It is being reported in the New York Times that Harriet Meirs personally phoned an aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales suggesting the appointment of J. Timothy Griffin a political director for the Republican National Committee and a deputy to Karl Rove US Attorney for Arkansas.
I guess President Bush just wanted to give Mr. Griffin a chance to advance his career. Of course he could have done that by giving him a Washington job in the Justice Department. Mr. Griffin wouldn't have had to sell his Washington house and move to Little Rock.
Hillary Clinton is running for President. That Hillary spent several years in Arkansas couldn't have anything to do with the appointment?
In fairness reportedly Mr. Griffin had worked as a Federal Prosecutor and as a JAG officer at some point prior to becoming a Rovian henchman.
On the other hand the Arkansas Times has reported that not all the the folks in Arkansas are happy about the appointment.
“Quite frankly, within the legal community in Central Arkansas and even Eastern Arkansas, they felt Bud was being pushed out so Tim could be rewarded with this position he wanted,” said Michael Teague, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor.
U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln said, “Clearly, the president and his administration are aware of the difficulty it would take to get Tim Griffin confirmed through the normal process, and therefore chose to circumvent it in order to name him as interim U.S. attorney. This decision denied the Senate the opportunity to carefully consider and evaluate Mr. Griffin’s qualifications and denied the American people the transparency the standard nomination process provides.”
The Arkansas Times reports that Mr. Griffin's political work includes "serving from 1995-96 as an associate independent counsel investigating Henry Cisneros, who was President Bill Clinton’s secretary of housing and urban development; senior investigative counsel to the Republican-controlled House Government Reform Committee’s 1997-99 inquiry into foreign contributions to the Democratic National Committee; deputy research director for the Republican National Committee from 1999-2000; legal adviser to the Bush/Cheney recount team in Florida following the 2000 election; special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff from 2001-02; and research director and deputy communications director for the Republican National Committee from 2002-05, after which he joined the White House political affairs office."
The British Broadcasting Corporation has unearthed e-mail messages Griffin sent from the RNC in 2004 containing spreadsheet information on thousands of Florida voters. The spreadsheets were titled “caging,” which, according to the BBC, alludes to a voter suppression tactic.
Griffin's caging scheme was a particularly nasty suppression tactic aimed at black sericemembers. According to Greg Palast / Democracy Now! the RNC mailed voters letters in envelopes marked, “Do not forward”, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as "undeliverable." The party could then challenge the voters' registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballot being counted.
Palast reports that
One target list was comprised exclusively of voters registered at the Jacksonville, Florida, Naval Air Station. Jacksonville is third largest naval installation in the US, best known as home of the Blue Angels fighting squandron.
The BBC obtained several dozen confidential emails sent by the Republican's national Research Director and Deputy Communications chief, Tim Griffin to GOP Florida campaign chairman Brett Doster and other party leaders. Attached were spreadsheets marked, "Caging.xls." Each of these contained several hundred to a few thousand voters and their addresses.
A check of the demographics of the addresses on the "caging lists," as the GOP leaders called them indicated that most were in African-American majority zip codes.
Gee, I wonder why Griffin wouldn't want to have his name submitted to the Senate for confirmation.
