Ninegate — a progress report

First issuing of ‘Attorneygate’ subpoenas to White House
Michael Roston, Raw Story
Wednesday June 13, 2007

A breaking news report on CNN indicates that two former White House officials will face subpoenas for their involvement in the firing of 8 US Attorneys earlier this year. RAW STORY has confirmed with House Judiciary Committee staff that House investigators will issue a subpoena for Harriet Miers, former White House Counsel, and the Senate will issue a subpoena for Sara Taylor, a former top aide to Karl Rove.

Harriet Miers will face a subpoena from House investigators. Miers, a one-time pick for the Supreme Court by President George W. Bush, served as White House Counsel until January when she stepped down and was replaced by Fred Fielding. Miers is known to have been extensively involved in the firing of the US Attorneys, with Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to the Attorney General, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that he often discussed the firing of Attorneys with her informally after weekly Judicial Selection Committee meetings at the White House.

Sara Taylor, the former Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Political Affairs, reported to Karl Rove in the White House, and also faces a subpoena. She reportedly ‘cleared out her office’ at the end of May. E-mails released yesterday depicted her extensive involvement in the firing of at least one US Attorney, Bud Cummins from the Eastern District of Arkansas.

Taylor would testify July 11 in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Miers would testify the next day before the House Judiciary Committee, the Associated Press reports.
In response, spokesman Tony Snow said the White House is “aware of the judiciary committee plans to issue subpoenas and will respond appropriately.”

“The committees can easily obtain the facts they want without confrontation by simply accepting our offer for documents and interviews but it’s clear that Senator Leahy and Representative Conyers are more interested in drama than facts,” Snow added.

Excerpts from AP article:

The subpoenas come a day after newly-released Justice Department documents revealed that Taylor was closely involved in the firings. In a Feb. 16 e-mail, Taylor described a U.S . attorney in Arkansas who was fired last year as “lazy” - “which is why we got rid of him in the first place,” according to to the documents.

Former prosecutor Bud Cummins, reached Tuesday night for comment, responded: “I’m sure I have some faults, but my work ethic hasn’t been one them.” Taylor also complained that Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told senators that Cummins was replaced at the urging of Miers, who was White House counsel at the time.

FULL AP ARTICLE CAN BE READ HERE

New Justice Department documents show White House involvement in Attorneys firings
Michael Roston, Raw Story
Wednesday June 13, 2007

The Justice Department on Tuesday released a new set of e-mails turned over in the pursuit of the investigation of the firing of 8 US Attorneys earlier in the year. The 46 page file showed extensive White House involvement in the process of the firings, and appeared to show a Justice Department staffer contemplating post-government work for one former US Attorney, David Iglesias of New Mexico.

The documents prompted an angry reaction from Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“These documents, which should have been released by the Department long ago, provide further evidence that White House officials like former Political Director Sara Taylor were deeply involved in the mass firings of well-performing prosecutors,” he said in a statement e-mailed to RAW STORY. “The Department of Justice should not be reduced to a political arm of the White House. We need an end to the White House’s stonewalling of our investigations so we can learn the truth.”

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee which released the documents Tuesday night, offered similar sentiments.

“These documents show that the White House played an integral role in the firings and their aftermath. This only underscores the need for White House cooperation with this investigation,” he said.

Conyers and Leahy today announced their intentions to issue subpoenas for two of the former White House officials who figured prominently in the latest e-mails.

Extensive White House involvement shown in e-mails

A number of e-mails in the Tuesday file showed White House staff to be extensively involved in the selection and firing of the US Attorneys, particularly Tim Griffin, who recently stepped down as the interim US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

A Feb. 16 e-mail showed that a White House official, Sara Taylor, was upset with the Justice Department for their installation of Griffin, who like Taylor was a former White House aide to Karl Rove.

“Tim was put in a horrible position; hung out to dry w/ no heads up. You forced him to do what he did; this is not good for his long term career,” she wrote to D. Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

She also complained that Paul McNulty, Deputy Attorney General, was unwilling to call Bud Cummins, the US Attorney Griffin replaced, “lazy - which is why we got rid of him in the first place.”

As Cummins began to talk to the media about his removal from office, Taylor also showed herself to be ready to go on the offensive politically.

“I normally don’t like attacking friends, but since Bud Cummins is talking to everyone - why don’t we tell the deal on him?” she asked Sampson in a Feb. 7 e-mail.

Notably, Taylor used a gwb43.com e-mail address, one of the domain names managed by the Republican National Committee, and not archived under standard White House document preservation procedures.

Taylor also objected to an earlier letter that the Justice Department planned to send to Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) about Griffin’s installation.

“I’m concerned we imply that we’ll pull down Griffin’s nomination should Pryor object,” she wrote on Jan. 25 to Sampson and William Kelley in the office of White House Counsel Harriet Miers.

But the White House wasn’t only involved in Griffin’s installation. A Dec. 12 e-mail shows Kenneth Lee, who works in the White House Counsel’s office, contacting Sampson about the firing of Carol Lam, the former US Attorney for the Southern District of California.

“Can you give me a brief update on Carol Lam…I believe she was one of the USAs under the replacement plan,” he wrote. “Do you know what the basis was for her replacement …. Harriet [Miers] may be asked about it tomorrow, and I wanted to give her background information just in case.”

E-mails in January also showed Harriet Miers, still the White House Counsel at that time, getting complaints from Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) about the appearance that the Justice Department was trying to circumvent the established ‘Parsky Commission’ process for selecting and confirming US Attorneys from California.

“I received another call from Gerry Parsky who had received a call from Senator Feinstein. Her assertion was that we were circumventing the Commission process re the USAs in San Diego and San Francisco by using the AG appointment authority,” she wrote to Sampson, who then clarified a number of legal questions in the Jan. 7 exchange.

Sampson also offered a prescient warning to Miers on using the authority given to the Attorney General under the PATRIOT Act to appoint interim US Attorneys on an indefinite basis.

“In no case (including E.D. Ark.) am I in favor of using the AG’s appointment authority unilaterally to jam Senators - that will only result in the Congress taking that authority away from us,” he wrote to Miers in that exchange.

And, Miers was depicted around Jan. 16 as trying to carry out damage control after Senator Feinstein complained on the Senate floor about the firings.

“The US Attorneys themselves haven’t fired any shots. Harriet feels very strongly that we shouldn’t respond to the merits, even though we are convinced that they have disloyally stirred up the Senators,” William Kelley, an official in the White House Counsel’s office, wrote to Sampson on Jan. 16.

Sampson discussed work for New Mexico Attorney Iglesias

Sampson also appeared in another e-mail on Jan. 10 to be contemplating finding work for David Iglesias, the US Attorney for New Mexico who was one of the group of eight fired by the Justice Department.

A sender whose name has been redacted by the Justice Department asked Sampson about Iglesias.

“What do you think of Iglesias? Would you hire him?” the sender asks.

Sampson responded, “I like David - I think I would. We should discuss by phone.”

The context of the exchange cannot be determined. Iglesias appears to have been targeted for removal from office by a pair of New Mexico Republican lawyers who were chastened by his unwillingness to indict a New Mexico Democrat prior to the 2006 office. These two lawyers were known to have sought to have discussions with White House adviser Karl Rove. ++

Officials rebuked for disclosing Rove’s connection to firing of U.S. attorney
Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor, McClatchy Newspapers
Tue, Jun. 12, 2007

WASHINGTON - The White House’s former political director was furious at Justice Department officials for disclosing to Congress that the administration had forced out the U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Ark., to make way for a protege of Karl Rove, President Bush’s political adviser, according to documents released late Tuesday.

Then-White House political affairs director Sara Taylor spelled out her frustrations in a Feb. 16 e-mail to Kyle Sampson, then the chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

She sent the message after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told the Senate that unlike other federal prosecutors, U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins wasn’t fired for performance reasons, but to make way for former Republican political operative Tim Griffin. Griffin, serving as the interim U.S. attorney, then announced that he wouldn’t seek confirmation to the Arkansas post, but would remain until the Senate confirmed someone else. Griffin has since resigned.

“Tim was put in a horrible position; hung out to dry w/ no heads up,” Taylor lashed out in the e-mail, which was sent from a Republican Party account rather than from her White House e-mail address. “This is not good for his long-term career.”

The Taylor e-mail was among 46 pages of documents that the Justice Department turned over to Congress Tuesday as part of the investigation into the firings of at least nine U.S. attorneys.

The Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees said the documents showed greater White House involvement in the firings than previously known.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the documents “provide further evidence that White House officials like former political director Sara Taylor were deeply involved in the mass firings of well-performing prosecutors.”

The White House disputed those characterizations, saying the e-mails deal only with the aftermath of the firings, not what led up to them, and that there was nothing inappropriate about wanting to promote Griffin, whom the administration considered “exceptionally” qualified.

“I know this is becoming terribly frustrating for Democrats, but once again documents show no wrongdoing in the decision to replace U.S. attorneys,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

Fratto said some documents also undercut Democrats’ assertions that the White House wanted to abuse a change in federal law to keep interim U.S. attorneys in place without Senate confirmation.

In an e-mail exchange from early January, then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers asked Sampson how the department wanted to handle replacement candidates. Sampson replied that “in no case” did he want to use the new law unilaterally to “jam senators” because “that will only result in the Congress taking that authority away from us.”

The newly released e-mails also showed that:

-The White House counsel’s office thought in January that the ousted prosecutors had “disloyally stirred up the senators” but argued against criticizing them publicly because they hadn’t “fired any shots” at the administration.

-Taylor called Cummins “lazy” and said that was “why we got rid of him in the first place.” Cummins, reached Tuesday, said, “I don’t know how Sara Taylor would have any information about my work ethic.” ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Add comment June 13th, 2007

TW3

That Was The Week That Was … as usual, odd and faintly hysterical. Might I also add that the preacher [offed by his wife] was a victim of his own hype … and that Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds could use a collective enema.

Jude

HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW
June 12, 2007

President George W. Bush traveled to Europe, where he
declared an end to the Cold War, suggested that a
U.S. missile shield was “not something we ought to be
hyperventilating about,” and suffered a stomachache that
left him “slightly indisposed.” In Iraq, the
Sunni-dominated Islamic Army announced that it would no
longer threaten the “project of Jihad” by continuing to
fight Al Qaeda. A security assessment found that just one
third of Baghdad’s neighborhoods were under U.S. control,
police recruits shot a “suspicious woman,” a Catholic
priest was kidnapped along with five boys, and 27 corpses,
each shot in the head and showing signs of torture, were
recovered. Proposed “War Czar” Lieutenant General Douglas
Lute described the results of the U.S. troop surge as
“uneven.” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said
people stood a greater chance of being hit by lightning
than dying at the hands of a terrorist, and that anyone
worried about it should “get a life.” A “clearly deranged”
German man attempted to board the Popemobile in the
Vatican and was beaten by the Vigilanza, the pontiff’s
security force. Government doctors announced that the
machine controlling Dick Cheney’s heart was old and should
be replaced. China was in the grip of “Web 2.0 madness,”
the U.S. military was developing lethal water guns to
combat scuba-equipped terrorists, and three adulterers
were executed by firing squad in Khyber, Pakistan. Hillary
Clinton thanked God for helping her endure the sexual
indiscretions of her husband.

The Republican presidential candidates met in New
Hampshire to engage in “verbal combat” over immigration,
and Eric Alterman, author of the “Altercation” blog, was
arrested after an altercation with police at the
Democratic debate. Two John McCain campaign officials were
fired for refusing to “rape and pillage” church
directories for potential donors. John Edwards said it was
fine if Rudolph Giuliani chose a campaign platform of
“four more years of what [the current] president has
done.” “He will never be elected,” Edwards added. “But he
is allowed to do that.” Violence erupted in the Alabama
state senate when a Democrat called Republican Charles
Bishop a son of a bitch. “I responded to his comment with
my right hand,” said Bishop. “Fleeting expletives” were
ruled legal by a U.S. court. Three Finnish fishermen were
abducted by the Iranian government, U.S. efforts to
recapture a shipping vessel taken by pirates off the Horn
of Africa failed, and Spanish naval authorities threatened
to board two boats they believe hold stolen
treasure. Global warming was linked to an upsurge of cat
sex, and NFL running back Clinton Portis explained why he
ridiculed laws against dog fighting. “I’m not even a pets
man,” Portis explained. “I’ve got a fish–that’s the
easiest thing to keep up. I’ve never been into dogs, never
dealt with dogs, don’t like playing with dogs. But at the
same time,” he added, “there’s a lot of people who are
crazy over pets.”

Students at Harvard University were scalping tickets to
their own graduation, high school officials in Galesburg,
Ohio, withheld the diplomas of five seniors after their
friends and families cheered too loudly at the
commencement, and three students were arrested in Aurora,
Illinois, following a cafeteria food fight. “Milk cartons,
full pop bottles, and blue slushies were flying around,”
said one student. “Kids literally bought the food to throw
it and, to me, that’s a little expensive.” The Spanish
people resisted a government proposal to add lyrics to the
national anthem. “It’s fine to identify a country with
music,” said one Madrileno. “But a country with words, no,
I don’t like it.” In China, a spike in the price of pork
tenderloin and bacon caused people to begin eating more
fish, and it was reported that Xiang Xiang, a
five-year-old panda bred in captivity and released into
the wild, was found dead in February. Wild pandas are
suspected. Forest guards in western India were using cell
phone ring tones of cows mooing, goats bleating, and
roosters crowing to lure hungry leopards away from human
encampments. In Selmer, Tennessee, a preacher’s wife was
sentenced to three years in prison for murdering her
husband, whom she said forced her to perform “unnatural”
sex acts with a black wig and platform shoes on, and in
Bautzen, Germany, three teenagers were found not guilty of
impairing the sex drive of an ostrich. Britain’s Royal
Society for the Protection of Birds banned the word “cock”
from its website. “Tit” and “swallow,” however, were still
permitted. Scientists successfully produced talking
construction paper, trained dogs to track polar bear
feces, and made stem cells out of adult mice. Cultural
taboos against the public discussion of menopause were in
decline among the American middle class, and in England,
gingerists, or people with a bias against red hair, were
subjecting the auburn-headed to slurs like “you ginger
bastard” or “you right ginger whinger.” The Internet’s
storehouse of wisdom, information, and pornographic images
was determined to weigh 0.2 millionths of an ounce.

– Theodore Ross
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/06/WeeklyReview2007-06-12

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Add comment June 13th, 2007