Feb
10
Jackson Free Press: Corruption in the Bush Justice Department
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The Jackson (Mississippi) Free Press has an article strongly critical of the Bush Justice Department.
“Of all the interesting odors hovering in the wake of the exiting Bush administration, the most pervasive smell could prove to be the sickly scent of corruption. The reek sank as far south as Mississippi, and will likely take Congress years to clean, if it manages to get its hands on a big enough mop.
Congressional Democrats are repeating a failed 2007 effort to drag former White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove to testify on the alleged politicization of the U.S. Department of Justice under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Rep. John Conyers, the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, fired off another subpoena to Rove last month, demanding his presence at a Feb. 2 hearing.
Conyers also wants Rove to address questions on the Justice Department’s firings of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006, an issue that first prompted suspicion about the politicizing of the Justice Department.
A series of DOJ internal e-mails contains a list of targets, rated first to last according to their sense of “loyalty to the President and Attorney General.”
Rove Goes Local
Mississippi U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton was one of the names on a 26-member hit-list, but Lampton held his job after bringing a series of indictments aimed specifically at Democratic judges and a prominent Democratic fundraiser.”
Read the rest here.
Jan
27
Special prosecutor to investigate selective prosecutions?
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In a letter dated December 12, 2008 Hiram C. Eastland, attorney for Paul Minor, asked House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether the selective prosecution of Paul Minor by Bush Justice Department attorneys was politically motivated. Although the committee directed the Justice Departments Office of Professional Responsibility and its Inspector General’s Office to investigate whether Minor was selectively prosecuted more than eight months ago, “no specific response regarding Paul Minor has been forthcoming.”
The letter closes “. . . justice and fairness demands that a truly independent investigation be undertaken by a special prosecutor with the necessary tools to ensure that the thoughtful objectives of your Committee are accomplished. The public’s confidence that America’s criminal justice system does not in any way tolerate taking political prisoners, Democrat or Republican, and the public’s confidence in the Justice Department’s prosecutive decisions will only be restored when all parties having a role in Paul Minor and other political defendants’ political prosecutions across the country are fully investigated, held accountable and brought to justice.”
You can read the full letter here.
Jan
27
Seigelman statement says Rove subpoena “restores people’s faith in democracy”
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John Byrne and Larisa Alexandrovna have a new story posted at Raw Story as part of their investigative series on the political prosecutions of Governor Siegelman, Paul Minor and others.
“Alabama Governor Don Siegelman had it all — popularity, a governor’s chair and a seemingly normal politician’s life — until he found himself on the other end of a US Attorney appointed by President George W. Bush.
Siegelman, who was convicted of corruption charges in 2006, was released on bail last April pending appeal after media reports — including those of Raw Story — revealed myriad irregularities surrounding his prosecution.
Among the relevations: the husband of the US Attorney who prosecuted Siegelman was a close associate of former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and worked as campaign manager for one of Siegelman’s gubernatorial opponents. An Alabama Republican whistleblower said that Siegelman was deliberately targeted and fingered Rove, asserting that he’d said he’d push the Justice Department to end Siegelman’s political career.”
Read the full story here.
Jan
14
House Judiciary Committee Report
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The House Judiciary Committee issued a report on abuses of power by the Bush Administration called “Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush.” The report is a comprehensive exploration of all the ways in which the Bush administration abused its powers.
The report covers abuses that are familiar: secret domestic wire-tapping, torture, extraordinary rendition, and so on. But it also highlights - putting first and foremost - a section called “Politicization of the Justice Department.” It explores in detail the way in which the Bush administration used a department with enormous powers, which is supposed to administer the law impartially, for partisan purposes.
The report points to the prosecutions of Governor Siegelman, Georgia Thompson, and Cyril Wecht, as well as Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz and Paul Minor and says, “Each of these matters presented at best a questionable exercise of prosecutorial discretion, and they often involved charges that appear to have elevated routine political fund-raising or similarly mundane conduct into aggressive federal criminal charges.”
It is difficult to argue, in light of the extensive, detailed evidence compiled in the report, that the Bush administration was not engaged in political prosecutions. Congress has subpoenaed extensive information in connection with these matters and is still awaiting many answers. The report seems designed to remind people that Congress is still demanding a great deal of information about these prosecutions and that once the new administration comes in, a great deal of that was previously hidden will likely be released.
You can read the full report here.
Aug
12
By Scott Horton
“Truthiness,” a phrase coined by the comic Stephen Colbert, has emerged as one of the hallmarks of the Bush Administration. Truthiness, Colbert tells us, is something a government spokesperson knows “from the gut”–without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. “Truthiness” has the outward appearance of truth. However, statements offered as “truthiness” are invariably false. Worse, the person who utters them usually knows they are false. But telling lies and getting away with it is a political art form. Call it the art of “truthiness.”
The Bush Justice Department has a huge truthiness problem. This helps explain why public confidence in the Justice Department just reached an all-time low point. Americans now have more confidence in the integrity and reliability of Post Office employees than they do in federal prosecutors and FBI agents. But is the Justice Department going to start coming to grips with its “truthiness” problem, or will it just plod along through inauguration day, 2009?
The clock is ticking on a series of important internal investigations. In recent weeks the public has gotten important details about a Bush Administration effort to pack the career-level ranks of the Justice Department with political hacks, in violation of laws protecting the integrity of the civil service. The Inspector General concluded that two figures, Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling, both trusted acolytes of Karl Rove, implemented this program, successfully hiring dozens of hacks for the Justice Department and firing or passing over career employees for a variety of illegal and unethical reasons. They were enabled in the process by an unprecedented sweeping authorization given them by Alberto Gonzales–an authorization designed to give Gonzales himself plausible deniability with respect to an illegal, and possibly criminal exercise.
In one case a former U.S. attorney was taken down based on unsubstantiated (and false) rumors that she was a lesbian. In another a prosecutor lost a promotion when it became known that he was married to a known Democrat. In a third an individual in an unguarded moment let slip some words of praise for Condoleezza Rice. True, Condi is a prominent Republican and a loyal Bushie to the core. But Monica Goodling found this expression of loyalty disturbing. After all, Condi supported abortion rights. The level of political vindictiveness that dominated this process of hiring and firing is astonishing—though not to those who have closely tracked developments at Justice over the last seven years.
Click here to keep reading.
