Beyond Damning Evidence

Someone's head is going to roll for this;

On March 2, 2005, in an e-mail to Harriet Miers, AG Gonzales' Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson wrote this;

To be clear, to put aside the question of expiring terms, the analysis on
the chart I gave you is as follows;
Bold= Recommend retaining, strong US Attorneys who have produced, managed
well, and exhibited loyalty to the President and Attorney
General
Strikeout= Recommend removing, weak US Attorneys who have been ineffectual
managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration initiatives,
etc.

US Attorneys are non-partisan and loyalty to President and party should not and is not supposed to be a factor in their firings. Among those with a strikeout were Bud Cummings of Eastern Arkansas, Carol Lam of Southern California, and Margaret Chiara of Western Michigan, while Kevin Ryan of Northern California and David Iglesias of New Mexico were listed as bold, they were all later fired. Kevin Ryan had been listed as a candidate for removal as early as January, 2006, when it appeared Harriet Miers had came up with the whole idea.

On September 13, 2006, in an e-mail, Kyle Sampson wrote this;

US Attorneys in the Process of Being Pushed Out;
-E.D. Arkansas- Bud Cummings
US Attorneys We Now Should Consider Pushing Out;
-Arizona- Paul Charlton
-Southern California- Carol Lam
-Western Michigan- Margaret Chiara
-Nevada- Dan Bogden
-Western Washington- John McKay

"Pushed out" is a very damning phrase. Absent from the list is David Iglesias of New Mexico. This is about the time where he received the pressuring phone calls from Senator Domenici and Congresswoman Wilson, who was in a tight race with Patricia Madrid.

In October, Harriet Miers writes to Kyle Sampson that she suggests that they "as a matter of Administration policy, [we] utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make Attorney appointments." She suggests that by doing this and circumventing the President and Senate confirmation, it will "give far less deference to the home-state senators and thereby get (1) our preferred person appointed and (2) do it faster and more efficently, at less political cost to the White House."

The new laws she speaks of comes from the PATRIOT Act and she speaks of the home-state Senators as Senate confirmation would be difficult. Many of the fired prosecutors came from states with Democratic Senators; California, Michigan, Washington, and Arkansas have two Democrats, while Nevada is home to the (at the time) Minority Leader.

This was especially important in Arkansas, where Bud Cummings was being "pushed out" in favor of someone who sent to work for him...Tim Griffin, a close personal friend of none other than Karl Rove. In the e-mails, Sampson makes it known that "it is important to Karl" indicating Rove knew of the plan to oust Cummings in September...he claims he didn't know about it until November...LIAR!

The firings occured on December 7, 2006. Later e-mails indicate that Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada) was not happy about the firing of Dan Bogden from his distirct, while the Chief of Staff for Senator Pete Domenici (R-New Mexico) was thrilled with the news.

To me, it seems like this came entirely out of the Justice Department with little, if any, Oval Office knowledge, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. This may actually be the beginning of the end of the administration. It's funny, the one thing that may finally bring down the people in the White House has NOTHING to do wtih the War in Iraq, as many had suspected would bring him down.

Bush is having an absolutely horrendous second term to say the least.