Former Rove-Protege Tim Griffin Joining RNC Opposition Research Shop To Help McCain ‘Turn His Fire’ On Obama

Last year, in the middle of the U.S. attorney scandal, former Karl Rove protege Tim Griffin resigned as the interim Eastern District U.S. attorney in Arkansas. Griffin had become the poster boy for the politicization of the U.S. attorney process after the Justice Department fired Bud Cummins to make way for him.

Now, Robert Novak reports that Griffin will be returning to his roots as a member of the RNC’s opposition research team. According to Novak, Griffin is being brought in as part of “the McCain campaign’s plan” to “turn his fire against [Sen. Barack] Obama“:

McCain, however, is not prepared to disarm himself unilaterally. Tim Griffin, the crack opposition research operative, is about to move into the Republican National Committee to turn his fire against Obama. McCain strategists see their only hope is to focus on the real Barack Obama.

But Griffin may do more than just “digging up of derogatory information” on Obama.

As RNC research director in 2004, Griffin reportedly led a “caging” scheme to suppress the votes of likely Democratic voters, including African-American service members in Florida. (Here’s an e-mail written by Griffin in August 2004 with the subject line “caging.”)

In March 2007, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) explained what happens in this “nefarious voter suppression tactic“:

First, a campaign identifies a geographic area with a disproportionate number of registered voters who belong to the opposite party — sometimes, but not always, taking the ethnic or racial makeup of that area into account. Second, the campaign sends “do not forward/return to sender” letters to voters in that area.

Third, the campaign challenges the right to vote of those citizens whose mail was returned “undelivered” — on the grounds that the voter does not live at the registered address. Of course, there are many reasons why a piece of mail might be “returned to sender” that have nothing whatsoever to do with a voter’s eligibility.

Last year, Whitehouse and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) introduced legislation to ban “caging,” but neither bill has been voted on.