The dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys is a reprehensible case study in Washington corruption – ironic because their jobs include prosecuting corruption.
The episode comes complete with a threatening phone call and an e-mail that was never supposed to be made public. In the phone call, a senior Justice Department official told one of his prey that if he and others didn’t stop talking to the press about their dismissals, department officials would publicly criticize their performance. H.E. Bud Cummins, former U.S. attorney from Arkansas, wrote in an e-mail that his unspoken reaction was, “Are you threatening ME???”
The answer, of course, is yes.
These U.S. attorneys were all appointed by President Bush but somewhere ran afoul of White House political expectations. The pressure that has been brought to bear on the U.S. attorneys is a startling abuse that deserves further investigation. In the meantime, we’re seeing an all-out effort at damage control by the Justice Department, where officials made appointments to loyalists who could use the jobs to gild their resumes in the hopes of getting a judgeship or some other future job.
It was all very calculated. First, the Bush administration engineered a change in the USA Patriot Act giving itself the ability to install U.S. attorneys without Senate consent. Once detected, legislation was introduced to fix that, but not before the Justice Department went into action. To create openings, the department fired eight prosecutors for contrived “performance issues.”
Inconveniently, the facts don’t jibe with reality – the prosecutors had earned favorable evaluations. More troubling are dark accusations that some of the prosecutors might have gotten in trouble for pursuing corruption cases against Republicans and refusing to cave to pressure intended to influence investigations of Democrats.
Congress heard allegations Tuesday that two lawmakers and a top GOP leadership aide tried to pressure prosecutors. Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, both New Mexico Republicans, made phone calls to then-local U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, asking about possible corruption charges against Democrats. Domenici hung up on Iglesias when he learned there would be no indictments before the November elections. Iglesias felt “leaned on.” The calls by Domenici and Wilson were wrong, and they should be subject to ethics investigations.
The nation’s federal prosecutors must be free of influence to pursue justice, not instruments of an ultra-political White House and a malleable attorney general.
