Guest Blogged by Arlen Parsa
Details continue to drip out from the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal which seem to suggest that electoral politics — and perhaps the 2008 election in particular — may well have been at the heart of the White House/Dept. of Justice scheme to strategically place partisan operatives where they might be most useful prior to the next Presidential Election.
One such detail revealed itself on Tuesday March 20th when Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR) appeared on MSNBC’s Hardball to discuss the recent purge of several US Attorneys by the Bush Administration. Host Chris Matthews opened the segment by asking Pryor how much he knew about the White House’s decision to replace the US Attorney in his state, Bud Cummins, with one of Karl Rove’s associates, a partisan operative named Tim Griffin.
Pryor criticized the Attorney General for firing Cummins and replacing him with Griffin, who had very little professional experience in Arkansas and had only recently moved there when Cummins was fired in December of 2006. Cummins, on the other hand, whom George W. Bush himself had appointed in 2001, had been well respected, competent, and non-partisan (despite personally being a Republican).
But the real bombshell came near the end of the interview….
Cummins told Matthews before going on the air that he had heard a “conspiracy theory” about why the Administration had chosen to replace Cummins with Griffin, and Matthews asked him about it a short time later when they were live. “Well,” Pryor said, slightly uncomfortable. “There’s kind of a conspiracy theory about that.”
“Some people have pointed to that, said isn’t that strange, here [the Administration is] putting in a maybe highly-political US Attorney in Hillary Clinton’s backyard… Isn’t that odd right before the Presidential race?” Pryor explained.
The implication was that if Republicans had a partisan prosecutor in Arkansas where the Clintons lived while Bill had served as governor during the 1980s, he would be able to drudge up old political dirt on the couple in time for the 2008 elections.
Pryor was quick to add that he didn’t personally subscribe to the theory, but that it was just speculation he had been hearing among political insiders.
But Griffin’s nomination wasn’t the only one with political and electoral undertones that might not bode well for Democrats in 2008. In fact, a report from the McClatchy Newspaper syndicate last Friday indicated that the Bush Administration has replaced US Attorneys in several key states, just in time for the 2008 Presidential election.
In April 2006, Karl Rove gave a keynote address to the National Lawyers Association, a partisan legal group. “He ticked off 11 states that he said could be pivotal in 2008,” McClatchy recalled in their report.
“Bush has appointed new U.S. attorneys in nine of them since 2005.”
Incidentally, during the same speech, Rove also acknowledged his friend, Thor Hearne, who had been both General Counsel to the Bush-Cheney 2004 election campaign and also Executive Director of the GOP front group “American Center for Voting Rights” or ACVR, which has engaged in voter suppression efforts via phony propagandistic reports on America’s non-existent “voter fraud” epidemic since 2004. (BRAD BLOG’s extensive coverage of ACVR can be found here. The group’s website has suddenly disappeared since the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal has come to light.)
“I ran into Thor Hearne as I was coming in,” Rove told the audience. “He was leaving; he was smart, and he was leaving to go out and enjoy the day.”
“I want to thank you for your work on clean elections,” he continued. “I know a lot of you spent time in the 2004 election, the 2002 election, the 2000 election in your communities or in strange counties in Florida, helping make it certain that we had the fair and legitimate outcome of the election,” Rove told the Republican attorneys.
He also compared elections in “some parts of the country” to those that take place in third-world dictatorships where the “guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored sunglasses.” Whether he was aware of the irony of his comments is still unknown.
In any event, three of the US Attorneys Bush has nominated since the 2004 election were, remarkably enough, from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which has been criticized for implementing policies which unfairly disadvantage poor, often minority voters whose political tendencies historically favor Democrats.
And Griffin himself had allegedly been involved with voter suppression. Griffin, as investigative journalist Greg Palast discovered in 2004, was one of the RNC operatives that had thought up a complicated scheme to disenfranchise Americans who did not respond to letters sent to their home addresses. Victims of the scheme whose votes were thrown away, Palast reported, included homeless people, and black soldiers serving overseas who obviously could not respond to mail, marked with “do not forward” instructions, delivered to their home addresses.
The scheme Griffin played a role in also reportedly targeted predominately African American areas in swing states such as Florida.
Griffin recently dismissed Palast’s reporting in a radio interview. “I’m intimately familiar with [Palast’s] allegations. That is a web article on the Internet. It’s patently false,” he pointed out, as if a “web article,” and “on the Internet” no less, might marginalize the facts of the report. Yet Griffin may not have been so intimately familiar with the allegations from that “web article on the Internet” after all: They were aired during a report by Palast, as filed on the television program “Newsnight” for the BBC. (A video of the original report can be found on YouTube).
When Justice Department and White House officials first tried to explain the US Attorney firings, they claimed that several of the prosecutors who had been forced to resign had refused to follow up on allegations of “voter fraud.” Some immediately recognized that “voter fraud” allegations have been the weapon of choice, of late, by Republicans attempting to make it more difficult for certain groups of Americans — particularly those in minority areas whose voters do not typically lean GOP — to vote, by pushing new regulations and disenfranchising Photo ID legislation as a “protective measure.”
The DoJ claims that the firings were “voter fraud” related raised some skepticism at BRAD BLOG and elsewhere, and even led to the New York Times editorial page to sharply criticize the supposed rationale for the firings. It is perhaps ironic that the public explanation the Administration has given for firing the prosecutors — specifically related to elections — may ultimately draw more attention to what some suspect is a deeper scheme to set up a system of disenfranchisement just in time for the 2008 elections.
At least one Arkansas newspaper has called for Griffin’s resignation since the US Attorney scandal began, and he has said that he would only stay until the Administration found a suitable replacement. The White House has privately worried that Griffin would not be able to pass muster in Senate confirmation hearings, which he would be required to undergo if he wanted to keep his current job. The loophole in the PATRIOT Act which allowed Griffin and others to bypass the normal confirmation process was recently closed by the Senate in a vote of 94-2. The House is expected to pick up the matter soon.
Seems to be a slight error with the Palast link halfway down the post. Happy to see it published though!
{Ed. note: Link issue now fixed. — DES}
So, since Tim Grifter was already installed down in Arkansas, that automatically gave him an opening to look through all of Hillerys stuff, no?
So, even if he is ousted, the Pukes already have the scoop ?
Isn’t it amazing? They first get hackable machines put in place to hold their choke hold on the people.. That works (after an initial court appointment to the Presidency by someone that wasn’t actually elected) for a time, but when we see that “leaked early voting counts” aren’t quite enough to finish gaming the election (something seems to have gone wrong despite all the under-votes and lost votes in Democratic areas since many seats went to Dems anyway in the last election), they then put in the “final word” people in to places they know they will have to blatantly steal next time.
Nice legal system we have here.. “and still the people sleep”..
I’ve got to tell you, there are way too many political, unelected positions in governement for me. US attorneys should be elected or appointed by non-partisan judges.
The powers that be will never allow elections of attorneys. That would be relinquishing power and this administration is doing everything to accumulate it. ALL!
The best way out of this mess is impeachment and conviction. (Even if impeachment occurs, which I doubt, conviction will probably never happen.) The only other alternative is to keep the message going to as many as can be reached. The public has had it with these crooks and like last November, diligence and a strong showing by democrats and independents, yelling as they exit the voting booth “I did NOT vote republican!” is essential.
Keep up the good work Brad. It’s patriots like you that have prevented a full blown dictatorship so far.
Can’t you just see KKarl rove’s jack-boot/brown-shirt crony henchman Griffin rummaging through Hillary’s and Bill’s underwear draw and clawing thru their dirty laundry hamper,.. desperately looking for something to sabotage Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential ambitions.
This bu$$hCo is such a slimy crew. The day we get this fascist cartel out of Washington DC and force them to release their death grip on our government is the day we can start to repair our Democratic Republic.
One of the DOJ officials set to testify before congress has indicated that she will “take the Fifth”, and not answer on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate her.
If this were to happen to be coming from one of the looney white house officials, I would wonder. But since white house folk think we have a third world government and testimony before congress is like telling mommie a lie, I would be surprised if one of them thought of the Fifth. Also, they have never seen the constitution.
But this is coming from where the people are who know the law (DOJ career lawyers) work, so I am not surprised.
They now know that crimes have been committed, and therefore they are doing what such lawyers should do … shut up because heads are going to roll.
“The implication was that if Republicans had a partisan prosecutor in Arkansas where the Clintons lived while Bill had served as governor during the 1980s, he would be able to drudge up old political dirt on the couple in time for the 2008 elections.”
…or to create a lot of phony NEW dirt like those other fired attorneys refused to do…
They are going at it right now in Iowa, (and Rove included Iowa on his “hit list,”) the US Attorney have been entrapping Democrats, even in light of these recent revelations, it is still an ongoing investigation, and it reeks of scheming.
Arlen Parsa
I picked up on this last year.
Since you have finally put it out there officially, I shall discontinue my postings about it and see if another Fitz comes along for Fitzmas.
Arlen: RE post #9
Focus on:
I tend to distrust this white house in the sense that I have the faith that everything they do is criminal in nature because they are criminal in nature.
You know, its the old adage: “you can take the boy out of the crime family’s state, but you can’t take the state of crime out of the boy”. 🙂
RE: post #7
I am unable to get past the name MONICA GOODLING. It sounds like the Hobbit version of Monica Lewinski.
She is the Spokesperson For DOJ who is taking the Fifth so she will not be incriminated.
Remember “Dusty Foggo”, the CIA third in power, hired by the CIA Director and congressman Gop Hack (just kidding his name escapes me right now … but I know it wasn’t Six Fingers), who Bush sent over to clean up the CIA?
And Snottie and Show Job and Scooter and Freedo and Pootie Poo and Turd Blossom …
Oh well … could these all be clones or merely someones imagination in a bad novel? Jim Webb must be freaking cracking up about now. 😉
“plagiarism is intellectual theft … which is a form of intellectual dishonesty” 🙁
Monica is just angling for immunity. Lawyers aren’t THAT stupid as to roll on their bosses and not have a safety net.
She’ll get immunity and testify before Alberto does, that’s why they’ve pushed his date so far out, and also to give him more time to shred.
Her only danger is that if she screws up and lies after immunity, they can take it away and prosecute her. And if she “forgets” too much, they can hold her in contempt (I already do hold ALL of them in comtempt, but that’s another story) for the duration of their term.
Personally, I think hanging is too mercifull for these Rethuglican hacks and criminals.
Bangor News ..March 22. James Tobin of Bangor found guilty 15 months ago of conspiring to make 800 repeated hang up calls for about an hour to a phone bank…Tobin was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison …He has been free on bail pending the outcome of his appeal.Federal appeals court reversed the conviction….The day before the Bangor News wrote “was this case put off until after the election?” The next day..Mar 22.. Bangor News says federal appeals court reversed the decision. Scandalous. I think Tobin works for Susan Collins but I’m not sure.It’s worth looking into Mainers.
Well, well, the Cheesehead colours are finally GONE!
I would comment more, but I got lots of reading to do, now that I can see the text!
Thanx to whomever finally knocked the dominos over, I always liked this place but the paint was ATROCIOUS!
Is there anything the bush regime Hasn’t LIED About . . .
Mike Malloy just gave this story a big plug !
To have scrwed or Not to have screwed? THAT is the question! Time to move this scandal inside the “gate” into the “AG in court”, instead.
In the news on Free Speech TV, they said that the Italians and Mexicans are looking into Rove connections in vote fraud in their elections.
http://www.exmearden.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/3/19/182854/322
SOOOOOOOOOO…………..
…is it a stretch that ROVE STOLE 2 ELECTIONS FOR BUSH?????????????? IN OUR COUNTRY????????????
How come WE’VE been saying this for years, and statistics have proven it…BUT IT TAKES OTHER COUNTRIES TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT ROVE AND THE GOP’S ELECTION FRAUD??????????????
When I first heard of these attorney firings, I wrote Sen. Feinstein and told her I believed the repubs were doing this to position their operatives to steal yet another presidential election. At the time I wrote that letter, I was thinking “I’m probably the only person in America who thinks this, but what the heck. I’m going to go with my gut on this one.” Since then, Feinstein is on to it, and now this article. Glad to read I have some friends in this thinking.
But of course he had no Pryor knowledge…
Thanks for the article, your focus on electoral fraud is a great public service.
I am glad we are all on the case and aware of what the neoCon criminals are trying to do to america. Good for us.
Henry Waxman has been all over this:
(Raw Story, emphasis added).
Okay, I’m not a computor specialist by a long shot, but can anyone who is answer this question for me?
If the RNC accounts are purged before Waxman can get their emails would the phone line systems like verizon, at&t, ect. have a copy? If so shouldn’t Waxman ask for a FISA order to get them?
And while they’re at it wouldn’t it be interesting to see what Cheney’s, Rumsfeld’s, Wolfowitz’s, AIPAC’s, Hallibuton’s and the rest of the cabal’s emails looked like just prior to 9/11 ?
This is also the reason the Chicago Tribune sent Jeff Johnson to take over the LA Times. The Times endorsement of Bruce McPherson to be Sec of
State, to game the voting machines in California in 2008. Their hopes were to have a California Katherine Harris of 2000 and a Ken Blackwell of 2004 running the election in California. Their plan is massive and they are leaving no stone unturned to win in 08.
I should add, youngharry,that the Republicans were in my opinion scheming to replace Ken Blackwell in Ohio with someone even worse for 2008. This past year they put up for Secretary of State one Greg Hartmann, a carpetbagger from Texas who had exactly no elections experience, said in a forum here in Cleveland that he believes all voting machines are totally safe and also that it was impossible for anything to have been wrong in the 2004 election because all the BoEs have two Republicans and two Democrat. This Mr. Hartmann appeared in Ohio about eight years ago, almost instantly winning a series of politically appointed jobs including executive director of the Hamilton County Republican Party. In his last job, Hamilton County Clerk of Courts, he proved as inept as in all his previous jobs, posting personal information of citizens on his website and creating dozens of cases of identity theft. A ne’er-do-well, rich frat boy from Texas (sound familiar), he is the son of Dick Cheney’s lawyer. Set up? You decide.
(Luckily, he lost- badly. He was such a bad candidate he didn’t get the endorsment of a single major daily in Ohio, and the major dailies here are mostly Republican shills)
Does anyone seriously doubt that Republicans would hesitate to illegally influence the 2008 vote to rig another election?
Brad
It appears more and more that the epicenter of this still locates on Arlen Specter and his willingness to accept the overseer/nursemaid from the OutHouse. If he had not been negligent in his duties as chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, he would not have aquiessed to Tolvan(?) writing and inserting legislation into the Hatriot Act Renewal. The emails, as posted by McClatchy, show he was instructed as to how to strike and insert the desired language into the bill. Specter, being the poorly equipped, mental midget that he is, wanted the Chairmanship of the Committee so bad that he sold his soul and, what little integrity he had, to remain Arlen Specter (R-OutHouse). He should have recused himself, or at best, resigned by now. All he will do now is obstruct and obfuscate the proceedings to protect Turd Blossom.
The emails are only preserved on the mail server and PCs.. (in general).. That is, if the Government’s “mail server” (or, in this case, the RNC’s mail server holding official government mails but not under full governmental control) was “purged”, there would only be the local copies left.. if those were deleted (properly), there would be no record of the mails (though, there are 2 parts to the mail server, incoming and outgoing.. but there could be many outgoing servers involved.. in fact, any ISP that sent the mail).
ISPs don’t keep copies of data transmitted over their lines (the actual mail gets broken up during transport in to several chunks, then put together and stored on the receiving server), there’s just way too much data. The “sending ISP” -might- have a copy of mails it sends, but you’d have no way to know which (of the 10s of thousands) outgoing mail server it started from (without the actual mail, that is). Hence, the Government runs their own servers to keep track of this stuff.. when officials (illegally, it seems) use services outside of those official means, we have no way to track down what we need (which is why criminals would use unofficial means).
There needs to be substantial research on appointments to the bench, also. Florida’s 1st district has been “reliably Republican” for as long as I can remember, but Jeff Miller faced a determined opponent, Joe Roberts, in ’06 for the districts’ house rep and Roberts plans to run again in ’08. It’s rumoured that the Republicans are planning to run a stronger candidate against Roberts in ’08. But not to worry..remember Florida’s Director of Elections, Clay Roberts? Yeah, the guy who stormed out of the room while being interviewed by Palast. Clay Roberts now sits on the bench at Florida’s First District Court of Appeals. Ole Jeb even asked if he could appoint Clay Roberts before Judge Erwin’s term expired!
http://abstractappeal.com/archives/2006_09_01_abstractappeal_archive.html#115952996644406251
Abstract Appeal — by Matt Conigliaro
Clay Roberts will be an “activist” jusge, as planned.
http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/08/04/florida/
Salon.com Politics | Is Katherine Harris’ office resisting Florida election reforms?
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Savantster!
Now that we know that lil nugget, I dare say time to watch those PCs.
Or maybe new LAWS for Whitehouse services!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And when it comes to the White house…
HE’S AGAINST THE PEOPLE”S
.
Hello Arlen!
Ya know if they’re trying to make this a
BIG BROTHER SOCIETY
WE CAN PLAY TOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think the term is “dredge up” not “drudge up.” Just for future
reference 🙂
If Democrats are being accused of “voter fraud” then Republicans should be accused of “sanity fraud” because everyone knows by now (especially after all the craziness of the Bush administration) that any claims to sanity by Republicans is definitely fraudulent.
If it can be proven that Rove, et al, used RNC email instead of US Gov. email for some communications, then we have an indictable offence against any and all White House officials who used those systems, as a direct violation of existing Federal laws.
The question will be whether or not any US Attorney or Congress will be able to get a grand jury indictment on them.
We need to keep reminding Pelosi and company that they must impeach Bush and Cheney, right now, both of them at once so Cheney can’t appoint a new VP to shield the White House from Pelosi taking the Presidency when Bush is ousted.