H/T to Joe for this post:

Greg Palast- Why is a BBC reporter doing the work that American network reporters will not do?

The whole Alberto Gonzales hearing issue tying Karl Rove in with political appointments to law enforcement positions could be blown wide open by an investigation by Greg Palast. The great Pacifica news program DemocracyNow had Amy Goodman interview Palast and he told of how he received 500 emails that were mis-addressed from the Republican email server to a server that was owned by a Palast friendly group. Those emails contained open discussion of how voters were going to be wrongfully blacklisted and law enforcement officials were going to bring bogus charges against Democrats and Democratic voters just prior to the election. This video is a bit long but once you start you will see why Greg Palast should be given high praise for his work that is ignored by the American media…other than DemocracyNow. This is the video from 5/14/07. After the Palast interview is an excellent interview with two Afghan women about the lack of Democracy in Afghanistan and the shrinking rights Afghan women are seeing. An MP3, text transcript, high speed video and low speed video stream of both stories are found .
at Democracy Now.

On a single day, December 7, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales demanded the resignations of 8 United States Attorneys. What was really the purpose of the firings - and who was behind it? Investigative journalist Greg Palast reports.
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We turn to the latest in the US attorney firing scandal. Nearly half of the US attorneys slated for removal by the Bush administration last year were targeted for not doing enough to prosecute voter fraud. According to the Washington Post, of the twelve US attorneys known to have been dismissed or considered for removal last year, five were identified by presidential advisor Karl Rove or other administration officials as working in districts that were trouble spots for voter fraud: Kansas City, Milwaukee, New Mexico, Nevada and Washington state. Four of the five prosecutors in those districts were fired.
Perhaps the most well-known of these US attorneys is ousted New Mexico prosecutor David Iglesias. His case has been at the center of the political firestorm. Investigative journalist Greg Palast has been closely following this story. He files a report and joins us in our firehouse studio.

WASHINGTON: Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said Monday he will resign, the highest-ranking Bush administration casualty in the furor over the firing of U.S. attorneys, The Associated Press has learned.

McNulty, who has served 18 months as the Justice Department’s second-in-command, announced his plans at a closed-door meeting of U.S. attorneys in Texas, according to two senior department aides. He said he will remain at the department until this autumn or until the Senate approves a successor, the aides said.

McNulty irked his boss, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, by testifying in February that at least one of the fired prosecutors was ordered to make way for a protege of Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s chief political adviser. Gonzales, who has resisted lawmakers’ calls to resign, maintains the firings were proper and rooted in the prosecutors’ lackluster performances.

Two other former Justice Department officials - Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson and White House liaison Monica Goodling - also resigned in the last two months over the U.S. attorney firings.

It is unclear what McNulty will do after he leaves the Justice Department, where he held several high-ranking posts in current Bush administration and that of former President George H.W. Bush.

More at the International Herald Tribune

This whole thing is bugging me,” said Tom Heffelfinger, who says he doesn’t know why he might have been under scrutiny.

WASHINGTON - Former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger’s name was on an early list of attorneys that the Justice Department considered firing, a congressional aide said Friday.

Heffelfinger, who was appointed by President Bush in 2001, resigned voluntarily in February 2006, nearly six months before the first of eight U.S. attorneys were sent packing.

Heffelfinger said Friday that if his name did appear on a list for possible termination — something he won’t believe until he sees it himself — then it was because he may have displeased “one or two people with the Department of Justice.”

He said he was confident that he had not raised hackles in the White House or the Minnesota congressional delegation.

“This whole thing is bugging me,” Heffelfinger said of the press reports and speculation about whether he was shoved out the door to make room for a more clubby prosecutor.

“It’s been going on now for a couple of months, so I’d just as soon get it out in the open.”

Heffelfinger said he’s been trying to understand why he might have been targeted. “The only thing I can think of is my advocacy on behalf of Native American issues,” Heffelfinger said.

More at the Star Tribune

I’ve been watching the hearings as The House Judiciary Committee on the Internet.

It’s so obvious that Gonzales is lying through his “Fredo” teeth, it isn’t funny. Aside from showing some arrogance toward the House Committee members on occasion by being confrontational, I’ve noticed that he is blinking a tremendous number of times and is incredibly fidgety.

Now, this doesn’t mean he’s lying. Maybe he’s nervous. I would be too. But the fact that everyone in this administration regarding the group firing of U.S. Attorneys have invoked the “can’t recall” defense, it is now beginning to appear that someone is so full of feces, their eyes are brown.

It’s disgusting that the United States Constitution has come under attack by the “Bushies”, so much so that the Founding Fathers must be spinning in their graves.

Gonzales’ “can’t recall” defense means one of two things: He is lying or his memory is so bad that he is unfit to serve any longer as Attorney General.

This dog and pony show needs to be stopped right now! As a citizen of the United States, I am increasingly embarrassed by this administration’s disgusting behavior in this and other matters regarding the dirty tricks and obvious tactics to transform the entire government into a permanent oligarchy based on neo-con politics.

Here’s a little roundup of articles relating to the US Attorney firings scandal. Actually, this has gone beyond GonzoGate…..it’s Emailgate, it’s BushGate, Rovegate, JusticeDepartmentgate, RepublicanGate…….it’s a snowball charging down the hill, picking up speed and growing rapidly.

From an editorial in the ShepherdExpressconcerning Wisconsin US Attorney Biskupic :

But now, after weeks of news about Alberto Gonzales- Justice Department, we may have an answer to our questions. Feeling the political pressure, Biskupic first tried to find the massive voter fraud that the Republican Party and the Journal Sentinel, along with their talk-radio friends, screamed was rampant in the city of Milwaukee. They even provided hundreds of names of “illegal voters” that Biskupic attempted to track down. After spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars, he found that there was no rampant voter fraud.

The real question is why Biskupic hasn-t investigated Troha family contributions of tens of thousands of dollars to U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan and President Bush. Rep. Ryan received more than $50,000 in campaign contributions from the Troha family. The only difference is that Paul Ryan actually introduced special-interest legislation for Troha, signed by Bush, that substantially increased the value of Troha’s business. Ryan provided a clear quid pro quo and he should be investigated and perhaps indicted. Ryan, of course, denied he knew this was happening; however, when a congressman introduces special-interest legislation for a major contributor, what is he thinking about? If Biskupic is really trying to ferret out corruption, why isn-t he investigating Ryan, where there is actually a smoking gun of corruption? But, wait a second, isn-t Paul Ryan a Republican?

From the NYTImes concerning the missing emails:

WASHINGTON, April 12-The White House said Thursday that missing e-mail messages sent on Republican Party accounts may include some relating to the firing of eight United States attorneys.

It also exposed the dual electronic lives led by Mr. Rove and 21 other White House officials who maintain separate e-mail accounts for government business and work on political campaigns - and raised serious questions, in the eyes of Democrats, about whether political accounts were used to conduct official work without leaving a paper trail.

Also, the Senate interviewed top Gonzales aide, Bill Mercer, on Wednesday.

From ZNet: How this scandal relates to voter’s rights.

Center for Progressive Action looks at the problems this has caused inside US Attorney’s offices.

Of course, they’re too busy talking about Imass. All Imass, all the time……

I’ll say it again, I think this US Attorney firing scandal is going to snowball. Big time. I heard the appeals court judge in Chicago heard the attorney’s opening remarks. After the opening remarks, Ms. Thompson’s attorney was in his car driving back to Wisconsin. The judge, in the meantime, went through all the papers and documents. He had the attorney called and told to return to Chicago immediately and come back to the courtroom. When he arrived, the judge said this case was total bullshit, I want this woman released NOW. This woman lost her job, was falsely prosecuted, had to sell her home to pay legal fees, and spent 4 months in prison. I try not to hate, because it is a waste of energy, but I do hate the Bush administration and all the damage they’ve done. There’s no punishment great enough for these amoral, self serving assholes.

An April 11 article in The Washington Post on the House Judiciary Committee’s decision to subpoena hundreds of Justice Department documents related to the U.S. attorney firings noted that Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) has “joined other members in demanding records and additional information about a federal public corruption case” in Wisconsin. Regarding the case, the Post reported only that a federal appeals court in Chicago ordered a former state employee to be “released after overturning her conviction.” The article did not report that Georgia Thompson — who was not identified by name — was convicted on charges brought by a Bush-appointed U.S. attorney just before the 2006 election, that Wisconsin Republicans used her conviction to attack Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle (D) during the campaign, that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit took the highly unusual action of ordering the defendant released during oral argument because of the lack of evidence to support the conviction, and that Feingold and five other senators have requested information about the case to investigate whether “politics may have played an inappropriate role” in the prosecution.

Full article at Media Matters

From a New York Times Editorial:

As Congress investigates the politicization of the United States attorney offices by the Bush administration, it should review the extraordinary events the other day in a federal courtroom in Wisconsin. The case involved Georgia Thompson, a state employee sent to prison on the flimsiest of corruption charges just as her boss, a Democrat, was fighting off a Republican challenger. It just might shed some light on a question that lurks behind the firing of eight top federal prosecutors: what did the surviving attorneys do to escape the axe?

Ms. Thompson, a purchasing official in the state’s Department of Administration, was accused by the United States attorney in Milwaukee, Steven Biskupic, of awarding a travel contract to a company whose chief executive contributed to the campaign of Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat. Ms. Thompson said the decision was made on the merits, but she was convicted and sent to prison before she could appeal.

The prosecution was a boon to Mr. Doyle’s opponent. Republicans ran a barrage of attack ads that purported to tie Ms. Thompson’s “corruption” to Mr. Doyle. Ms. Thompson was sentenced shortly before the election, which Governor Doyle won.

Continue reading at the NY Times

About time……now my question is, how does this play on her testifying? Funny a girl who attended a college that is “committed to an embracing evangelical spirit,” is so worried about perjury. Doesn’t she know the truth will set her free???

WASHINGTON: A top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned on Friday, becoming another casualty of the political storm that has rocked the Justice Department since the dismissals of eight federal prosecutors last year.

The aide, Monica Goodling, had helped to coordinate those dismissals with the White House, an episode that has provoked demands for Gonzales’s dismissal. Even his allies, including President George W. Bush, say the dismissals were bungled from the standpoint of public relations and politics.

Goodling, who has been on leave as the Justice Department’s liaison to the White House, notified the Senate Judiciary Committee through her lawyer on March 26 that she would invoke her constitutional right not to testify in the panel’s inquiry about the dismissals - not because she had anything to hide, the lawyer said, but because she did not expect fair treatment in the current climate of political hostility.

Last sentence……. now the Justice Dept. admits they gave congress inaccurate info, and that Rove did play a role in the firings. Hearing is on today at 10:00 am on C-Span3. Must see tv!

WASHINGTON, March 28 - Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales endured blunt criticism Tuesday from federal prosecutors who questioned the firings of eight United States attorneys, complained that the dismissals had undermined morale and expressed broader grievances about his leadership, according to people briefed on the discussion.

Several of the prosecutors said the dismissals caused them to wonder about their own standing and distracted their employees, according to one person familiar with the discussions. Others asked Mr. Gonzales about the removal of Daniel C. Bogden, the former United States attorney in Nevada, a respected career prosecutor whose ouster has never been fully explained by the Justice Department.

While Mr. Gonzales’s trip was part of a long’scheduled tour, he has been meeting in recent days with prosecutors in an effort to repair the damage caused by the dismissals. President Bush has backed Mr. Gonzales, but his tenure at the Justice Department may still be in peril as lawmakers in both parties have called for his resignation, questioned his credibility and raised doubts that he can lead the department.

His former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, is to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. In his prepared testimony, Mr. Sampson, who resigned two weeks ago, said the prosecutors were fired not for political reasons, but because they failed to follow the president’s priorities. He is likely to be closely questioned about the extent of Mr. Gonzales’s involvement in planning the firings.

On Wednesday, the Justice Department released more than 200 additional pages of e-mail messages and other documents and sent a letter to lawmakers saying that it had given Congress inaccurate information in an earlier letter that asserted that Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, had played no role in the removals.

More at the NYTimes

Eubanks said Congress should not limit its investigation to the dismissal of the U.S. attorneys.

No politics in the US Justice system…..nawwww. Never happen. Impeach Impeach Impeach. There’s GOT to be a way!!!!!!!!!

The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government’s racketeering case.

Sharon Y. Eubanks said Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s office began micromanaging the team’s strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial, to the detriment of the government’s claim that the industry had conspired to lie to U.S. smokers.

She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty. He and two others instructed her to tell key witnesses to change their testimony. And they ordered Eubanks to read verbatim a closing argument they had rewritten for her, she said.

“The political people were pushing the buttons and ordering us to say what we said,” Eubanks said. “And because of that, we failed to zealously represent the interests of the American public.”

Continue reading at the Washington Post

In September 2006, just weeks before pivotal Congressional midterm elections, Paul Charlton, US Attorney for Arizona, opened a preliminary investigation into Republican Representative Rick Renzi of the state’s First Congressional District for an alleged pattern of corruption involving influence-peddling and land deals. Almost immediately, Charlton’s name was added to a blacklist of federal prosecutors the White House wanted to force from their jobs. Charlton is someone “we should now consider pushing out,” D. Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez’s chief of staff, wrote to then White House Counsel Harriet Miers on September 13. In his previously safe Republican district, Renzi had barely held on in the election. On December 7, the White House demanded Charlton’s resignation without offering him any explanation.

Who is Brent Ward?

Ward first came to prominence in Utah, where as US Attorney during the Reagan era he cast himself as a crusader against pornography. His battles made him one of the most fervent and earnest witnesses before Attorney General Edwin Meese’s Commission on Pornography; he urged “testing the endurance” of pornographers by relentless prosecutions. Meese was so impressed that he named Ward a leader of a group of US Attorneys engaged in a federal anti-pornography campaign, which soon disappeared into the back rooms of adult bookshops to ferret out evildoers. Ward returned to government last year as the chief of the Justice Department’s newly created Obscenity Prosecution Task Force, where his main achievement has been the prosecution of the producer of the Girls Gone Wild film series.

Full article at the Nation

Just say no……..

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House offered on Tuesday to make President George W. Bush’s senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and other officials available to congressional investigators to give unsworn testimony in the firings of U.S. attorneys.

In a letter to relevant members of Congress, White House counsel Fred Fielding made clear he was not offering them to give sworn testimony as they have requested.

“Such interviews would be private and conducted without the need for an oath, transcript, subsequent testimony or the subsequent issuance of subpoenas,” Fielding wrote.

Democratic lawmakers described the offer as unsatisfactory, saying they wanted the witnesses under oath. But they also said they and others would consider it before formally responding.

The White House said Bush would address the issue at 5:45 p.m./2145 GMT when he returned from Kansas City.

The fallout over the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys has triggered a Democratic investigation over whether the action was politically motivated and raised doubts about how long Attorney General Alberto Gonzales can remain in his job.

More at Reuters

Tony Snow: “None of us knows what’s going to happen to us over the next 21 months.”

Me: “I know what I’d like to happen to all of you in the next 21 months.”

WASHINGTON - The White House began floating the names of possible replacements for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Monday as the Justice Department released more internal documents related to the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

One prominent Republican, who earlier had predicted that Gonzales would survive the controversy, said he expected both Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty to resign soon. Another well-connected Republican said that White House officials have launched an aggressive search for Gonzales’ replacement, though Bush hadn’t decided whether to ask for his resignation.

Support for Gonzales appeared to be collapsing under the weight of questions about his truthfulness and his management ability. White House spokesman Tony Snow offered a tepid defense when asked if Gonzales would stay on the job until the end of President Bush’s term.

“We hope so,” Snow said. “None of us knows what’s going to happen to us over the next 21 months.”

Read more here

The U.S. attorney in San Diego notified the Justice Department of search warrants in a Republican bribery scandal last May 10, one day before the attorney general’s chief of staff warned the White House of a “real problem” with her, a Democratic senator said yesterday.

The prosecutor, Carol S. Lam, was dismissed seven months later as part of an effort by the Justice Department and the White House to fire eight U.S. attorneys.

A Justice spokesman said there was no connection between Lam’s firing and her public corruption investigations, and pointed to criticisms of Lam for her record on prosecuting immigration cases.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a television appearance yesterday that Lam “sent a notice to the Justice Department saying that there would be two search warrants” in a criminal investigation of defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes and Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, who had just quit as the CIA’s top administrator amid questions about his ties to disgraced former GOP congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham.

The next day, May 11, D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, sent an e-mail message to William Kelley in the White House counsel’s office saying that Lam should be removed as quickly as possible, according to documents turned over to Congress last week.

“Please call me at your convenience to discuss the following,” Sampson wrote, referring to “[t]he real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires.”

The FBI raided Foggo’s home and former CIA office on May 12. He was indicted along with Wilkes on fraud and money-laundering charges on Feb. 13 — two days before Lam left as U.S. attorney.

Continued at the Washington Post

H/T Bat for this post!

But he doesn’t recall the details. Riggghhhttt!

Former Washington state Republican Party Chairman Chris Vance acknowledged Tuesday that he contacted then-U.S. Attorney John McKay to inquire about the status of federal investigations into the 2004 governor’s race while the outcome was still in dispute.

Vance also spoke regularly with presidential adviser Karl Rove’s aides about the election, which Democrat Christine Gregoire ultimately won by 129 votes over Republican Dino Rossi. But Vance said he doesn’t recall discussing with the White House McKay’s performance or Republicans’ desires for a formal federal investigation.

Vance’s revelations come as Congress continues investigating whether the firings of McKay and seven other U.S. attorneys by the Bush administration were politically motivated.

Vance is one of at least two Republican officials who called McKay to inquire about a possible investigation by his office into the governor’s race.

In testimony before Congress last week, McKay said that he received a call in late 2004 or early 2005 from Ed Cassidy, then chief of staff for Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Pasco, inquiring about the status of ongoing investigations into possible voter fraud. McKay said he cut off Cassidy before he could ask inappropriate questions.

McKay has never publicly mentioned being contacted by Vance. “I vaguely remember getting a call from Chris Vance” about the election, he said Tuesday, “but I don’t remember anything significant about the call.”

More at the Seattle Times