For years, GOP leaders have been eyeing former U.S. attorney Chris Christie for national political office. In recent congressional testimony, Karl Rove revealed that “he had conversations with Christie about a possible run for governor while Christie was serving in the non-political position of U.S. attorney.” Christie’s campaign has said it was just an “informal conversation.” However, Christie’s challenger in the New Jersey gubernatorial race, Gov. Jon Corzine (D), contends that it was a violation of the Hatch Act, which says that federal employees can’t even engage in “any act in furtherance of candidacy” for an elected office. Yesterday at Netroots Nation, Corzine met with a group of progressive bloggers and sharply criticized Christie’s discussion with Rove:

It is hard to understand how a lawbreaker gets the reputation of being the king of law enforcement, and uses that as a platform. It’s the Hatch Act.

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Today, President Obama nominated four individuals to serve as U.S. attorneys — most notably Daniel Bogden in Nevada. “These fine men and women have demonstrated the extensive knowledge of the law and deep commitment to public service Americans deserve from their United States Attorneys,” said Obama in a statement. Bogden has actually already served as a U.S. attorney, but he was ousted in the Bush administration’s political purge. Even Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) said that the case had been “completely mishandled” by then-attorney general Alberto Gonzales. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has been pushing the White House to bring back Bogden.

While serving as a U.S. attorney during the Bush administration, Christopher Christie, now a Republican candidate for Governor in New Jersey, tracked the whereabouts of citizens through their cell phones without warrants. The ACLU obtained the documents detailing the spying program from the Justice Department in an ongoing lawsuit over cell phone tracking.

While the documents reveal 79 such cases on or after Sept. 12, 2001, they do not specify how many of the applications were made during Christie’s tenure. Christie served as U.S. attorney from Jan. 17, 2002 through November 2008. ACLU staff attorney Catherine Crump noted:

Tracking the location of people’s cell phones reveals intimate details of their daily routines and is highly invasive of their privacy. The government is violating the Constitution when it fails to get a search warrant before tracking people this way.

The new revelations about the cell phone tracking program under Christie is yet another example of the warrantless spying programs authorized under the Bush administration. Previous programs approved without a court order or warrant have included the secret program to monitor radiation levels at over 100 Muslim sites and the NSA spying program on the phone and e-mail communications of thousands of people inside the U.S. These programs run contrary to the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids “unreasonable searches” and sets out specific requirements for warrants, including “probable cause.”

During his tenure as U.S. attorney, Christie also awarded his former boss, John Ashcroft, a $28-52 million dollar no-bid contract to “monitor a large corporation willing to settle criminal charges out of court.” Former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach blasted the decision, saying that awarding a no-bid contract “suggests other political things, and that seems to me to be as wrong as it can be.” Christie also doled out “a multi-million-dollar, no bid contract to an ex-federal prosecutor who declined to criminally prosecute Christie’s brother on stock fraud charges two years earlier.”

Christie’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, declined to comment on the cell phone spying program “due to pending litigation.”

On Dec. 7, 2006, then-Nevada U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden, along with six other U.S. attorneys, was told by the Bush Justice Department to resign, which he did on Jan. 17, 2007. In March, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told reporters that he had recommended to the Obama White House that they should reappoint Bogden. In the Atlantic today, Murray Waas reports that there is “a real possibility” that the Justice Department will re-hire him:

A Justice Department official told me that the idea of hiring Bogden back is in fact a real possibility, and said that the White House counsel’s office has been quietly vetting his background in anticipation of his possible reappointment — not a difficult task, considering that he has been employed by the government for the majority of his adult life.

Bogden still “has no official explanation as to why he was fired, or even who made the decision.” “Most of us have gotten some sense, if not a good sense, as to why we were fired,” former New Mexico U.S. attorney David Iglesias told Waas. “But unlike the rest of us, Dan has never had that.” Bogden has previously said that when he was asked to resign, then-Associate Attorney General William Mercer told him that the firings were being carried out “so the Republican Party would have more future candidates for the federal bench and future political positions.”

On CNN last night, host Campbell Brown asked former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales how he let nine U.S. attorneys get fired “for political reasons” while he was running the Justice Depatment. “I disagree with that,” replied Gonzales, claiming that a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general on the 2006 firings had concluded that the attorneys were not “fired for partisan political reasons.”

Gonzales claimed that the report found that “most of these U.S. attorneys” were fired for “perfomance related reasons” and that it didn’t “draw definite conclusions” about the other firings:

BROWN: Your office fired nine U.S. attorneys for political reasons. There has been no disagreement about that. I mean, how could you let that happen?

GONZALES: Campbell, Campbell, Campbell. I disagree with that. You said that nine U.S. attorneys were fired for partisan political reasons. That’s not what the report said. Quite the opposite. The report clearly found that there were performance related reasons for the removal of most of these U.S. attorneys and with respect to the remainder, they didn’t have enough information to draw definite conclusions.

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Gonzales’ assertion that the report vindicated his office of any political motives for the dismissals, however, is false. The report did draw “definite conclusions” about the firing of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias

The evidence we uncovered in our investigation demonstrated that the real reason for Iglesias’s removal were the complaints from New Mexico Republican politicians and party activists about how Iglesias handled voter fraud and public corruption cases in the state.

As detailed above, many Republicans in New Mexico believed that fraudulent registrations by Democratic Party voters was a widespread problem in New Mexico, an evenly divided state politically that has had very close national elections. Beginning in the summer of 2004, New Mexico Republican Party activists talked to Iglesias about the “party’s . . . efforts” on the voter fraud issue, and sought to involve him in those efforts.

Iglesias refused to prosecute voter fraud cases sought by GOP activists and the report concluded that then-Sen. Pete Domenici’s (R-NM) complaints to the White House were a “primary factor” in Iglesias’ being placed on the firing list.

– Michael Wilson

In an interview with a local New Mexico station today, fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, a JAG corps member, said that he has been tapped to be part of a special team of prosecutors for Guantanamo detainees. “One hundred percent of what I’m doing is prosecuting terrorist cases out of Guantanamo,” he explained. “We want to make sure that those terrorists that did commit acts will be brought to justice — and those that did not will be released.” Watch it:

Today, DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine testified about his recent report on the U.S. Attorney scandal. Harriet Miers, who defied a subpoena regarding her role in the scandal, refused to talk to Fine’s investigators. Fine said she ignored the IG despite the White House in fact encouraging her to speak to them:

JOHNSON: Was Harriet Miers one of those who the White House encouraged to speak to you?

FINE: She was one who we requested to be interviewed…my understanding is all the individuals were encouraged by the White House counsel’s office to speak to us.

Miers, however, refused to talk to Fine’s investigators. “The reason her attorney gave is that an interview might undermine her ability to rely on instructions she received from the White House directing her not to appear for congressional testimony,” he said.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) said that Miers is “playing games” with investigators. “To us, Ms. Miers says she’s willing to testify but the White House won’t let her. And to you, she says she won’t testify even though the White House says it’s okay,” he said.