WARNING! The following post contains images that may be too intense for young children or pregnant women. Parental Discretion is advised.
In a comment to this post, PrchrLady wondered if Michael Chertoff and Harriet Miers paired off together, what would their children look like. Because Watching Those We Chose is a full-service blog, here's your answer, PrchrLady:
An editorial in this morning's New York Times neatly sums up Bradley Schlozman's testimony concerning the ACORN indictments and his role in the politicization of the Department of Justice.
Mr. Schlozman said it did not occur to him that the indictments could affect the campaign. That is hard to believe since the Justice Department’s guidelines tell prosecutors not to bring vote fraud investigations right before an election, so as not to affect the outcome. He also claimed, laughably, that he did not know that Acorn was a liberal-leaning group.All roads in this scandal lead to the White House. The White House refuses to make Harriet Miers, Karl Rove, Scott Jennings, Sara Taylor and William Kelley available for testimony under oath and have generally stonewalled regarding critical emails. At long last the Times editorial board has concluded
Mr. Schlozman fits neatly into the larger picture. Prosecutors who refused to use their offices to help Republicans win elections, like John McKay in Washington State, and David Iglesias in New Mexico, were fired. Prosecutors who used their offices to help Republicans did well.
This noncooperation has gone on long enough. Mr. Leahy should deliver the subpoenas for the five White House officials and make clear that if the administration resists, Congress will use all available means to get the information it needs.The Nattering Nabob says, "My God, even the New York Times gets it." The Nattering Nabob is right.
Pressrelease 365 reports the following:
Kansas City, MO 04/09/07 - Medical Supply Chain founder Samuel Lipari unearthed a US Department of Justice memo revealing the Office of the Attorney General had targeted not eight but ten US Attorneys including the former attorney for the Western District of Missouri, Todd P. Graves. The documents were obtained during Medical Supply Chain's discovery related to the civil antitrust action Medical Supply Chain, Inc. v. Novation LLC, et al, Western District of Missouri case #05-210-CV-W-ODS filed on March 9, 2005.Why would Samuel Lipari be in a position to unearth this tidbit. Well, it seems that his company Medical Supply Chain, has been actively engaged in a civil anti-trust suit against Novation, LLC, Volunteer Hospital Association (VHA), University Health System Consortium (UHC) and Neoforma, Inc. Lipari claims the companies "were involved in a scheme to monopolize hospital supplies to defraud Medicare through payments to administrators and kickbacks. The scheme resulted in almost all of Kansas City, Missouri St. Luke's hospital's one hundred million dollar supply budget being purchased through Novation LLC. St. Luke's merged with University of Kansas Hospital after Irene Cumming, CEO of the University of Kansas Hospital was given a job by University Health System Consortium (UHC) on March 19, 2007."
The e-mail dated January 9th, 2006 from Kyle Sampson, chief of staff for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, to Harriet Miers and William Kelley at the White House, shows the ten U.S. Attorneys that were first selected to voluntarily resign or face termination. Attorneys that resigned were redacted. Todd P. Graves of Missouri resigned March 24, 2006.
Lest we forget Tim Griffin is currently ensconced as the interim US Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. He was appointed under the Specter amendment to the US Patriot Act. Kyle Sampson gave detailed instructions on how Justice should deal with the two Democratic senators now clamoring to nominate a permanent replacement for Bud Cummins.
The New York Times reports:
In a Dec. 19 e-mail message, Mr. Sampson wrote: “Getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc.,” a reference to Ms. Miers and Mr. Rove.Of course.
Mr. Sampson’s e-mail message, sent to the White House and Justice Department colleagues, suggested he was hoping to stall efforts by the state’s two Democratic senators to pick their own candidates as permanent successors for Mr. Cummins.
“I think we should gum this to death,” Mr. Sampson wrote. "Ask the senators to give Tim a chance, meet with him, give him some time in office to see how he performs, etc. If they ultimately say ‘no never’ (and the longer we can forestall that the better), then we can tell them we’ll look for other candidates, ask them for recommendations, interview their candidates, and otherwise run out the clock. All this should be done in ‘good faith’ of course."
Yesterday I speculated that the entire prosecutor firing dust up might be a smoke screen for the removal of Carol Lam. Apparently Josh Marshall had the same thought. This morning Josh points to language in a May 11, 2006 email Kyle Sampson, Gonzale's chief of staff, urged Harriet Miers to call him regarding "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam." It seems that just then the Wilkes Foggo investigation was really heating up. Porter Goss had resigned as CIA director and Rep. Jerry Lewis had been implicated in the scandal. On May 12, 2006, FBI agents executed search warrants on Foggo's office and home.
Note the phrasing "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam." Carol Lam and not Dusty Foggo's corruption is the problem. What is an obvious solution to the "Carol Lam problem," fire her, and that is exactly what they did.
Read Josh's timeline. This line of inquiry has to be explored.
Ron Hutcheson, Marisa Taylor and Margaret Talev of McClatchy Newspapers report that "In a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he wants to know whether Lam was fired for the Cunningham case or because "she was about to investigate other people who were politically powerful." You are not alone Senator, you are not alone.
Why would Harriet Miers recommend taking down all the incumbent USAs. That would have been unprecedented in the middle of a term. Why did they then draw up lists of USAs to hit? Normally those matters would have been handled one person at a time. Instead they decided to bring several of them down in a group. There is only one reason for taking out a whole group at once. There is somebody you don't want to take out all by herself.
The more I read about this the more I am forced to the conclusion that this is one giant obstruction of justice case and it is focused like a laser on Carol Lam. Wilkes or Foggo was about to turn. She was getting close to taking out her second Congressman, Jerry Lewis. Duncan Hunter was not far away. From Duncan Hunter it probably isn't a big jump to somebody even bigger.
No this is the biggest scandal since Watergate. Probably the biggest since Teapot Dome. You can just smell it.
Tpmmuckraker has published the best time line of this scandal so far. It looks like this mess all began in the White House. For some reason back in 2005 people were a little hacked at the operations of the US Attorneys around the country. Harriet Miers proposed canning all 93 of them. Alberto said no, that would be too disruptive. She put her head together with her buddy Kyle Sampson at the DoJ and came up with a hit list of 12. That list changed over time. Analyzing that list is going to be fun. Any bets as to the common theme. How about a refusal to knuckle under to local Republican demands for investigations of Democrats?
I wonder why Harriet wanted to can all 93 US Attorneys? Maybe somebody should ask her.
I said last week that the game was afoot. Well last evening two very important things happened. First, Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson resigned. Allegedly he did not tell key Justice officials about the extent of his communications with the White House, leading them to provide incomplete information to Congress. Second, and the reason for Sampson's admission and resignation, several key documents were made available to congress and the press. The documents indicate that in February of 2005 former White House Counsel Harriet Miers proposed that the administration fire all 93 of the then serving US Attorneys. According to this morning's Washington Post article Gonzales rejected Meirs idea as impractical, but endorsed Sampson's
recommend(ation) that the Department of Justice and the Office of the Counsel to the President work together to seek the replacement of a limited number of U.S. Attorneys. (A) limited number of U.S. attorneys could be targeted for removal and replacement, mitigating the shock to the system that would result from an across the board firing.Later Sampson
strongly urged bypassing Congress in naming replacements, using a little-known power slipped into the renewal of the USA Patriot Act in March 2006 that allows the attorney general to name interim replacements without Senate confirmation.
"I am only in favor of executing on a plan to push some USAs out if we really are ready and willing to put in the time necessary to select candidates and get them appointed," Sampson wrote in a Sept. 17 memo to Miers. "It will be counterproductive to DOJ operations if we push USAs out and then don't have replacements ready to roll immediately.
"I strongly recommend that as a matter of administration, we utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make USA appointments," he wrote.
By avoiding Senate confirmation, Sampson added, "we can give far less deference to home state senators and thereby get 1.) our preferred person appointed and 2.) do it far faster and more efficiently at less political costs to the White House."
"Kyle thanks for this," Miers wrote back. "I have not forgotten I need to follow up on the info. But things have been crazy."
Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans that some prosecutors were not aggressively addressing voter fraud, the White House said Monday. Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, was among the politicians who complained directly to the president, according to an administration official.
The president did not call for the removal of any specific United States attorneys, said Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman. She said she had “no indication” that the president had been personally aware that a process was already under way to identify prosecutors who would be fired.
But Ms Perino disclosed that White House officials had consulted with the Justice Department in preparing the list of United States attorneys who would be removed.
Within a few weeks of the president’s comments to the attorney general, the Justice Department forced out seven prosecutors.
