Great editorial in today’s New York Times:

During the hearing on his nomination as attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said he understood the difference between the job he held — President Bush’s in-house lawyer — and the job he wanted, which was to represent all Americans as their chief law enforcement officer and a key defender of the Constitution. Two years later, it is obvious Mr. Gonzales does not have a clue about the difference.

He has never stopped being consigliere to Mr. Bush’s imperial presidency. If anyone, outside Mr. Bush’s rapidly shrinking circle of enablers, still had doubts about that, the events of last week should have erased them.

Be sure to read the whole thing. And speaking of abuse of power — Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor write for McClatchy Newspapers —

Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state’s U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.

In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

“Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?” Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.

“He’s gone,” Rove said, according to Weh.

“I probably said something close to ‘Hallelujah,'” said Weh.

If Gonzales is Tom Hagen, is Rove Pete Clemenza? Or Luca Brasi?

Following up the last post, on the politicization of justice — speaking at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, Karl Rove addressed the recent purge of U.S. attorneys.

“My view is this is unfortunately a very big attempt by some in the Congress to make a political stink about it,” he said. “The question is, did they have the same reaction if they were in the Congress in the ’90s or did they have the same reaction if they were in the ’80s? Every president comes in and appoints U.S. attorneys and then makes changes over the course of their time.”

Funny he should say that. In fact, the Republicans made a big stink when Bill Clinton replaced U.S. attorneys at the beginning of his first term. Shortly after her confirmation, Attorney General Janet Reno asked for the resignations of U.S. attorneys that had been appointed by Reagan and Bush I. As I explained here and here, this is standard practice for a president at the beginning of his first term. I believe Bush II replaced all of Bill Clinton’s appointees, and no one complained.

But in 1993 the GOP Noise Machine made the replacing of U.S. attorneys by Clinton into a big scandal. Wingnuts alleged that Clinton was trying to impede the investigation of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski. (Rostenkowski was indicted the following year; I assume the indictment was brought by a Clinton appointee.)

It is extremely unusual, however, for U.S. attorneys to be replaced in mid-term except for cases of gross misconduct, which doesn’t seem to be the case with the eight who have been purged so far.

As Paul Krugman wrote this morning,

For now, the nation’s focus is on the eight federal prosecutors fired by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. In January, Mr. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that he “would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons.” But it’s already clear that he did indeed dismiss all eight prosecutors for political reasons — some because they wouldn’t use their offices to provide electoral help to the G.O.P., and the others probably because they refused to soft-pedal investigations of corrupt Republicans.

In the last few days we’ve also learned that Republican members of Congress called prosecutors to pressure them on politically charged cases, even though doing so seems unethical and possibly illegal.

See also this editorial in yesterday’s New York Times:

The [congressional] hearings left little doubt that the Bush administration had all eight — an unprecedented number — ousted for political reasons. But it points to even wider abuse; prosecutors suggest that three Republican members of Congress may have tried to pressure the attorneys into doing their political bidding.

… Two of the fired prosecutors testified that they had been dismissed after resisting what they suspected were importunings to use their offices to help Republicans win elections. A third described what may have been a threat of retaliation if he talked publicly about his firing.

David Iglesias, who was removed as the United States attorney in Albuquerque, said that he was first contacted before last fall’s election by Representative Heather Wilson, Republican of New Mexico. Ms. Wilson, who was in a tough re-election fight, asked about sealed indictments — criminal charges that are not public.

Two weeks later, he said, he got a call from Senator Pete Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, asking whether he intended to indict Democrats before the election in a high-profile corruption case. When Mr. Iglesias said no, he said, Mr. Domenici replied that he was very sorry to hear it, and the line went dead. Mr. Iglesias said he’d felt “sick.” Within six weeks, he was fired. Ms. Wilson and Mr. Domenici both deny that they had tried to exert pressure.

John McKay of Seattle testified that the chief of staff for Representative Doc Hastings, Republican of Washington, called to ask whether he intended to investigate the 2004 governor’s race, which a Democrat won after two recounts. Mr. McKay says that when he went to the White House later to discuss a possible judicial nomination (which he did not get), he was told of concerns about how he’d handled the election. H. E. Cummins, a fired prosecutor from Arkansas, said that a Justice Department official, in what appeared to be a warning, said that if he kept talking about his firing, the department would release negative information about him.

At Raw Story you can watch (or read a transcript of) an interview with George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley from Wednesday night’s Countdown. Be sure to watch (or read) this if you haven’t already. Here’s just a bit —

TURLEY: … First of all, it is very uncommon for U.S. attorneys to be fired or asked to resign. To have eight of them put in this position is truly unprecedented. It does send a very chilling message to other U.S. attorneys that, but for the grace of god, go you. These are very successful U.S. attorneys.

And what they‘re reporting about these phone calls is extremely unusual and extremely unsettling.

ALISON STEWART: The attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, told Congress the firings were not political at all. Now, has he backed himself into a corner, if it is proven in some way that they were fired for simply not toeing a political line?

TURLEY: Well, this is not the first time that Attorney General Gonzales has been challenged in terms of sworn testimony. He really had to say they were not fired for political reasons. He can hardly say we really needed to use the spot for some kid Karl Rove likes. That would not have gone over very well. What is really getting to a serious point, are the allegations that some of these U.S. attorneys seem to be threatened or thought they were being threatened about speaking to the media or the public.

Also, these calls from politicians really took me back. I have to tell you, I‘m a criminal defense attorney. I have been around the city in the criminal defense system for a long time. I find it shocking that politicians today would feel comfortable picking up a phone and calling the U.S. attorney about sealed indictments. It is other-worldly. …

… U.S. attorneys are supposed to retain an element of independence. They‘re not supposed to be constantly looking over their shoulder to see if Karl Rove is coming on them with a wood chipper.

One part of the U.S. attorney scandal has allegedly been resolved. Laurie Kellman reports for the Associated Press:

Slapped even by GOP allies, the Bush administration is beating an abrupt retreat on eight federal prosecutors it fired and then publicly pilloried.

Just hours after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dismissed the hubbub as an “overblown personnel matter,” a Republican senator Thursday mused into a microphone that Gonzales might soon suffer the same fate as the canned U.S. attorneys.

“One day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later,” Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said during a Judiciary Committee meeting.

A short time later, Gonzales and his security detail shuttled to the Capitol for a private meeting on Democratic turf, bearing two offerings:

— President Bush would not stand in the way of a Democratic-sponsored bill that would cancel the attorney general’s power to appoint federal prosecutors without Senate confirmation. Gonzales’ Justice Department had previously dismissed the legislation as unreasonable.

— There would be no need for subpoenas to compel testimony by five of Gonzales’ aides involved in the firings, as the Democrats had threatened. Cloistered in the stately hideaway of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., the attorney general assured those present that he would permit the aides to tell their stories.

The Justice Department is shifting from offense to accommodation.

Regarding the item about appointments without Senate confirmation — this refers to a clause in the Patriot Act that allows the Attorney General to appoint “interim” attorneys who can serve indefinitely without Senate confirmation. Jonathan Turley said of this provision:

According to Turley, the provision in the Patriot Act that allowed such firings was no accident. “When you see an administration trying to try to put into legislation something this specific, this tailored, it does not come out of nowhere,” said Turley.

“It did not come out of the head of Zeus,” Turley said. “It came out of the head of someone at the White House who wanted to use it. I think there are serious questions there and this is a scandal that is getting worse by the day.”

Now President Bush will not stand in the way of a Dem bill to revoke this little privilege. Just wait for the signing statement.

Paul Krugman:

For those of us living in the Garden State, the growing scandal over the firing of federal prosecutors immediately brought to mind the subpoenas that Chris Christie, the former Bush “Pioneer” who is now the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, issued two months before the 2006 election — and the way news of the subpoenas was quickly leaked to local news media.

The subpoenas were issued in connection with allegations of corruption on the part of Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat who seemed to be facing a close race at the time. Those allegations appeared, on their face, to be convoluted and unconvincing, and Mr. Menendez claimed that both the investigation and the leaks were politically motivated.

You might recall The Narrative about last fall’s Senate race in New Jersey — voters were being forced to choose between a corrupt politician (Menendez) versus a pure and clean Republican who agreed with Bush’s policy on Iraq. This is from an October 2006 Washington Times story:

Political observers say the outcome depends on whether voters here get angrier about Mr. Bush and the Iraq war or about state corruption.

“Is this going to be a national referendum or is it going to be a statewide referendum on state corruption?” said New Jersey Republican political consultant Mark Campbell. “If this is national, Menendez wins; if this is a statewide election on the need for reform … Tom Kean Jr. wins.”

“People deserve to know if their senator is the only senator under federal criminal investigation,” Mr. Kean said as he took a break Oct. 8 from shaking hands with the tailgating crowd at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

Kean Junior, whose father had been a popular New Jersey governor, ran a one-note campaign on the Menendez corruption charges. Menendez won, 53 percent to 45 percent. Whether there was any substance to the allegations against Menendez I do not know. What I do know is that the news stories about the alleged corruption dried up after the election.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written about the U.S. Attorney scandal, and I plan to catch up on the most recent developments later today. But for now I want to focus on Krugman’s point —

The bigger scandal, however, almost surely involves prosecutors still in office. The Gonzales Eight were fired because they wouldn’t go along with the Bush administration’s politicization of justice. But statistical evidence suggests that many other prosecutors decided to protect their jobs or further their careers by doing what the administration wanted them to do: harass Democrats while turning a blind eye to Republican malfeasance.

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.

Righties will probably argue that Democrats are seven times more likely to be corrupt; to which I say, I doubt that.

And let’s not forget that Karl Rove’s candidates have a history of benefiting from conveniently timed federal investigations. Last year Molly Ivins reminded her readers of a curious pattern during Mr. Rove’s time in Texas: “In election years, there always seemed to be an F.B.I. investigation of some sitting Democrat either announced or leaked to the press. After the election was over, the allegations often vanished.”

It’s not just Democratic candidates. You might remember that at the beginning of 2003, Scott Ritter was trying to warn the world that the Bush Administration was cooking up phony evidence as a pretext for war. Out of the blue, a sealed court record about Scott Ritter was leaked to the press; details here.

“…it’s becoming clear that the politicization of the Justice Department was a key component of the Bush administration’s attempt to create a permanent Republican lock on power,” Krugman writes. Ya think?

Marisa Taylor and Greg Gordon write for McClatchy Newspapers:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is transforming the ranks of the nation’s top federal prosecutors by firing some and appointing conservative loyalists from the Bush administration’s inner circle who critics say are unlikely to buck Washington.

The newly appointed U.S. attorneys all have impressive legal credentials, but most of them have few, if any, ties to the communities they’ve been appointed to serve, and some have had little experience as prosecutors.

For background on the U.S. Attorney scandal — it’s not generally acknowledged to be a scandal, but it should be — see old Mahablog posts U.S. Attorneys: It’s the Replacing, Stupid and The Purge. In a nutshell, the White House is using a provision inserted into the Patriot Act last year to fire U.S. attorneys and replace them without (constitutionally mandated) Senate approval.

U.S. attorneys usually are appointed at the beginning of a president’s term and serve for four years, after Senate confirmation. Firing in mid-term for reasons other than gross misconduct is extremely unusual, although not illegal. What is more fishy is that the White House has given itself the power to appoint “interim” attorneys who can serve indefinitely without confirmation by the Senate.

Taylor and Gordon of McClatchy continue,

The nine recent appointees identified by McClatchy Newspapers held high-level White House or Justice Department jobs, and most of them were handpicked by Gonzales under a little-noticed provision of the Patriot Act that became law in March. …

… Being named a U.S. attorney “has become a prize for doing the bidding of the White House or administration,” said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who’s now a professor at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “In the past, there had been a great deal of delegation to the local offices. Now, you have a consolidation of power in Washington.”

I like this part:

A Justice Department spokesman said it was “reckless” to suggest that politics had influenced the appointment process.

Sounds like a threat to me. Anyway, here are the nine new U.S. attorneys:

Tim Griffin, 37, the U.S. attorney for Arkansas, who was an aide to White House political adviser Karl Rove and a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

Rachel Paulose, 33, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota, who served briefly as a counselor to the deputy attorney general and who, according to a former boss, has been a member of the secretive, ideologically conservative Federalist Society.

Jeff Taylor, 42, the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., who was an aide to Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and worked as a counselor to Gonzales and to former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

John Wood, U.S. attorney in Kansas City, who’s the husband of Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Julie Myers and an ex-deputy general counsel of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Deborah Rhodes, 47, the U.S. attorney in Mobile, Ala., who was a Justice Department counselor.

Alexander Acosta, 37, the U.S. attorney in Miami, who was an assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division and a protege of conservative Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

John Richter, 43, the U.S. attorney in Oklahoma City, who was the chief of staff for the Justice Department’s criminal division and acting assistant attorney general.

Edward McNally, the U.S. attorney in southern Illinois, who was a senior associate counsel to President Bush.

Matt Dummermuth, the U.S. attorney in Iowa, who was a Justice Department civil rights lawyer.

This is from an editorial in yesterday’s New York Times:

The federal investigation into Congressional corruption is approaching a crucial deadline and potential dead end. Feb. 15 is the last day on the job for United States Attorney Carol Lam of San Diego, the inquiry’s dedicated prosecutor, who is being purged by the Bush administration.

Her investigation led to the imprisonment of former Representative Randy Cunningham, the California Republican who took millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for delivering lucrative government contracts. But just as Ms. Lam was digging into other possible wrongdoing, the White House decided to force her from office without explanation.

Ms. Lam has been investigating the dealings of Brent Wilkes, a private contractor and deep-pocketed political contributor who was designated co-conspirator No. 1 in the Cunningham case. Mr. Wilkes developed other cozy relationships. Among other avenues, the inquiry has been looking into rich government contracts secured by corporations and lobbyists with ties to Representative Jerry Lewis — the former appropriations chairman — and his staff. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Mr. Wilkes could be indicted before Ms. Lam leaves office. The question now is whether her successor, as yet unnamed, will pursue the inquiry with the same dedication or will quietly smother it.

I don’t yet know which of the nine people above is replacing Lam. In fact, I infer from the list of nine that nine U.S. attorneys are being replaced, but news organizations and Congress have only been able to identify seven. Not exactly transparent, huh?

In the wake of the recent firings of a half-dozen U.S. attorneys, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, filed bills that would restore to federal judges the right to name interim appointees when vacancies develop. On Thursday, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., whose office has confirmed that he inserted language making the change in Patriot Act last year, gave his qualified support to Feinstein’s bill.

Justice Department officials have refused to say how many prosecutors were fired or to explain the firings, but Feinstein has said she’s aware of the ouster of at least seven U.S. attorneys since March 2006.

Not only should everyone in this White House be indicted and prosecuted, every politician and journalist/media personality who has ever once covered Bush’s butt in the past six years be indicted and prosecuted. However, there may not be enough honest and independent U.S. attorneys to do it.

Patrick Fitzgerald is a U.S. attorney, btw. I bet ol’ Speedy is achin’ to force him out, too.