The controversy surrounding the purge of U.S. attorneys is starting to grow — not dissipate.
Three signs:
(1) The White House is letting it be known that political maven Karl Rove and President George W. Bush’s former counsel Harriet Miers will be allowed to testify — but not under oath:
The White House will allow the president’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, and former White House counsel Harriet Miers to be interviewed by congressional committees investigating how the firing of several U.S. attorneys was handled, Rep. Chris Cannon said Tuesday.
But Rove and Miers will not testify under oath in the matter, Cannon added.The announcement came after current White House counsel Fred Fielding met with members of the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary committees, who had considered using subpoenas to force Rove, Miers and their two deputies to reveal what they knew about the reasons behind the firings of at least seven U.S. attorneys.
Not under oath — no matter what the justification — will not be sufficient for many Democrats and many voters regardless of party.
(2) Despite an increasingly-bipartisan belief that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign and news reports indicating the White House is already putting out feelers for a replacement, Bush made it be known today that he continues to support him no matter what:
President Bush sent a powerful message of support Tuesday for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, calling his longtime friend to express unwavering support in the face of calls for his resignation.
The White House also denied reports that it was looking for possible successors for Gonzales. “Those rumors are untrue,” White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.
Bush called Gonzales from the Oval Office at 7:15 a.m. EDT and they spoke for several minutes about the political uproar over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, an issue that has thrust the attorney general into controversy and raised questions about whether he can survive. The White House disclosed Bush’s call to bolster Gonzales and attempt to rally Republicans to support him.
“The president reaffirmed his strong backing of the attorney general and his support for him,” Perino said. “The president called him to reaffirm his support.”
This raises the possibility that the earlier reports were either (a) totally wrong or (b) reflected a move by some in the White House to begin looking for a replacement.
But it also reflects Bush’s typical style which is to dig in his heels and brush aside the concerns of critics in both parties on issues. Question: is the GOP ready to fall on its sword for Gonzales if this controversy continues to have “legs” with new revelations in the news media and/or in Congress?
(3) The Washington Post reports that U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was one of those on a list of attorneys who could have been fired due to poor performance:
U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had “not distinguished themselves” on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading the CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said yesterday.
The ranking placed Fitzgerald below “strong U.S. Attorneys . . . who exhibited loyalty” to the administration but above “weak U.S. Attorneys who . . . chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.,” according to Justice documents.
U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had “not distinguished themselves” on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading the CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said yesterday.
The ranking placed Fitzgerald below “strong U.S. Attorneys . . . who exhibited loyalty” to the administration but above “weak U.S. Attorneys who . . . chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.,” according to Justice documents.
All this taken together continues to portray a portrait of an administration almost giddy with power after the 2004 elections and now battling a rear-guard action to protect the way it has operated before.
But have some things ALREADY changed?
Most certainly yes.
One sign: by a whopping BIPARTISAN majority the Senate moved to revoke one of the executive branch’s new powers, one slipped into a bill almost unnoticed by many lawmakers:
The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to end the Bush administration’s ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ firing of eight federal prosecutor…
….[The] Senate by a 94-2 vote passed a bill that would cancel the attorney general’s power to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. Democrats say the Bush administration abused that authority when it fired the eight prosecutors and proposed replacing some with White House loyalists.
“If you politicize the prosecutors, you politicize everybody in the whole chain of law enforcement,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt.
The bill, which has yet to be considered in the House, would set a 120-day deadline for the administration to appoint an interim prosecutor. If the interim appointment is not confirmed by the Senate in that time, a permanent replacement would be named by a federal district judge.
Essentially, the Senate returned the law regarding the appointments of U.S. attorneys to where it was before Congress passed the Patriot Act, including the unilateral appointment authority the administration had sought in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.
And so all of this is operating in two areas: on the institutional level (Congress versus the Executive branch) and on the political level (how long will GOPers to go the mat in defending an administration that is even ignoring the preferences of some members of its own party?).
It’s a controversy that shows no sign of abating….but, rather, one that will grow before it starts to recede. And, more than ever, it appears as if the Bush White House is relying and depending on loyal support from its base in another Us Versus Them political battle.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.