Attorney General Alberto Gonzales isn't the only one having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. The flow of information surrounding the Bush administration's move to fire several United States Attorneys on political grounds has only increased in recent days, with reporters at McClatchy, among others, scoring some serious scoops -- almost all of which mean bad news for those in the upper echelon of the administration, including President Bush's closest advisor Karl Rove. First, McClatchy's team of Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor writing on Saturday.
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 with his job performance including his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Chairman Allen Weh 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.
Weh's account calls into question the Justice Department's stance that the recent decision to fire eight U.S. attorneys, including Iglesias, was made without the White House weighing in. Justice Department officials have said the White House's involvement was limited to approving a list of the U.S. attorneys after the Justice Department made the decision to fire them.
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Weh recalled asking Rove at a White House holiday event in December: "Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" What Weh didn't know was that the firings of Iglesias and the others had already been approved.
Weh said Rove told him: "`He's gone.' I probably said something close to `Hallelujah.'"
In an article online today that details the White House's response to the Talev/Taylor article (Bush spokesperson Dana Perino conceded that Rove had acted as a conduit), the McClatchy duo, plus Ron Hutcheson, report the following:
The new details about Rove's involvement emerged as the top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee declared their interest in talking to him.The committee is trying to determine whether the firings were part of an effort to exert political control over federal prosecutors. Democrats consider Rove the key source for any political interference at the Justice Department because of his role at the center of politics and policy in the White House.
Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., and Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., confirmed their plans after McClatchy Newspapers reported Saturday that New Mexico's Republican Party chairman, Allen Weh, had complained to Rove and one of Rove's deputies about Iglesias.
"Mr. Conyers and Ms. Sanchez intend to talk with Karl Rove about any role he may have had in the firing of the U.S. attorneys," Sanchez spokesman James Dau said. "The revelations from Mr. Weh certainly give us something else relevant and salient to talk about."
As if all of this were not bad enough for Rove and Gonzales, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reports in the March 19 issue of the magazine that a second ousted U.S. Attorney, David McKay of Seattle, has come forward and stated that he was pressured by a senior Justice Department official to stay silent about his firing and senior Democratic lawmakers began calls for the resignation of the Attorney General.
My sense at this moment is that it will not be the case that both Rove and Gonzales emerge from this scandal with their jobs -- that President Bush will have to throw one of them under the bus to save the other. Naturally, this would be an extremely difficult decision for the President as the two men have been among his closest political advisors throughout his career. That said, given the realization that at least one head will need to roll as a result of this ongoing scandal, which continues to hit its stride with every new revelation, President Bush would likely make the choice to sacrifice one of his advisors to save the other. Which one he would choose to protect, I do not know, nor would I at this time care to guess.
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