White House Officials Implicated in Politically Motivated Cases

Karl Rove Accused of Crafting Messages

by Glynn Wilson

A special prosecutor has been appointed to investigate Bush administration officials for turning the Justice Department into a political arm of the White House, according to a press release and a report issued Monday by United States Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

While the press release focuses on the political motivated firing of nine U.S. attorneys across the country, a voluminous report from the Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility takes White House officials and members of Congress to task for the undue influence of politics in the administration of justice.

While a quick scan of the 356-page report indicates it does not deal directly with the related political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, the report describes potential crimes to be looked into in the political firings of nine U.S. attorneys, including lies told to investigators, obstruction of justice, and wire fraud.

In a Washington press conference, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility director Marshall Jarrett said that a special prosecutor was needed because “serious allegations involving potential criminal conduct have not been fully investigated or resolved.”

Justice Department officials said they do not have the complete story of the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias of New Mexico, one of the most blatant cases, but blamed his firing on the actions of Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, who had complained about his handling of voter fraud and public corruption cases. Their issue with Iglesias was that he did not use his office fast enough or hard enough to prosecute Democrats.

The Bush administration wanted Democrats investigated and prosecuted to keep them from winning elections, as they did to Siegelman in 2005 after he announced his intention to run for governor again in 2006.

The report’s most scathing criticism is reserved for Bush’s former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, although former White House political adviser Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, and former Justice Department official Monica Goodling, and other key witnesses are taken to task. The report says Gonzales “bears primary responsibility” for the process of firing of the prosecutors and the turmoil that followed, since he “abdicated” his leadership role and was “remarkably unengaged.”

The report concludes that his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, was the person most responsible for coming up with the plan to fire the prosecutors and indicates that his comments to Congress, the White House, and others were at least “misleading” if not outright perjury and obstruction of justice.

According to Mukasey, the Report makes plain that, “at a minimum, the process by which nine U.S. Attorneys were removed in 2006 was haphazard, arbitrary, and unprofessional, and that the way in which the Justice Department handled those removals and the resulting public controversy was profoundly lacking.”

“The leaders of the department owed it to those who served the country in those capacities to treat their careers and reputations with appropriate care and dignity. And the leaders of the Department owed it to the American people they served to conduct the public’s business in a deliberate and professional manner,” Mukasey says. “The Department failed on both scores.”

The report is an important step toward acknowledging what happened, and “holding the responsible officials to proper account,” Mukasey’s statement continues. “I hope the report provides a measure of relief to those U.S. Attorneys whose reputations were unfairly tainted by the removals and their aftermath. They did not deserve the treatment they received.”

In the normal course of events, a report recommending further investigation would not be released until after the investigation and any resulting prosecution had been completed, for fear that disclosing publicly relevant facts and witness statements would hinder the investigation or prosecution, the press release says, but…

“In this instance, the Offices of Inspector General and Professional Responsibility have made the judgment that the circumstances warrant a departure from this usual practice,” Mukasey says. “The Justice Department has an obligation to the American people to pursue this case wherever the facts and the law require.”

Mukasey appointed attorney Nora Dannehy of Connecticut as the special prosecutor, who he calls a “well-respected and experienced career prosecutor who has conducted or supervised a wide range of investigations and prosecutions during her lengthy career.”

Some critics say she is too closely tied to Mukasey and his second in command at Justice to be an effective prosecutor, and that the appointment shows the investigation is going to be pushed out the side door of Justice while the financial crisis and the election take most of the public heat over the next month.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and a former U.S. attorney himself, questioned the effectiveness of the investigation to be led by federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy.

He indicated in a press conference that it’s unclear whether Dannehy will have the power to subpoena White House officials and whether her probe would focus narrowly on the question of whether a crime was committed by Gonzales and his deputies, or rather if she had the mandate to look at a possible cover-up by the Bush administration.

“There is a cover-up,” Whitehouse said. “And it continues.”

He also singled out Mukasey for blame, noting that the DOJ’s own Office of Legal Counsel has not cooperated with the report.

“If he’s willing to accept a White House cover-up, if he’s willing to accept the inspector general being hindered, then we, I think, should have further questions of the attorney general,” Whitehouse said.

New York attorney Scott Horton, who has followed the cases closely, writing for Harpers.org said Mukasey’s pick “sends a clear signal that Mukasey does not appreciate the gravity and importance of the issues raised.”

“Moreover, it seems reasonably clear at this point that Mukasey’s prime objective in this maneuver is to ensure that the matter is swept under the rug until after the November 4 election, so that those responsible for trashing the traditions and integrity of the Department of Justice will suffer no political damage for their misdeeds,” he said. “This is a disappointing, but at this point hardly surprising, development that favors White House stonewalling. Michael Mukasey has emerged as just the sort of Attorney General George W. Bush was hoping for.”

According to the report, and in contrast to what Karl Rove has said in public while defying a Congressional subpoena to testify under oath, he and other White House officials were involved with the Justice Department investigations and played an active role in crafting the release of information on the firings to the public.

In a March 2007 meeting mentioned on page 84 of the report, called by Deputy White House Counsel William Kelley and attended by Karl Rove, Sampson, Paul McNulty, and others:

According to several witnesses, Rove came in to the meeting for only a few minutes and then left. Battle said Rove spoke at the meeting but he could not recall what he said. McNulty said that he could not specifically recall either, but thought Rove said something to the effect that Moschella’s testimony should explain why the U.S. Attorneys were removed. None of the witnesses said they could recall specifically what Rove said at the meeting, although all agree that the discussion generally centered on what Moschella should say about the reasons for each U.S. Attorney’s removal.

This clearly shows involvement by Rove in crafting public relations messages at the Justice Department in direct contradiction to what he has said in public for the past year since he abruptly resigned his White House position last August.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat, responded to the report by repeating a warning he has been making publicly since last summer.

“Since last summer, my committee has warned that the Bush administration fired U.S. attorneys for political reasons and tried to cover it up by misleading Congress, and today’s report confirms our very worst suspicions,” Conyers said. “This scheme — which the report makes clear was hatched in the White House — was a fundamental betrayal of the American people and the men and women of the Department of Justice and it will be a long time before we can fully repair the damage.”

The report also makes clear, he said, that a number of central questions remain unanswered, “largely because of White House stonewalling.”

“So it is all the more important that we continue our effort to obtain White House documents and testimony,” he said.

Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sánchez of California said she was disturbed by the findings “that improper political considerations were an important factor in the removal of several of the fired U.S. Attorneys.”

“The report’s conclusion that Attorney General Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General McNulty’s lack of supervision and general lack of knowledge of the removal process demonstrates that the top ranks of the Justice Department were asleep at the switch,” Sánchez said.

She also was troubled by “the White House’s brazen snub of its own Justice Department.”

“Because of the White House’s refusal to cooperate with the Inspector General’s investigation, we still do not know why the nine U.S. Attorneys were fired,” she said.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Pat Leahy, the Vermont Democrat, said in a statement that the report might have told us even more if the investigation had not been impeded by the refusal of Bush administration officials to cooperate and provide documents and witnesses, just as they remain in contempt of Congress for failing to cooperate with the Judiciary Committee’s investigation.

“In this debacle as in others, the Bush administration’s self-serving secrecy has shrouded many of their most controversial policies — from torture, to investigating the causes of 9/11, to wiretapping,” Leahy said.

He indicated the committee will be looking into former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ testimony to Congress about the firings for evidence of possible perjury. And he warned that if President Bush chose to pardon anyone ultimately convicted of a crime in connection with the firings, such a move would be seen by the nation as an admission of wrongdoing.

Sen. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican and ranking minority member on the committee, said there’s no indication the White House is planning pardons. But he indicated a willingness to “push back” if that were found to be the case.

Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., who received an anonymous tip in January 2007 that led to the investigation, issued a press release saying the report “confirms our worst fears, and makes it clear that this was a scandal that went to the highest levels of the Department of the Justice, and that the role of the White House was in fact prominent.”

Mukasey admits that the report “describes a disappointing episode in the history of the Department.”

Mukasey’s statement and the full report can be accessed on the Department of Justice Website here.

The House Judiciary Committee reaction is here

AP: Special Prosecutor Named to Probe US Attorney Firings