By Matt Apuzzo - Associated Press Writer
August 13, 2009
WASHINGTON – Years after President George W. Bush fired
nine U.S. attorneys, lawmakers are still searching for answers.
But they seem to be asking the wrong questions.
In keeping the controversy alive, Democrats have muddied the
discussion: Did political adviser Karl Rove fire a prosecutor
so his friend could get the job? Did the White House cut a
deal with a senator and agree to fire a prosecutor in exchange
for putting a judge on the bench? Did political operatives
second-guess decisions about what cases prosecutors were filing?
Those are the questions House Judiciary Committee Democrats
focused on this week after releasing thousands of pages of
e-mails and transcripts of their interviews with Rove and former
White House counsel Harriet Miers.
But politics in the Justice Department is nothing new. The
real question is whether the Bush administration took it a
step further and illegally used prosecutors to go after political
enemies.
The Justice Department has a unique pedigree. It is a governmental
descendent of the mythological Lady Justice, who carried a
sword to fight evil and blindly balanced fairness. But it also
has political DNA, inherited from a long line of presidents
who used the department to champion civil rights, break up
companies and fight communists and terrorists as the White
House saw fit.
There is built-in tension here before the president picks
any of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys. Job seekers in any administration
can expect some variation of the questions, "What have
you done to help elect the president?" and "Do you
have anything in your past that could embarrass the president?"
On paper, a U.S. attorney has wide authority as the senior
federal law enforcement official in his district. In reality,
he gets his priorities from the attorney general and the White
House. If the administration's priorities are terrorists, guns
and gangs, the new U.S. attorney may shut down investigations
into environmental crimes, corruption or computer fraud.
At its heart, that's a political decision. If the president
promises to stop violent crime but a U.S. attorney is instead
getting tough on polluters, the White House is going to notice.
In the run-up to the 2006 firing of New Mexico U.S. Attorney
David Iglesias, the head of the state's Republican Party e-mailed
the White House, complaining that Iglesias was soft on voter
fraud. He asked that Iglesias be replaced so the state could "make
some real progress in cleaning up a state notorious for crooked
elections."
The Bush administration took the complaint to heart. In a
June 2005 e-mail, White House adviser Scott Jennings said the
New Mexico congressional delegation was also frustrated over
the lack of voter fraud cases. He urged that Iglesias be fired.
"Iglesias has done nothing. We are getting killed out
there," Jennings wrote to Rove's deputy.
Comments like this are what the controversy is really about.
The firing only matters if it offers insight into whether the
White House wanted Iglesias to take out its political opponents.
Federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy is investigating that question,
and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich.,
says he gave her all the documents the panel collected.
The relationship between U.S. attorneys and Washington is
not a simple matter.
A president who worries that voters think he's soft on crime
might want a gang crackdown. The attorney general might demand
more gun cases. Maybe the U.S. attorney in a high-crime swing
state gets an ultimatum.
Political? Definitely. But not unheard of.
But what if the president tells the attorney general to spike
a case against a major donor? To investigate a potential rival?
This is the road toward the Watergate scandal and President
Richard Nixon's resignation.
Republicans don't want to talk about what the U.S. attorney
firings might reveal about political motives. Justice Department
investigators have already concluded that Bush appointees improperly
let politics influence decision-making. Focusing the congressional
investigation and the public debate on political warfare would
only underscore that finding.
Republicans want this to be about the firing of a few prosecutors.
They say the president has that authority. Period.
Democrats are being disingenuous, too. They pretend the Justice
Department is an independent body, that the Bush administration
was the first to bring politics into the halls of Justice.
They ignore the fact that the department receives letters
from Congress every day asking for investigations into situations
that constituents or political allies are worked up about.
They gloss over the fact that one of the perks of the Senate
is being able to influence who gets picked as U.S. attorney,
since the Senate confirms the president's nominees.
And they forget that the White House may never have had a
closer ally in the Justice Department than when Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was his brother's most trusted adviser.
There's a long history of politics in the Justice Department.
The question is where the line gets drawn, and whether it's
been crossed.
- Matt Apuzzo is a member of the Washington enterprise team
for The Associated Press.
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