As the Bush Era recedes in the rear-view mirror, both friends and foes keep revisiting its glory days. The House Judiciary Committee makes public documents that show Karl Rove turning "law enforcement into a tool of partisan politics," and Dick Cheney wants it known that George W. Bush went soft on him in their second term and "turned out to be more like an ordinary politician in the end."
The former Vice President's rueful attitude will serve mainly to hype interest in his forthcoming memoirs, but the Rove revelations may affect the future of Bush's Brain in more drastic ways, with a New York Times editorial urging Congress to hold open hearings and the Justice Department to push its own investigation toward criminal charges in the firing of the US Attorneys:
"The materials released on Tuesday paint an ugly picture of fair-minded prosecutors under siege by the White House for refusing to politicize their offices. And it puts Mr. Rove, former President George W. Bush’s chief political operative, at the center of it."
The Obama Administration seems inclined to let sleeping dogs lie, but the Bush alumni show no signs of slinking off to snooze quietly.
Cheney is so incensed that his Presidential puppet fired his former mentor Don Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense after the 2006 elections and refused to pardon Scooter Libby for outing Valerie Plame before leaving office that he apparently can't wait for his memoirs to appear to vent his rage.
Rove, meanwhile, keeps savaging the Obama usurpers on Fox News and in the Wall Street Journal, confident that he can escape prosecution in the US Attorney case by claiming he was only "a conduit" in the maneuverings to fire them.
In the days of raucous town halls about health reform, all this may get filed under the heading of stale news, but history will undoubtedly care.
Showing posts with label US Attorney firings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US Attorney firings. Show all posts
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Rooting Out Rove
A 390-page report by the Inspector General is only a small step for mankind in bringing Karl Rove to justice for what he did to the Justice Department in the firing of the nine US attorneys, but it's a start.
The internal investigation finds political pressure drove the 2006 dismissals but that refusal of major players at the White House and the department to cooperate in the year-long inquiry has left significant “gaps” in understanding what happened.
Investigators' doubts have led Attorney General Michael Mukasey to appoint Acting United States Attorney in Connecticut Nora Dannehy, who led the conviction of a former governor for corruption, to continue the probe and decide if anyone should be prosecuted.
The "anyone" list starts with Bush's White House toadies, Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, and goes on to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was overcome with memory lapses while testifying before Congress, and his cast of ideological helpers, including Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson, who the report says "abdicated their responsibility" in supervising the firings.
After stonewalling Congress while Bush remains in office, this bunch will be facing possible prosecution in a new atmosphere next year, one in which the criminal politicizing of everything in Washington comes to an end, and Justice reverts to its original mission of discovering and punishing actual crime.
In that event, Karl Rove could be practicing his punditry for Newsweek and Fox News from a new venue that will give him plenty of time to think deep thoughts about the new American political scene.
The internal investigation finds political pressure drove the 2006 dismissals but that refusal of major players at the White House and the department to cooperate in the year-long inquiry has left significant “gaps” in understanding what happened.
Investigators' doubts have led Attorney General Michael Mukasey to appoint Acting United States Attorney in Connecticut Nora Dannehy, who led the conviction of a former governor for corruption, to continue the probe and decide if anyone should be prosecuted.
The "anyone" list starts with Bush's White House toadies, Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, and goes on to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was overcome with memory lapses while testifying before Congress, and his cast of ideological helpers, including Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson, who the report says "abdicated their responsibility" in supervising the firings.
After stonewalling Congress while Bush remains in office, this bunch will be facing possible prosecution in a new atmosphere next year, one in which the criminal politicizing of everything in Washington comes to an end, and Justice reverts to its original mission of discovering and punishing actual crime.
In that event, Karl Rove could be practicing his punditry for Newsweek and Fox News from a new venue that will give him plenty of time to think deep thoughts about the new American political scene.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Obama, Rove: Six Degrees of Separation
What's the journalistic etiquette for exposing someone who works for the same publication? In the new Newsweek, Michael Isikoff reports that the name of fellow columnist Karl Rove has surfaced in the federal trial of Barack Obama's albatross, Antoin Rezko:
"Former Illinois state official Ali Ata is expected to testify about a conversation he had with Rezko in which the developer alleged Rove was 'working with' a top Illinois Republican to remove the Chicago US attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.
"The allegation, which Rove denies, quickly reverberated in Washington. Democrats in Congress now want to question Ata. They believe he can help buttress their theory that Rove played a key role in discussions that led to the firings of U.S. attorneys at the Justice Department in 2006."
According to the Chicago Tribune, "Prosecutors at...Rezko's fraud trial caught a break when Ali Ata, former Illinois Finance Authority executive director, pleaded guilty to tax fraud and lying about Rezko and agreed to become a witness at the trial."
Rove's motive would have been to derail Fitzgerald's Scooter Libby prosecution, in which Bush's Brain was being implicated in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame as retaliation for her husband's revelation that the Administration lied about Saddam Hussein's pursuit of nuclear material in Africa.
Now that Obama has turned out to be a distant cousin of Dick Cheney, his six-degrees-of-separation tie to Karl Rove may not come as too much of a shock.
Maybe Rove will explain it all in his next Newsweek column.
"Former Illinois state official Ali Ata is expected to testify about a conversation he had with Rezko in which the developer alleged Rove was 'working with' a top Illinois Republican to remove the Chicago US attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.
"The allegation, which Rove denies, quickly reverberated in Washington. Democrats in Congress now want to question Ata. They believe he can help buttress their theory that Rove played a key role in discussions that led to the firings of U.S. attorneys at the Justice Department in 2006."
According to the Chicago Tribune, "Prosecutors at...Rezko's fraud trial caught a break when Ali Ata, former Illinois Finance Authority executive director, pleaded guilty to tax fraud and lying about Rezko and agreed to become a witness at the trial."
Rove's motive would have been to derail Fitzgerald's Scooter Libby prosecution, in which Bush's Brain was being implicated in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame as retaliation for her husband's revelation that the Administration lied about Saddam Hussein's pursuit of nuclear material in Africa.
Now that Obama has turned out to be a distant cousin of Dick Cheney, his six-degrees-of-separation tie to Karl Rove may not come as too much of a shock.
Maybe Rove will explain it all in his next Newsweek column.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)