Buh-Bye Griffin
The Arkansas Times (blog) reports:
The U.S. Justice Department has notified Arkansas’s congressional delegation that Interim Eastern District U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin is resigning effective Friday, June 1. Jane Duke will become acting U.S. attorney. (This is the assistant in the office who the Justice Department once had said had to be passed over as an interim appointee because of her pregnancy. Since it’s illegal to discriminate on account of pregnancy, Justice had to back off this statement.)
Still no word from the White House on selection of a nominee to put through the Senate confirmation process from a slate sent up by Rep. John Boozman.
This is long overdue and a positive development,” said Michael Teague, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor. “Credibility is being restored to the leadership postion at the U.S. attorney’s office. We have confidence Jane Duke will do a good job.”
Griffin was placed in the job as part of an effort to install picks of Karl Rove in U.S. attorney jobs throughout the U.S. Griffin once worked for Rove. The politics of the move has become more apparent in a succession of congressional hearings. Pryor’s criticism of the ouster of Bud Cummins to give Griffin the job and the use of a permanent interim appointment under the Patriot Act helped trigger what has grown into a national scandal. A law to end the president’s ability to make permanent interim picks without Senate confirmation now awaits the president’s signature.
Long overdue indeed. As far as I can tell, Griffin did not deserve this job: what made him “qualified” were politics. Karl Rove’s politics. He is a “loyal Bushie.”
It seems to me that the law has to be changed: to make sure that something like this does not happen again.
Cross posted at my own blog.
6 Responses to “Buh-Bye Griffin”
I am not surprised at this news since I heard yesterday that he was being tapped to run Fred Thompson’s campaign. He would not have won confirmation in the Senate because he had tried to restrict Democrats from voting in the 2004 campaign (gating) , and apparently is just like a little Karl Rove. This should galvanize the Democrats against Thompson, as well as the other Republican candidates.
The law doesn’t have to change. It just has to be followed.
Well, except for the portion of the new patriot act which allows a unconfirmed USA to serve indefinately.
But if an administration wants to grossly politicize the appointment of US attorneys they’ll always be able to do so. The only counter to this is to ensure plenty of light shines on the process.
Davebo, I thought the provision allowing an unconfirmed appointee to serve indefinitely had been revoked by Congress, soon after the abuse was revealed.
“Buh-Bye Griffin†Hello Fred Thompson’s campaign mamager LMAO.
Scum going to work for….well scum, whats new?
I’ll tell you the part that’s interesting- they want him to be in charge of opposition research. Well, no one could figure out why Griffin was sent to Little Rock, since he had no chance of confirmation from the Senate. Ark Sen Pryor said that he was lied to by Gonzales about the appt (and objected strongly to Griffin replacing Cummins).
They never came up with a believable reason for moving him down there. Since we know that he’s Karl Rove’s protege and know that there was little distance btwn Rove and the RNC and Rove and DOJ, couldn’t Rove have situated him in Little Rock to dig up dirt on the Clintons for the ’08 campaign??? Fred Thompson has been tight with this WH, and was a staunch LIbby supporter.
According to Slate’s Supreme Court watcher Dahlia Lithwick, what qualified Griffith was his understanding of “vote caging.” According to Lithwick,
The whole article is an eye opener and the issue of vote caging vs. (faked) voter fraud cases needs a lot more play.