Gonzales Allows Karl Rove-Protege To Remain As U.S. Attorney, Even Though His Term Has Expired
Gonzales Allows Karl Rove-Protege To Remain As U.S. Attorney, Even Though His Term Has Expired
On Jan. 18, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that he never intended to take advantage of a Patriot Act provision that allows the President to appoint “interim” U.S. attorneys for an indefinite period of time, without Senate confirmation:
I am fully committed, as the administration’s fully committed, to ensure that, with respect to every United States attorney position in this country, we will have a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed United States attorney.
Similarly, on Dec. 15, 2006, Gonzales personally assured Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) that Karl Rove-protege Tim Griffin would face Senate confirmation.
Before the Patriot Act was changed in 2005, the Attorney General could appoint interim U.S. attorneys to serve for a maximum of 120 days. After that time period, they needed to receive Senate confirmation or the federal district court in the vacant office’s district would name a replacement.
As emptywheel notes at Firedoglake, Griffin’s 120 days were up on April 20. Griffin has announced that he had “made the decision not to let my name go forward to the Senate.” Yet the Bush administration has not named a replacement candidate.
In early March, Rep. John Boozman (R-AR) said that he was “interviewing candidates to recommend as replacements for Griffin.” ThinkProgress spoke with Boozman’s office today, which confirmed that on March 30, Boozman submitted three names to the White House to replace Griffin. His office said that it has not heard from the administration on the state of the process.
Griffin remains as U.S. attorney in Arkansas and has stated that he is ready and willing to serve until the end of Bush’s term. If Gonzales was serious about installing “a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed United States attorney,” he would have replaced Griffin by now. Evidently, he instead plans to “gum to death” the process.
UPDATE: The Arkansas Blog notes that Griffin was appointed under the Patriot Act, and therefore is legally allowed to serve indefinitely. Yet nevertheless, Gonzales still promised senators that he never intended to take advantage of the provision.
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The man is simply a Liar. He doesn’t even know that he is doing it.
May 17th, 2007 at 6:49 pmWhy would you get rid of a loyal bushie?
May 17th, 2007 at 6:50 pmThis is blatant abuse of power, and if you argue that, you’re are unamerican. I don’t care if you think that is a logical fallacy, so don’t try to explain, I had a perfect gpa in COM.
May 17th, 2007 at 6:53 pmHAHA
You liberals lose again.
I gotta have my man there so when Hillary wins in Arkansas in ‘08, he can invalidate the whole election. HAHAHAH
Shock and Awe!!!
May 17th, 2007 at 6:54 pmTim Griffin is the perpetrator, along with Rove, of a massive GOP effort to suppress the minority vote. Since the GOP can’t win vote, they led a new campaign, ILLEGAL no less, to find ways to
It is a MASSIVE effort to deny the vote to minorites as reported by Greg Palast to Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/14/1426254
“We went through the 500, and what we found were this massive plan to deny the right to vote — I mean, extraordinarily targeting African American soldiers sent overseas. They’d send them a letter to their home address. The letter would come back. They say, “Gee, they don’t live there. They shouldn’t be allowed to vote.†Their absentee ballot would come in from overseas, and it would be challenged. They would lose their vote. They wouldn’t even know it. Now, when we showed this to several voting rights attorneys, including, as you heard, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — now, he was really shaken up. That’s when he said these guys should be in jail. So this is the other side of this whole issue involving the prosecutors.
And who did this? Who was in charge of this? It wasn’t Rove personally. He had put Tim Griffin in charge. Griffin is the guy who, with Rove, picked out the US attorneys to be fired and then had himself named by Rove — had himself named by Rove to the spot as US attorney for Arkansas. So what we may have here is a case of the perpetrator of voter fraud becoming the prosecutor. I mean, it is — and what this is all about — in fact, I have an internal Tim Griffin email — what this is all about is, he says it’s all about the votes. This is about the 2008 election, a panic to get their people in place for 2008 to create hysteria about voter ID, knock out minority voters, especially Hispanic, and to put in their people who are experienced in knocking out voters. “
May 17th, 2007 at 6:54 pmFlush this turd, Senator Pryor.
May 17th, 2007 at 6:56 pmDepends on what the definition of “taking advantage of” is.
May 17th, 2007 at 6:56 pmOur government has been hijacked and not a damn one of our so-called congressional leaders is doin’ anything about it. Democracy depends a great deal on faith. If faith in government is lost we are on the road to anarchy.
May 17th, 2007 at 6:57 pmShame on Pelosi and Reid for being more worried about their agendas than restoring faith in government. If they can’t impeach the WH then we shall have to impeach Pelosi and Reid for failure to live up to their oath of office.
Maybe an easier question would be — When aren’t they lying?
May 17th, 2007 at 6:58 pmFunMe,
That’s what I just said. See my above post. Whiner.
You Dems will win in ‘08, but my well placed US attorneys will overturn it and give it to back to my party, if not me!!!
May 17th, 2007 at 6:58 pmOne of those names Boozman submitted for consideration (the leading contender) is 65 year old Betty Dickey.
Dickey ran against Pryor for Arkansas Attorney General in 1998 – and lost.
Guess who ran her campaign? Tim Griffin.
Talk about sour grapes all around!
May 17th, 2007 at 6:59 pmSaddamize…
…Abu, Bushiva, L’il Dick, Dicklicker Perle, Hadley, Feith, Dummy Rummy, Cundti, Andy Gump’card, Tony, Dana, Scott, Scooter, Novak…
…awww sh*t…
…get ‘em ALLLL!
May 17th, 2007 at 7:00 pmYou Dems will win in ‘08, but my well placed US attorneys will overturn it and give it to back to my party, if not me!!!
Comment by President Bush
God is not smiling at you.
May 17th, 2007 at 7:02 pmComment by President Bush
I think I see a hydrogen powered vehicle over there that needs to be plugged into that 440v receptacle..Could you just hop over there and plug that hose marked danger into the wall socket?
(Joking=)
May 17th, 2007 at 7:06 pmThis is one of two lies Gonzales told under oath in January:
During his January 18, 2007 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales almost surely lied about the political purge underway among the ranks of the U.S. attorneys, as well as the vital role of the Patriot Act in facilitating it.
During the January 18th hearing, Gonzales pompously declared, “I would never ever make a change in a United States attorney position for political reasons or that in any way would jeopardize an ongoing investigation.” But as the email exchanges between Gonzales’ chief-of-staff Kyle Sampson, White House Counsel Harriet Miers and Karl Rove deputy Scott Jennings show, that’s exactly what was going on. A damning Sampson email described the system Gonzales’ DOJ would use for ranking U.S. attorneys, keeping those who “exhibited loyalty to the president and attorney general” and sacking the prosecutors who “chafed against administration initiatives.”
Gonzales also misled the Senate about the critical importance of a hitherto little-known provision of the Patriot Act enabling the Attorney General to appoint new prosecutors without Senate confirmation. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee that:
“I am fully committed, as the administration’s fully committed, to ensure that, with respect to every United States attorney position in this country, we will have a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed United States attorney.”
But as a September 13, 2006 Sampson email to Harriet Miers shows, Gonzales’ DOJ was committed to exactly the opposite course of bypassing Congressional approval for its new U.S. attorneys.
“I strongly recommend that as a matter of administration, we utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make USA appointments. [...] By not going the PAS route, we can give far less deference to home state senators and thereby get 1.) our preferred person appointed and 2.) do it far faster and more efficiently at less political costs to the White House.”
May 17th, 2007 at 7:06 pmHave these lying thugs ever told the truth about anything? I think not…why else do the trolls make excuses for them?
May 17th, 2007 at 7:08 pmLet Gonzo stay…
…peal his skin offdaily…
…it shows how slimy Bushiva and his criminal regime…
…really are…
…maybe by the timeEVERYTHING comes out…
…the people will want to do for Bushiva and L’il Dick…
…what the Italians did for “Il duce”…
May 17th, 2007 at 7:09 pmLame Duck,
I will send the Secret Service over to your place to service you for that comment. Just as soon as I plug this thing in here!!!
May 17th, 2007 at 7:10 pmYou liberals lose again.
I gotta have my man there so when Hillary wins in Arkansas in ‘08, he can invalidate the whole election. HAHAHAH
Shock and Awe!!!
Comment by President Bush — May 17, 2007 @ 6:54 pm
May 17th, 2007 at 7:10 pmIs this what we have become? Is this just a game of sort? I hope not. My faith is that flatearthers like this will eventually fade to black and our countrymen will return to the belief system that made our country the greatest.
Biskupic tried to ’squeeze’ Georgia Thompson
U.S. Attorney’s office made offers of leniency, tied to her testifying against others
Bill Lueders on Thursday 05/17/2007
The federal prosecutors who put Georgia Thompson in prison, on charges later overturned by an appeals court as lacking in merit, repeatedly offered to go easy on her if she were to implicate others in the administration of Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle.
“They said she would have to testify before the grand jury against [former Department of Administration Secretary Marc] Marotta and Gov. Doyle,” says Stephen Hurley, Thompson’s attorney.
Did they specifically name Doyle?
“We knew what they were talking about,” says Hurley, making his first public comments on the conduct of prosecutors in the Thompson case, which in recent weeks has become the subject of national media attention and congressional inquiry.
According to Hurley and co-counsel Marcus Berghahn, U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic and others in his office made offers of leniency prior to filing charges against Thompson and again before the start of her trial.
“I began to get the impression that the indictment was being used to squeeze her,” says Hurley, noting that these overtures continued even after Thompson’s sentencing.
…..read the whole article, there’s much more
May 17th, 2007 at 7:15 pmForgot to post the url for the article on Biskupic…duh!
http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=7081
May 17th, 2007 at 7:18 pmMan that catholic girl that beat up Karl as a kid really messed him up.
Lame Duck, I will send the Secret Service over to your place to service you for that comment. Just as soon as I plug this thing in here!!!
Comment by President Bush
The spooks already live here and we get along just fine thank you very much =)
May 17th, 2007 at 7:19 pmLone Voice of Reason,
This is no game. We play for keeps. You on the left can keep your mamby pamby play by the rules ways, but we play dirty.
I’m not sure why you bring up the fact that the earth is flat. I suppose your one of those whackos thinks we actually circle the sun. LOON!!!!
Our country is the greatest when there is a small aristocratic elite that systemically subjugates the rest of you low wage earners. We have to keep that wage down because if you get to comfortable in a middle class lifestyle, you’ll start protesting and sh*t all over again lilke you all did in the 60’s. Man, that sucked!! Maybe I could do a signing statment that would allow me to arrest people for protesting.
Shock and AWE!!!
May 17th, 2007 at 7:20 pmjust a word to our esteemed senators for future reference…
political oversight involves more than asking for promises, it means doing your damn job. if someone is not qualified, then say no. period end of story.
Senate: (to Gonzalez) do you promise to actually uphold the laws of this country or as your record and previous positions indicate, are you going to continue to circumvent our our laws and constitutional protections as a nation?
Gonzo: hey, I promise (sh$t eatin’ grin).
Senate: (in that motherly tone of voice) Do you really promise?
Gonzo: I promise!
Senate: OK, but we’ll be watching you.
May 17th, 2007 at 7:23 pmI’m not sure why you bring up the fact that the earth is flat. I suppose your one of those whackos thinks we actually circle the sun. LOON!!!!
Elites are liberals. Admit it. It’s the reactionists and the revolutionaries that must be kept under watch.
May 17th, 2007 at 7:34 pmThanks President Bush, you could’nt have made my point better about flatearthers like you. You need to take a class in american history. America is a republic ruled by democracy. I’ll break it down for you, democracy means, demos (people, or self) and kratos (rule). Did you grow up home schooled? you remind me of those whackos pick up rattlesnakes in church.
May 17th, 2007 at 7:36 pmThese people have no shame.
May 17th, 2007 at 8:07 pmDon’t forget Tim Griffin “caged” 70,000 voters consisting of minorities, service members and college students.
THIS WAS THE VOTER FRAUD THEY SHOULD BE INVESTIGATING not that made up shit that Karl Rove keeps on the news.
May 17th, 2007 at 8:18 pmGriffin is nothing more than a partisan “oppo” research hack.
May 17th, 2007 at 8:27 pmHe wasn’t sent to Arkansas to do legal work.
He’s been sent on a mission to do what scumbags like him do best. He’s looking for all the dirt he can find on as many Democrats as he can find.
Do we know which “Patriot Acts” Griffin performed on Karl Rove in exchange for the appointment? Or is that covered by “executive privilege”?
May 17th, 2007 at 9:43 pmI thought that interim-appointment provision in the “patriot” act was only in case of an emergency… or does the fact that the U.S. is at war make everything an emergency?
May 17th, 2007 at 10:02 pmUnfortunately, Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Gonzales have little credibility left. They lie and they deceive, time after time.
My guess is that their goal is to keep power for themselves and/or like-minded power brokers for as long as possible, no matter what the cost. Controlling the Justice Department is one part of how they can make this happen.
May 17th, 2007 at 10:12 pmEvery single day this so-called administration sinks lower & lower.
Pathetic.
May 17th, 2007 at 10:15 pmGonzales never had any intention of removing Griffin or getting Senate approval. Rove needs Griffin in place for the ‘08 elections to disrupt the Clinton campaign. Griffin should have already been indicted as the evidence against him for election fraud is overwhelming. Hopefully this will happen before the election.
May 18th, 2007 at 1:57 amwhat was funny was imagining the look on turdblossom’s face when the election, rigged though it was, STILL went the democrats way in ‘06.
the problem is, we do have a core of loyal bushies that will allow the idiot in chief to do whatever he wants as long as it doesn’t involve the loyal bushie to actually have to pay for it.
try to explain to your kids and grandkids why it was so important to pawn your country off to china and saudi arabia to fight in a “war” that only gave succor to the rich. i’m sure they will be very interested in your explanation for why they are going to pay through the nose forever.
repugs will rue the day they let bushco steal the white house, because any candidate that has an (R) after their name is poison from now on, and rightly so.
May 19th, 2007 at 3:29 pmWhy doesn’t a Senator challenge the Constitutionality of Griffin’s appointment? Article III of the Constitution provides that all major U.S. govt officers must be appointed with the advice and consent of the Senate. Since when can a Congressional act such as the puking patriot act override the Constitution? This frustrates me no end. Any 8th grader in a civics class (let’s pretend that our schools still teach civics) is familiar with the hierarchy of U.S. laws, and knows that provisions in the Constitution cannot be altered except by a constitutional amendment. So what on earth is going on here? Why do Democratic senators not file Supreme Court challenges to all the unconstitutional “laws” that the repuking rubberstamp “Congress” passed between 2001 and 2006? Griffin’s appointment was clearly unconstitutional. Why is the man still in office? What the hell is going on? The whole situation is so fucking cheesy and rotten and fascistic. How can even a half-witted senator tolerate this banana republican govt under cheney-bush’s junta? For heaven’s sake, will someone please invoke the Constitution and flush these people down the toilet?
May 20th, 2007 at 12:37 pmWoops. I meant to say Article II of the Constitution, not Article III.
May 20th, 2007 at 12:39 pm