This evening yet more details have emerged from the prosecutor purge scandal, details that have the potential to cause even more woes for the already embattled Bush administration. First, McClatchy newspapers' team of Ron Hutcheson, Marisa Taylor and Margaret Talev report on circumstantial evidence that greatly adds to the case that the Bush administration fired United States Attorneys either as a result of their investigations of Republican lawmakers or their refusal to investigate Democrats.
At least two of the U.S. attorneys who were later forced to step down, Iglesias in New Mexico and Paul Charlton of Arizona, were on Sampson's "retain" list in February 2005.But by September of 2006 - after it became clear that Charlton had launched an investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz, - Sampson included the Arizona prosecutor on another list of U.S. attorneys "we now should consider pushing out."
Other memos and e-mails suggest a variety of reasons that individual prosecutors might have fallen out of favor.
In an e-mail dated May 11, 2006, Sampson urged the White House counsel's office to call him regarding "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam," who then the U.S. attorney for southern California. Earlier that morning, the Los Angeles Times reported that Lam's corruption investigation of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif., had expanded to include another California Republican, Rep Jerry Lewis.
David Johnston and Eric Lipton add more on this front.
Another United States attorney, David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, was added to the hit list in the fall of 2006 after criticism from his home state, including a demand by Senator Pete V. Domenici, a Republican, to meet with the attorney general to discuss the performance of Mr. Iglesias's office.
As is now evidenced by emails and other documents, the decisions to fire Iglesias, Lam and Charlton followed almost immediately after reports of their investigations of Republicans or after complaints by Republican officials that they were not going after Democrats. At this point the evidence, as I noted above, is largely circumstantial, but we are quickly getting to the point at which the preponderance of evidence suggests that there was a causality between the the reports/complaints and the firings. Certainly a preponderance of evidence is not enough to convict in a court of law. But it is probably enough to warrant the appointment of a special prosecutor to begin an official investigation, as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is now advocating for. It is definitely enough to build the case in the court of public opinion against the political and partisan actions by the Bush administration.
Given this situation, coupled with Gonzales' poor performance in his press conference in which he completely and utterly failed to deflect criticisms about his actions, it's no wonder that some are beginning to float the notion of a resignation by Gonzales. And not all of those floating the ideas are Democrats, either. From The New York Times' duo of Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jeff Zeleny comes an indication that Republicans -- unnamed at this point, but administration allies, nonetheless -- might be trying to pin blame and culpability for the scandal on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, perhaps an indication that those high up in the administration and the GOP are thinking about hedging their bets by designating Gonzales as the fall guy for the scandal.
With Democrats, including the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, insisting that Mr. Gonzales should step down, his appearance underscored what two Republicans close to the Bush administration described as a growing rift between the White House and the attorney general. Mr. Gonzales has long been a confidant of the president but has aroused the ire of lawmakers of both parties on several issues, including the administration's domestic eavesdropping program.The two Republicans, who spoke anonymously so they could share private conversations with senior White House officials, said top aides to Mr. Bush, including Fred F. Fielding, the new White House counsel, were concerned that the controversy had so damaged Mr. Gonzales's credibility that he would be unable to advance the White House agenda on sensitive national security matters, including terror prosecutions.
"I really think there's a serious estrangement between the White House and Alberto now," one of the Republicans said. [emphasis added]
This type of story does not come out of nowhere. Republicans don't just leak news to the press that "there's a serious estrangement" between the President and his Attorney General, a longtime ally, for nothing. I have suggested that the President will be forced into a position where he will have to throw one of his closest and most trusted staffers -- Gonzales or Karl Rove -- under the bus in the hopes of saving the other, and perhaps this is the reasoning behind this story.
Whatever the case may be, just the fact that this story continues to endure on the front page of major newspapers almost every day is terrible news both for the Bush administration and the Republican Party, and the fact that the news today is particularly damning makes matters even worse for them.
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