Domenici and Wilson try to cut their losses
December 7th: to many Americans, it’s Pearl Harbor Day. To seven former U.S. Attorneys, it’ll also be remembered forevermore as the “pre-Christmas firing massacre“.
What’s unusual about the “pre-Christmas firing massacre” is that it wasn’t triggered by any change in administration. The Republican administration fired seven of its own Republican-appointed prosecutors. Some of the prosecutors have told us they were left angry or puzzled.
But Republicans-firing-Republicans might have amounted to nothing more than a family squabble if it weren’t for all the political innuendos that have been circulating. Maybe, some whispered, these prosecutors hadn’t been doing the Republicans’ bidding. Maybe they were fired for political reasons. Speculation became something more than that yesterday when one of the ousted prosecutors, David Iglesias of New Mexico spoke publicly and said he might have been fired for refusing to cave in to political pressure.
Maybe under oath, Iglesias will reveal the names of those two members of Congress who called him about investigating that Democrat. Somewhere, two members of Congress are probably squirming uncomfortably.
The two members of Congress doing the squirming are Pete Domenici and Heather Wilson. Pete mostly represents the Air Force and whichever oil company took him to dinner last week. Heather ran for re-election by pleading she wouldn’t recognize George W. Bush if he stayed at her house for a month. She was re-elected by 875 votes out of nearly 211,000 – after the last recount.
They were pressuring Iglesias to speed up his investigation of a Dem accused of bid-rigging – but, wasn’t likely to hit the skids before the November elections. They didn’t want to miss the pot versus kettle sound bites.
I would like to say this surprises me. It doesn’t.
The Clintons did a similar mass firing of prosecutors, including Joseph diGenova of the DC region, who was replaced by Deval Patrick.
The Clinton’s fired everyone, to cover up the fact that they wanted to get rid of the guys investigating politicians. This firing was only those guys investigating Republicans, like the guy on the Duke Cunningham case.
3 – I read that somewhere, too – the Duke Cunningham prosecutor – Carol Lam – was supposedly digging deeper into who else, in and out of congress, the contractor admitted to bribing. Among other probes.
Here’s an excerpt from a report in The American Progress (which is of course not a right-wing, or even objectively centrist, source): “Two days before giving up her position as the U.S. Attorney for San Diego, Carol Lam won indictments against a former top official in the Central Intelligence Agency and a California businessman who was a top contributor to the Bush 2004 reelection campaign. The Justice Department says she is being asked to step down because of ‘performance-related’ issues.” — http://tinyurl.com/2pnr3o
And on Feb 2, USA Today (not a left-leaning ideological bastion) reported: “The Justice Department acknowledged Tuesday that it fired the U.S. government’s chief prosecutor in Little Rock for no reason except to replace him with a lawyer who had been an aide to Karl Rove, the Bush administration’s chief political strategist.” – http://tinyurl.com/2y646l
Oh hell, I thought I detected Karl Rove’s stink all over this.
“The Clintons did a similar mass firing of prosecutors, including Joseph diGenova of the DC region, who was replaced by Deval Patrick.”
Clinton wasn’t president in 1988, that’s when diGenova left his position as DA in the DC region. Here is diGenoca’s web site: http://www.digenovatoensing.com/attorneybiosjd.htm
“From 1983 – 1988, Mr. diGenova was United States Attorney for the District of Columbia”
As for Deval Patrick, he left private practice …
“In 1994, Clinton nominated Patrick Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, and he was confirmed by the Senate. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deval_Patrick
1988 DiGenova leaves United States Attorney for DC. 1994, Patrick becomes Assistant AG for Civil Rights.
You really don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?
Kudos to A_B! Much of what the Right Wing brigade at DV says is just plain false. I don’t usually have time to locate refutations, but it is great when someone does.
OK, Frank remembered the wrong names, but the mass firing happened. It was front page at the time.
#8, good post.
Thank you for saving me the effort of researching. I know, if I was a Republican, or a right wing nut, or conservative, or Libertarian then I could just invent some shit to throw out there, but I’m not.
But as #1 put it, I’m not surprised this happened. I just hope that the Congress has the authority to do something about it.