(Updated) Yet Another Blow to American Justice
I wrote just the other day that the damage that the Bush administration has done to the American justice system is incalculable, and that long after the president retires to his Texas ranch to search among the scrub brush for his lost legacy and long after the vice president has his final myocardial infarction, we will be trying to undo the damage.
Now comes word that in yet another assault on the justice system, the White House was deeply involved in the decision to dismiss federal prosecutors.
The New York Times reports that last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not aggressively addressing voter fraud. Translation: They were being “too soft� on Democrats as the crucial mid-term election approached.
After initially stonewalling when the story broke last month, the scandal-weary White House has not even bothered to deny its involvement.
A White House spokeswoman said, however, that the president did not call for the removal of any specific U.S. attorneys and she had no indication that the president had been personally aware that a process was already under way to identify prosecutors who would be fired.
Whew! That’s a relief.
Meanwhile, Gonzales abruptly canceled travel plans today amid growing calls for his ouster. This kind of seems like a waste since the AG is the symptom and the White House is the disease, but stay tuned.
More here and here. See also Holly’s post above.
31 Responses to “(Updated) Yet Another Blow to American Justice”
You hould have mentioned what kind of performance the WH expects from its attorneys, Shaun. Thank god that Krugman, one of the few journalists who do more than stenotyping, dug up the numbers:
“Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny.”
http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/2007/03/paul-krugman-department-of-injustice.html
Well, this shows honest performance never was the real point, the main criterium for judging attorneys is how good they deliver smear arguments for republican campaigns.
|-(
Even worse is the removal of Carol Lam, who was involved in the Duke Cunningham investigation. Lam indicted Dusty Foggo, the number 3 at the CIA, just days before she was forced out. Under Gonzales, who still seems to see his function as the Bush family atty, the integrity of DOJ has been hopelessly compromised. Bush and Cheney have used Gonzales as their enabler in order to subvert the Constitution- as was done in the matters of warrantless wiretapping and loss of habeous corpus. Gonzales should resign in the wake this scandal and the one at the FBI. He’s an embarassment- another crony who has directed DOJ to serve the narrow aims of this president, instead of preserving the integrity of the office.
Hmm, apparently memories are short here. Does no on remember Bill Clinton firing almost every single judge right after he took office? How much of an “assault on the justice system” did Bill Clinton do? Selective memory among partisans is really becoming epidemic.
“Does no on remember Bill Clinton firing almost every single judge right after he took office?”
Maybe because it didn’t happen? Afaik judges can’t be fired.
[...] Managerial reasons is a metaphor for mismanaging this situation by saying the attorneys got fired for performance reasons. Everybody has an opinion, legal or otherwise: The Moderate Voice, Outside The Beltway, Talking Points Memo, The Carpetbagger Report, Think Progress, The RBC, Prairie Weather, Political Animal, Daily Kos, Brilliant at Breakfast, Left in the West, The Sideshow, On Deadline, rubber hose, Daniel W. Drezner and Obsidian Wings Will Rove have to testify? Remember when he was a genius and all these guys were so smart? [...]
Whether deliberately or by osmosis, Entropy is simply repeating the latest batch of Rove talking points.
Incoming president’s often replace federal prosecutors at the start of their terms but once appointed the expectation is they will complete their 4 or 8 year stints. A federal prosecutor is only replaced under extraordinary circumstances and as none of those fired had received negative reports there can only be one reason for the AG’s actions- to politicise the justice system. That this is of little concern to Entropy is just a wee bit scary ( lots more like him out there, folks).
truflo,
So, it’s not “politicizing the justice system” to fire all of your predecessor’s judges, but it is when replacing your own? Wow, the mind boggles. The original post here is claiming that Bush’s firings were political. Major Democrats have condemned them as “political” but you’re suggesting that somehow Clinton wiping the slate clean was not political?
PS, I provided a link to the NYT story on March 23, 1993 with the details of the Clinton firings, but the spam filters seems to have caught it. You can search the NYT archive on that date for articles by David Johnston – it’s a page 1 article.
Actually, it is even worse than that. I read an article today that Bush (through Miers) initially explored the possibility of replacing all 91 prosecutors in one fell swoop!
Entropy- The Clinton administration fired the US attorneys, not US judges, lol. BTW, the great icon of conservatism, Ronald Reagan did the same at the start of his term as well. Did you think he wanted US attorneys in the system that had been appointed by Carter?
Clinton’s attorneys were replaced because they had been appointed by the two previous Republican administrations whose values deviated substantially from Clinton’s. Bush,OTOH, fired prosecutors from his own party that he had appointed himself, in order to influence sensitive ongoing investigations. According to WaPo, Harriet Miers wanted to replace all 93, but the idea was quashed by Rove, because it would create too much attention.
However, Entropy does have a point. The system has been politicised from the git-go, how far you want to take it is up to each individual president. That Bush and co want to take at as far as it can possibly go is no surprise.
I don’t care what past presidents did. X marks the spot. We are here.
Politicizing the judiciary is a dangerous thing even if my aunt Polly does it. There should be procedures in place whereby no president can remove judges at whim without showing cause.
OT…but notice President Bush in the picture at Shaun’s post behind Gonzales.
Bush has the identical!!! pursed lip expression in EVERY SINGLE picture with every one of his appointees.
You can check this. There are so many pictures of almost identical scenes online.
I swear, it is truly bizarre! Every time I see it, I wonder at what is in his mind…or maybe it is just a cardboard cut-out of Bush propped up at these media appearances.
The identical pose. The identical pursed-lip expression. Only the tie changes.
How can Bush do it?
Hey, Entropy, what is the latest Rovian talking point in reply to this accusation, pls?
“Gonzales Lied Under Oath, Said All Bush-Appointed Attorneys Would Be ‘Senate-Confirmed’”
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/13/gonzales-lies/
The Bush administration’s actions here are much less unseemly (as usual) than were Clinton’s. In fact, there seems to be reluctance by some Bush administration members in firing all the judges because this would be too disruptive. That’s not the kind of thing the Clintons would care about.
“[D]omajot” said:
> Politicizing the judiciary is a dangerous thing even if my aunt Polly does it.
For years we have had left-wing judicial activism and even political favoritism and many on the Left have no problem with it or even approve of it (because they have impatience with and contempt for the legitimate way to change or write new law, namely the legislative process performed by the legislature).
So far, to better people the Dems have nothing to gripe about — yet. Now: What would be the criteria for rehiring the judges or hiring new judges? Refusal to legislate from the bench, outstanding. But willing to be more or simply to be pro-business, etc? It’s time to find out. The Dems then have extra points to score between now and 11/08.
> There should be procedures in place whereby no president can remove judges
> at whim without showing cause.
This is where impeachment should be applied. If there is cause, removal is in order.
AR – If Bush did this at the start of his reign, fire all the FA, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Clinton cleaned house after 12 years of Republican FA. Doing so selectively in mid term smacks of hackerey.
I’ve heard this man’s story. He a great admire of GWB, almost adoring of the man. Maybe that’s the problem.
“However, Entropy does have a point.”
Not really. During Clinton’s reign, US attorneys had to be confirmed by the Senate, and so there as some oversight against too openly partisan decisions. This changed in 2005 with the Patriot Act, as the Thinkprogress story (link above) shows. But, of course, the new provision wasn’t intended to be misused for replacing attorneys with a flawless record with more partisan ones, just for political purposes. And Gonzalez stated under oath that this wasn’t intended, even though his own chief of staff had written a memo stating that exactly this was the hidden idea behind the provision. Damn crooks.
C’mon, people: if you’re going to comment on American governmental affairs, at least know something about how American government works, OK?
Clinton didn’t fire “all the judges.”
Judges can’t be fired.
Judges can only be impeached or (if they’re elected) voted out.
That’s what “an indepedent judiciary” means, for cryin out loud.
As for “Well, he fired all the attorneys!” – again, an elementary level of knowledge about how the federal government actually works would come in handy here, y’know?
Because Presidents can and do, ROUTINELY, fire the US Attorneys who were appointed by their predecessor. US Attorneys are political appointees. It’s standard procedure for new Presidents to replace the previous Administration’s US Attorneys with their own appointees. There’s nothing sinister or illegal or unprecedented about it. Got that?
What makes this story a story is that 1) the US Attorneys were already Bush appointees; 2) they were replaced without Congressional confirmation, even though Gonzales said/promised they would face Congressional confirmation; and 3) they were fired for not using investigations to help Republicans politically. All of which is different from what Clinton did, and from what most every other President has done.
If you keep arguing otherwise, you don’t come off as a clean government advocate. You come off as an idiot who doesn’t know anything about your own government.
“U.S. attorneys have enormous power. Their decision to investigate or indict can bankrupt a business or destroy a life. They must be, and long have been, insulated from political pressures. Although appointed by the president, once in office they are almost never asked to leave until a new president is elected. The Congressional Research Service has confirmed how unprecedented these firings are. It found that of 486 U.S. attorneys confirmed since 1981, perhaps no more than three were forced out in similar ways — three in 25 years, compared with seven in recent months.”
http://newsgazettewatch.blogspot.com/2007/02/why-have-so-many-u.html
CaseyL:
Expertly said. Thank you for the tutorial. Too bad it was necessary, but then if you asked 50 people at a shopping mall what habeas corpus is, five would think it an obsence sex act and 44 wouldn’t have a clue.
Caey, didn’t Bush fire all Clinton-era attorneys, too? I’m searching for this info, but haven’t found it yet.
There’s another point to be made, the dishonesty of the administration and the negligence with which they treated the reputation of the fired attorneys:
“But at least three of the eight fired attorneys were told by a superior they were being forced to resign to make jobs available for other Bush appointees, according to a former senior Justice Department official knowledgeable about their cases. That stands in contradiction to administration claims that the firings were related either to job performance or policy differences. A fourth U.S. attorney was told by a top Justice Department official that the dismissal in that attorney’s case was not necessarily related to job performance.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/03/13/coulter/
Of course, the Bush gang didn’t want their real motives to be known, so they just declared the attorneys were fired because of bad job performance, not caring a little bit that this put a severe stain on the carreer opportunities of those lawyers. That’s more than shameful.
Thank you everyone for pointing out that attorneys were fired, not judges. It was a typo on my part in my haste to post before I had to head out the door. I know the difference.
Gray, I actually agree with you on the confirmation side of it. I think attorneys should continue to be confirmed as they always were.
However, I stand by my contention that firing a few attorneys that Bush appointed is really no different from the house-cleanings at the beginning of a Presidency. What you’re essentially saying is that once a President appoints an attorney, he/she can’t be replaced. That’s just silly. These attorneys serve as the pleasure of the President. If attorneys are so important, and their job is not political, then why would a President replace all of them at the beginning of his/her term? I suspect a large part of the reason is that there are a few or perhaps many attorneys an incoming President doesn’t like, so rather than pick and choose which to fire, and trigger a political firestorm like we’re seeing now, it’s easier and provides more political cover to just replace all of them. In addition, it allows a President to put friends and political allies in those positions – people who support THAT PRESIDENT’S POLICIES. How is that not political? Perhaps, though, if Bush had followed Harriet’s advice, there might not be the hubub.
Really the only thing that bothers me about this story is that Bush claimed the firings were due to performance, which apparently isn’t the case judging from their performance reports. The real reason seems to be policy differences, such as what types of cases should take priority over others. That’s a valid reason to replace an attorney in my view.
And please, people, don’t label me as some Rove robot who spews RNC talking points. You don’t know anything about me and extrapolating from one or a few posts or positions will not give you an accurate pictures. For the record, I’m a true non-partisan. The only time I’ve ever registered with one political party or another is to vote against someone I particularly hated in a primary. I loathe the two-party system and both the democrats and republican collusion to maintain their duopoly on power.
So it is with much amusement that I see partisans like Shaun and Gray rail against politicians they don’t like being “political” while rarely, if ever, acknowledging when the shoe is on the other foot. For a moderate blog, this site has plenty of left-leaning contributors but few, from what I’ve seen so far, from the other side of the spectrum. There are some great and truly moderate/independent contributors here though, which is why I read.
“However, I stand by my contention that firing a few attorneys that Bush appointed is really no different from the house-cleanings at the beginning of a Presidency.”
Generally, you’re right. But in this case, this disregards the lying about the motives and the behind the scene intriguing of the interested parties. Also, pls note that the Patriot Act allows bush to switch attorneys without confirmation, but that this was intended to be a streamlined process in case of emergency. Bush still could have confirmed the surrogates with the Senate, he deliberatel chose not to do that. Now we know he was trying to hide the fact that his Attorney General is making a farce of the impartiality of Justice. 7 times more Dems investigated than Reps, how do you explain this?
“For a moderate blog, this site has plenty of left-leaning contributors but few, from what I’ve seen so far, from the other side of the spectrum.”
That’s not true. We libruls just try harder!
“The real reason seems to be policy differences, such as what types of cases should take priority over others. That’s a valid reason to replace an attorney in my view.”
When the party affiliation of the accused is becoming a main reason for indictment or not, this is a travesty of justice and absolutely NOT legal. There’s no way to spin that into a valid policy.
Gray,
I recently read the allegations with regard to the New Mexico attorney and prosecution of democrats. If that is true, then I condemn it wholeheartedly. As more information comes out, it looks like there might have been nefarious political intent with some of the firings but not with others. Normally, I’d support an investigation, but in the Congress “investigation” is more often political grandstanding. Still, the allegations should be looked into.
Gray said: “When the party affiliation of the accused is becoming a main reason for indictment or not, this is a travesty of justice and absolutely NOT legal.”
Ah Gray! You’re defending Scooter Libby!!!
I knew you would see the light eventually, and join the forces of righteousness against the criminalization of politics in the United States.
Another thing to look at is why some USA’s were left in place. Remember the investigation in NJ on Bob Menendez that was leaked right before the election? I think DOJ has been trying to make sure that Congress stayed in Republican hands by rushing some investigations, and slowing down others.
I remember hearing about a year ago that the top prosecutor for the Abramoff case was offered a judgeship, when the case got too hot—anyone know if that’s true??
“You’re defending Scooter Libby!!!”
Sounds like a good joke, but sry, I don’t get it, Marlowe. Could you pls explain for someone who obviously still isn’t really awake???
I keep seeing mention of Clinton firing 91 of 93 judges after getting in office. This is hardly plausible, however, I wish one of you would show me when and how this happened.
I can locate NO evidence of this dispite an exhaustive search.