DOJ's Elston resigns

Another senior DOJ official, Michael Elston, has resigned. According to a DOJ anonymous source, Elston has accepted a job at a Washington law firm and his last day at the scandal-laden DOJ is next Friday.

McClatchy Washington Bureau:

Michael Elston, chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, became the fifth department official to leave his post since the controversy over the firings rocked the nation's top law enforcement agency....

... Elston's name first surfaced when one of the fired U.S. attorneys, Bud Cummins of Arkansas, disclosed in March that Elston had phoned him to suggest that senior department officials would retaliate against the prosecutors if they discussed their firings publicly.

In an e-mail written to five of the ousted U.S. attorneys minutes after the Elston call, Cummins said of the conversation: "I was tempted to challenge him and say something movie-like such as `are you threatening ME???'"

The department denied that Elston was trying to intimidate or silence the dismissed U.S. attorneys.

Elston's name also showed up on numerous e-mails in which department officials weighed which U.S. attorneys to fire. In one e-mail, he was informed about how the department would deal with the fallout from the firings.

In recent testimony, the former interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Bradley Schlozman, disclosed that he sought approval from Elston before bringing indictments for voter-registration fraud against four workers for a liberal-leaning group [ACORN] just days before the 2006 election. Department policy discourages such prosecutions on the eve of elections.

Elston's boss, McNulty, announced recently that he would leave his job at the end of the summer.

Paul Kiel itemizes some of Elston's "hit jobs" at the DOJ :

-- He allegedly called three of the fired U.S. attorneys [Charlton, McKay, and Cummins] and made an implicit threat that the Justice Department would detail the reasons for their firings if they didn't stay quiet.

-- He allegedly rejected a large number of applicants to Justice Department positions because they were Democrats.

-- When Carol Lam, the former U.S. attorney for San Diego, asked to stay on the job longer in order to deal with some outstanding prosecutions (the expanding Duke Cunningham case among them), Elston told her not to think about her cases, that she should be gone in "weeks, not months" and said "these instructions were 'coming from the very highest levels of the government.'"

-- He called around to the U.S. attorneys whom he had placed on one of the draft firing lists to apologize when he discovered that his list would be turned over to Congress.

Let me get this straight: Schlozman fingered Elston in getting approval for the ACORN indictments by going over Craig Donsanto's head. As Corpus Juris explained, "...everyone agrees the indictments flew in the face of Donsanto's own manual, DoJ rules and long standing tradition." And now Elston plans to leave the DOJ. Uh-huh.

The rats are deserting the sinking ship at the Bush Administration's DOJ. Now if only the WH firewall, er, I mean AG Gonzales would resign. But don't hold your breath.

POSTSCRIPT: Background on the ACORN indictments are here and here and here.

UPDATE: WaPo adds a few details and a statement from Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY):

"Alberto Gonzales appears to be the last man standing, but he should have been the first to go," Schumer said. "Almost every official involved in the U.S. attorney firings is gone, but that doesn't change the simple fact that the buck stops with the attorney general."

Indeed.

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Von Spakovsky and Schlozman, The Tweedledee and Tweedledum of Republican Voter Suppression

Next week, unless he decides to quit, (my bet) there will be a confirmation hearing for Hans Von Spakovsky to the Federal Election Commission.

This afternoon the Brennen Center for Justice and the Lawyers Committee sponsored a press conference providing background information about Von Spakovsky's role in the Republican voter suppression campaign. The presser was held at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. The questions were answered by Joseph Rich, former chief of the Voting Rights Division, of the Civil Rights Division of the USDoJ's Professional Staff.

Unfortunately, I live a thousand miles away. As much as I would like I just couldn't attend. Because Von Spakovsky is the next big name on the voter suppression hit parade, I am looking for a complete transcript. We will hear a lot about Hans during the coming week.

Because they office in DC and they have a real budget, ThinkProgress was able to send a reporter. (Blue girl, you need to do something about that.)

The press conference took a 1/2 step away from Von Spakovsky when one of the reporters ask Rich questions about Bradley Schlozman and the ACORN indictments. You will recall that Schlozman is adamant that Craig Donsanto, the director of the Election Crimes branch in the Public Integrity section, ordered him to go forward with the indictments in the face of express directions published the manual Donsanto wrote. ThinkProgress is reporting this evening that Rich believes

“Schlozman’s the person who recommended those lawsuits, he pushed to get them, and I suspect [Schlozman] pressured Donsanto.”

According to ThinkProgress, Rich said, “I’ve heard that Schlozman talked to [Michael] Elston, which indicated he may have gone over Donsanto’s head to get approval.”

That kind of pressure might explain why Schlozman was so sure Donsanto would back him up even though everyone agrees the indictments flew in the face of Donsanto's own manual, DoJ rules and long standing tradition.

Whatever rock you turn over in this voter suppression mess you find Von Spakovsky and Schlozman. They are virtually Tweedledee and Tweedledum. I wonder how high up the food chain we have to go to find their master?

This has been an interesting exercise. I have learned how to spell some funny sounding German names.

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I Am Sick Of Anonymous Sources

I have been following the outstanding coverage of the US Attorney scandal provided by The Washington Post's Dan Eggen since the beginning. I have never failed to learn something new reading his articles. Never, until today.

This morning Eggen filed a pretty routine story describing Bradley Schlozman's testimony about the election fraud indictments he brought just prior to the 2006 election. Schlozman claimed, under oath, that he didn't think the indictments against four former low level employees of the left leaning voter registration group ACORN would have any impact on the election. Eggen noted (as all of us who live in Missouri knew) that in the final four days of that election the GOP used the indictments in their campaign against Claire McCaskill.

Eggen reports that Todd Graves, who was familiar with the DoJ manual on the subject, later testified he was surprised that Schlozman brought the indictments so close to an election. The manual states United States Attorneys "must refrain from any conduct which has the possibility of affecting the election itself," and "most, if not all, investigation of an alleged election crime must await the end of the election to which the allegation relates."

So far there nothing in Eggen's piece that hasn't been reported elsewhere.

Then at the end of the story he trots out the following.

A department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the policy "does not mean . . . that the department forbids the filing of any charges, ever, around the time of an election." The Missouri case involved voter-registration efforts, rather than the election itself, the official said.

Who is the department official Dan? Is it Schlozman, or somebody in his camp? Is it Craig Donsanto, the official Schlozman spent all day hiding behind? To whom did you give anonymity? If it is Schlozman or somebody in his camp, that's no big whoop. If it is Donsanto, that is news, especially since TPMmuckraker is reporting that Donsanto, who wrote the manual, told David Iglesias something entirely different in a similar case. Without the official's identity there is not a single bit of news in your article. Why would you give the official anonymity anyway? The guy didn't exactly give you a whistle blowing quote.

A sad day for Dan Eggen. He seems to have gone Washington.

Dan, if you want a real story, try finding out when the GOP wrote and produced its negative ads. There were only four days between the indictments and the election. The ads were up pronto. If the ads were in production before the indictments then you have caught Schlozman in a giant lie. He says he didn't talk to anybody besides Donsanto and his people prior to the indictments. He also says that he didn't think the indictments would affect the election. The GOP obviously did. The timing was so precise, I wouldn't be surprised to learn the date of the indictment was on somebody's election campaign flowchart.

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