, SJC was making sure OIG could continue the investigation wherever it might lead--including toward Gonzales' own actions. There was an abortive attempt to get Paul Clement to appoint a Special Counsel, but that quickly fizzled.

Meanwhile, the White House was desperately trying to avoid any more incriminating testimony. Bill Mercer withdrew his nomination to AAG rather than have to answer the Senate's questions. Paul Clement and Fred Fielding were making intellectually suspect justifications for the White House and Harriet Miers to refuse subpoenas. Pete Domenici made a successful bid (thanks to Andrea Mitchell's crack reporting skills) to throw suspicion off him--only to resign several months later..

And then, in the middle of this, AGAG testified again--lying again, at least according to John McKay. And, perhaps not incidentally, both SJC and HJC started getting more explicit about Rove's involvement, and a whole lot more explicit about Gonzales' role in covering up Iglesias' firing.

Could get interestin'...

Gonzales Gets a Friendly Crowd

People seem to forget that the House is more extreme than the Senate. That's changed from the days when Senators were appointed, but it still holds. And wingnuts like Dan Lungren and Elton Gallegly are either patting Abu G on the back or moving on to the illegal immigrant brown menace. Zoe Lofgren had a good line of argument about Todd Graves and Bradley Schlozman, but this House Judiciary hearing will be an alternating good cop/bad cop show.

Meanwhile here's the story out of Seattle.

"I think there will be a criminal case that will come out of this," McKay said during his meeting with Times journalists. "This is going to get worse, not better."...

McKay said he believes obstruction-of-justice charges will be filed if investigators conclude that the dismissal of any of the eight prosecutors was motivated by an attempt to influence ongoing public-corruption or voter-fraud investigations....

McKay said he began to have concerns about politics entering the Justice Department in early 2005, when Gonzales addressed all of the country's U.S. attorneys in Scottsdale, Ariz., shortly after he took over as attorney general.
"His first speech to us was a 'you work for the White House' speech," McKay recalled. " 'I work for the White House, you work for the White House.' "

McKay said he thought at the time, "He couldn't have meant that speech," given the traditional independence of U.S. Attorneys. "It turns out he did."

And here's the story out of Missouri.

Eleven months before seven US Attorneys were fired on December 7th, 2006, former Kansas City US Attorney Todd Graves received a call from an official at the Executive Office for the U.S. Attorney telling him he was fired. Graves announced his resignation less than two months later on March 10.

Justice Department officials would later tell Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) that Graves had been dismissed for "performance" issues, according to Wednesday article in the Kansas City Star. But that's not what Graves was told at the time. According to a source with detailed knowledge of the conversation, Graves was told that his removal was not based on his performance as a prosecutor, but that it was simply time to let someone else have a chance at the job.

This hearing will essentially be a rerun of "I don't remember, I don't recall." It's almost pointless to watch.

US Attorney Update

Too much for paragraphs, I'm going to bullet points:

• McClatchy has confirmed that as many as 12 US Attorneys were targeted in the initial effort to fire federal prosecutors. The others were Steven Biskupic in Wisconsin (who may have saved his job by indicting Georgia L. Thompson), Todd Graves in Missouri (who ended up resigning), Thomas Heffelfinger in Minnesota (resigned) and Thomas Merino in Pennsylvania (still on the job). Both Graves and Heffelfinger were replaced by two of the most partisan operatives in the whole Justice Department.

• James Comey's testimony to the House Judiciary Committee last week was pretty damaging. He called the fired attorneys "some of the best" prosecutors in the system. He also claimed that he didn't know about the firings, despite being the deputy attorney general when discussions were in place. We still don't know who directed this effort.

• But we're getting closer, with this report showing that Karl Rove was involved in coaching Justice Department officials on their testimony to Congressional committees. Oddly, his point in that coaching was that the officials needed to provide a concrete reason for the firing of the various attorneys. This was probably what made the scandal even worse, as the reasons were quickly shown to be bogus. If the Justice Department simply said that the prosecutors lost the confidence of the President, it would be hard to argue. But by giving specifics that could be rebutted, the scandal spun out of control. And Rove's supposed to be the Boy Genius? Dan Froomkin has more.

• Pulitzer Prize winner Charlie Savage has a good rundown of Bradley Schlozman's role in the scandal, his baseless voter fraud investigations in Missouri, his work to suppress voting rights in the Civil Rights Division, etc. Not much of this is new, but for those who want to catch up, it's a great way to understand Schlozman and his importance. He essentially proves the point that the Justice Department had a specific concern to use their power to help ensure Republican electoral successes. Actually this McClatchy article moves the story forward, showing that Congress is investigating Schlozman's hiring practices while in the Civil Rights Division (it appears to be based on how Republican the applicants were). Incidentally, the Civil Rights Division doesn't have any black people in it.

• The US Attorney in Washington State, John McKay, may have been fired because he was investigating the murder of his former colleague Tom Wales. Wales was a major proponent of gun control legislation, and his murder is still unsolved, though two and two can be put together...

Another Domino Falls in Purgegate

Via (who else?) TPM Muckraker, we have YET ANOTHER example of a federal prosecutor being fired for attempting to investigate a Republican. From The Arizona Republic:

Two weeks after Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton was ordered to give up his post, he sent an e-mail to a top Justice Department official asking how to handle questions that his ouster was connected to his investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz.

Charlton, one of eight federal prosecutors forced to resign last year, never received a written response.

It seems like Charlton was beginning his investigation into Renzi, and the Justice Department had some knowledge of it.

And this is curious.

In October, Justice Department officials confirmed that Renzi was the subject of an inquiry into a land swap that would benefit a friend and business associate. Renzi has denied any wrongdoing. He could not be reached Tuesday.

Renzi is a Bush loyalist. When Renzi was locked in a battle for his congressional seat last year, the president came to Arizona to campaign for him.

When the first list of U.S. attorneys targeted for ouster was drafted, Charlton's name was not on it. But his name was on a subsequent list, drafted in September. Although the Renzi inquiry was not yet public, it is likely the Justice Department was aware of the investigation, said a former U.S. attorney who is familiar with the protocol when a sitting lawmaker is involved.

"If we had anything of a major investigative nature, I would notify the Justice Department," said Melvin McDonald, who was Arizona's U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration. "Typically, that's what happens."

So DoJ confirmed an investigation in October. Charlton's name hit the target list in September. And surely, he began the investigation well before DoJ confirmed it.

So let's recap:

• David Iglesias, US Attorney for New Mexico, gets phone calls from Pete Domenici and Heather Wilson pressuring him to indict local Democrats, and we he resists their pressure, he's fired.

• Carol Lam, US Attorney in San Diego, emails the Justice Department about obtaining warrants to search the house of Dusty Foggo, #3 at the CIA, and the next day Kyle Sampson is writing people about "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam.

• John McKay, US Attorney in Washington State, resists calls to investigate non-existent and baseless accusations of voter fraud, and winds up on a target list, eventually getting fired.

• Daniel Bogden, US Attorney in Nevada, was in the midst of investigations targeting current or former Republican members of Congress (Jim Gibbons?) when he was fired.

• And let's not forget Debra Wong Yang, US Attorney for Los Angeles, who, months after opening an investigation into Rep. Jerry Lewis, was hired away for $1.5 million dollars by the same law firm representing Lewis, which Josh Marshall says is part of "an odd pattern of pivotal investigators and prosecutors getting fortuitous promotions or offers of employment in the private sector at key moments."

Yeah, I think I see a pattern here.

Democrats in Arizona are being pretty aggressive about the Charlton case.

"Obviously, there needs to be an investigation," said Rep. Harry Mitchell, D-Ariz. "You need to find out the facts. It shouldn't be partisan at all."

On Tuesday, the Arizona Democratic Party wrote to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, asking that it look into a connection between Charlton's removal and the Renzi investigation. The letter, signed by state party Chairman David Waid, said the investigation appears to have stalled since Charlton was forced out.

The newest e-mails, memos and other records raise fresh questions about whether there were political motivations for Charlton's ouster, as the documents indicate that Justice Department officials were still - after the fact - trying to settle on a complete explanation for why Charlton was called on Dec. 7 and told to resign.

DoJ is so busted.

UPDATE: Carpetbagger points me to this Max Blumenthal article that adds some context to the Charlton firing. He was put on the list for targeting at pretty much the same time that he opened the Renzi investigation. Prior to that, he was winning awards for running a model office. And the DoJ alibi for firing him is a... doozy:

The Justice Department and the White House offered a scattershot of alibis for firing Charlton. The Bush Administration's case against Charlton rested ultimately on the account of a little-known Justice Department official named Brent Ward, who claimed in a September 20, 2006 e-mail that Charlton was "unwilling to take good cases."

What accounts for this bizarre e-mail? And who is Brent Ward?

Ward first came to prominence in Utah, where as US Attorney during the Reagan era he cast himself as a crusader against pornography. His battles made him one of the most fervent and earnest witnesses before Attorney General Edwin Meese's Commission on Pornography; he urged "testing the endurance" of pornographers by relentless prosecutions. Meese was so impressed that he named Ward a leader of a group of US Attorneys engaged in a federal anti-pornography campaign, which soon disappeared into the back rooms of adult bookshops to ferret out evildoers. Ward returned to government last year as the chief of the Justice Department's newly created Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, where his main achievement has been the prosecution of the producer of the Girls Gone Wild film series [...]

According to the source, Ward's accusation against Charlton stems from a case he filed in June 2006. That month, Ward ordered Charlton to prosecute Five Star Video, an adult video store that registered on Ward's radar when it mailed copies of the DVD's Gag Factor 18, Filthy Things 6, Gag Factor 15, and American Bukkake 13 to customers across state lines. Charlton agreed to take the case, but as the source told me, Ward implored him to attach an additional US Attorney to it. Concerned about wasting the already limited resources at his disposal on a case of dubious value, Charlton hesitated. Despite his misgivings, he assigned the additional prosecutor--a key fact missing from the White House e-mails.

So, you have a maniac in the DoJ forcing frivolous porno investigations that Charlton FOLLOWS THROUGH ON because it's his job - and then when he's fired, the same maniac is used to claim that he doesn't take "good cases." Like the "American Bukkake 13" ring that has ripped this country asunder.

I'm at a loss...