Truthfully there is probably not enough time in W's Admin to go after both W and Clinton. Another dodge would be to go after Clinton first and then after W, so that the W investigation will be in flight when We leaves and pardons the whole lot of them.
Rove's Newest Investigator Is Under Investigation Karl Rove is under investigation by the executive branch. So, too, is his investigator. On Tuesday, The Los Angeles Times reported that the Office of Special Counsel, an obscure federal investigative and prosecutorial agency that is supposed to protect federal employees from prohibited personnel practices, is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove. The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House emails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House. Rove is tied to all three elements of the OSC investigation. "We will take the evidence where it leads us," Scott Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel, told The Los Angeles Times. "We will not leave any stone unturned." But who is Scott Bloch, and should his vow be taken at face value? The Times story did not provide background on the fellow who will be examining whether Rove and other administration officials may have violated the law by using political email accounts for White House business, by explicitly encouraging government actions for direct partisan gains, and by dismissing David Iglesias, a US attorney in New Mexico. Bloch is a George W. Bush appointee, and his recent record is not one of a relentless pursuer of government corruption and wrongdoing. Here's an overview: * In February, The Washington Post reported Bloch himself was under investigation: The Office of Personnel Management's inspector general has been investigating allegations by current and former OSC employees that Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch retaliated against underlings who disagreed with his policies--by, among other means, transferring them out of state--and tossed out legitimate whistle-blower cases to reduce the office backlog. Bloch denies the accusations, saying that under his leadership the agency has grown more efficient and receptive to whistle-blowers. The 16-month investigation has been beset by delays, accusations and counter-accusations. The latest problem began two weeks ago, when Bloch's deputy sent staffers a memo asking them to inform OSC higher-ups when investigators contact them. Further, the memo read, employees should meet with investigators in the office, in a special conference room. Some employees cried foul, saying the recommendations made them afraid to be interviewed in the probe. The OSC's memo, the group said, "was only the latest in a series of actions by Bloch to obstruct" the investigation. "Other actions have included suggestions that all witnesses interviewed...provide Bloch with affidavits describing what they had been asked and how they responded." * Two years earlier, the paper reported that Bloch had declined to enforce a discrimination ban: Since taking office in January 2004, the Bush appointee has been accused of failing to enforce a long-standing policy against bias in the federal workplace based on sexual orientation, unnecessarily reorganizing the OSC to try to run off internal critics, and arbitrarily dismissing some personnel complaints and whistle-blower disclosures in an effort to claim reductions in backlogs. He has denied such allegations and argued that he has made the agency more efficient at processing cases and, at the same time, more receptive to whistle-blowers and federal workers who have suffered unfair treatment. * That same year, public interest groups and employees at the OSC accused Bloch of running an overly partisan shop. As Govexec.com reported: Amendments to a complaint filed against Special Counsel Scott J. Bloch in early March allege that OSC took no action on a complaint regarding then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's use of government funds to travel in the weeks before the 2004 presidential election, but vigorously pursued allegations against Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry's visit to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Three nonprofit whistleblower protection groups--the Government Accountability Project, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Project on Government Oversight--and anonymous career OSC employees filed the initial complaint March 3, listing a series of prohibited personnel practices and violations of civil service laws by Bloch. The politicization allegations stem from Bloch's decision to have a group of lawyers report to a political deputy rather than a career senior executive. The complaint states that OSC has pursued trivial matters without regard to political affiliation...but has not evenly handled higher profile cases. At the OSC, Bloch is supposed to protect whistleblowers. But he's been charged with reprising against those who challenge his agency and others. Before Bloch was appointed by Bush to take over the OSC, he was a deputy director and counsel at the Justice Department's Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives. "By most measures, his tenure has been an absolute failure," says Adam Miles, legislative representative at the Government Accountability Project. "He's been under pressure to start doing something." Miles notes that GAP did not initially expect the complaint it filed against Bloch in 2005 to go anywhere. "It was referred to a federal entity called the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency," Miles recalls, "and we thought it would just rot there." But the case was handed to Pat McFarland, the inspector general for the Office of Personnel Management. McFarland is a former St. Louis detective who spent 22 years as a Secret Service agent before becoming IG at OPM in 1990. McFarland's investigation of Bloch, Miles says, "hasn't been a totally transparent process but we're hearing it's reaching a conclusion--which could be motivation for Bloch to start this investigation into the White House. If OPM does turn up any adverse information on Bloch, it would be more difficult for the White House to get rid of him while he was actively investigating them." But this could cut the other way. If Bloch is the subject of an investigation, he might be inclined to treat the White House favorably to protect his own position. In either case, there seems to be a conflict of interest. Bloch, Miles says, "may not be the appropriate person to be conducting the investigation" of Rove and the White House. It is a dizzying situation. The investigator investigating officials who oversee the agency that is investigating the investigator. Forget firewalls. This looks more like a basement flooded with backed-up sewage--with the water rising.
Nice! A big, splashy story out of nowhere that the administration is going to have an inside (independent, *snicker*) investigation of Rove headed by a Bush appointee. What could possibly go right?
The real reason why Bush can't fire Fredo. <object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/f1QwGJXUaUQ"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/f1QwGJXUaUQ" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>
Rove, Still In the Mix Two months ago, he helped coach Justice Department officials on how to testify about the U.S. attorneys’ firings. Was that a harmless part of his job, or an inappropriate attempt to mislead Congress? May 3, 2007 - Deputy chief of staff Karl Rove participated in a hastily called meeting at the White House two months ago. The subject: The firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year. The purpose: to coach a top Justice Department official heading to Capitol Hill to testify on the prosecutorial purge on what he should say. Now some investigators are saying that Rove’s attendance at the meeting shows that the president’s chief political adviser may have been involved in an attempt to mislead Congress—one more reason they are demanding to see his e-mails and force him to testify under oath. At the March 5, 2007, meeting, White House aides, including counsel Fred Fielding and deputy counsel William Kelley, sought to shape testimony that Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General William Moschella was to give the next day before the House Judiciary Committee. Although the existence of the White House meeting had been previously disclosed by the Justice Department, Rove’s attendance at the strategy session was not—until both Moschella and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty talked about it in confidential testimony with congressional investigators last week. Portions of their testimony were read to NEWSWEEK by a Democratic aide who asked not to be identified talking about private matters. According to McNulty’s account, Rove came late to the meeting and left early. But while he was there he spoke up and echoed a point that was made by the other White House aides: The Justice Department needed to provide specific reasons why it terminated the eight prosecutors in order to rebut Democratic charges that the firings were politically motivated. The point Rove and other White House officials made is “you all need to explain what you did and why you did it,” McNulty told the investigators. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18479265/site/newsweek/
NJ: Withheld Emails Show White House Signed Off on False Statements By Paul Kiel - May 10, 2007, 1:26 PM Murray Waas has a new story on the U.S. attorney firings, this one leading to the inescapable conclusion that the administration was complicit in attempts to cover up White House involvement in the firings. The revelations come from emails that the Justice Department is withholding from Congress. A "senior executive branch offiical" tells Waas that it's no accident that Congress hasn't gotten their hands on these documents: A "senior administration official" adds that "Gonzales is doing this to save his own neck." So what documents are we talking about? The story deals with two separate letters that the Justice Department sent to Congress about the firings. The first was a January 31 letter to Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AK) assuring him that "not once" had the administration considered using the Patriot Act provision to install Tim Griffin, Karl Rove's former aide, as the U.S. attorney for Little Rock. The provision allowed the attorney general to appoint interim U.S. attorneys indefinitely without Senate confirmation. Of course, Kyle Sampson had been pushing to use the provision for months -- and had communicated the plan to the White House. But when it came time to answer questions about it, the White House signed off on a letter saying that they had never contemplated such a thing. And the withheld documents show that Christopher Oprison was the White House official who signed off on the letter -- that's funny because Kyle Sampson had layed out the plan to use the Patriot Act provision to appoint Griffin in an email to Oprison just a month before. The second letter in the piece is a February 23rd letter to Congress that claimed that Karl Rove hadn't had any role in appointing Griffin. Fittingly, Oprison also signed off on that one -- even though Sampson had written him in an email in December that Griffin's appointment was "important to Karl." White House spokesman Tony Fratto tells Waas that "Chris did not recall Karl's interest when he reviewed the letter." But Fratto also says that "We have no record of that letter ever leaving the White House counsel's office." In other words, they never bothered to ask Karl Rove or any one in his office to check whether the statement was true. And they just forgot that Sampson earlier had boasted about Rove's interest. Huh. http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003194.php Murray Waas' entire National Journal article -- Administration Withheld E-Mails About Rove http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/070510nj1.htm
It’s Subpoena Time For months, senators have listened to a parade of well-coached Justice Department witnesses claiming to know nothing about how nine prosecutors were chosen for firing. This week, it was the turn of Bradley Schlozman, a former federal attorney in Missouri, to be uninformative and not credible. It is time for Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to deliver subpoenas that have been approved for Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and their top aides, and to make them testify in public and under oath. Mr. Schlozman was appointed United States attorney in Missouri while the state was in the midst of a hard-fought Senate race. In his brief stint, he pushed a lawsuit, which was thrown out by a federal judge, that could have led to thousands of Democratic-leaning voters being wrongly purged from the rolls. Just days before the election, he indicted voter registration workers from the liberal group Acorn on fraud charges. Republicans quickly made the indictments an issue in the Senate race. Mr. Schlozman said it did not occur to him that the indictments could affect the campaign. That is hard to believe since the Justice Department’s guidelines tell prosecutors not to bring vote fraud investigations right before an election, so as not to affect the outcome. He also claimed, laughably, that he did not know that Acorn was a liberal-leaning group. Mr. Schlozman fits neatly into the larger picture. Prosecutors who refused to use their offices to help Republicans win elections, like John McKay in Washington State, and David Iglesias in New Mexico, were fired. Prosecutors who used their offices to help Republicans did well. Congress has now heard from everyone in the Justice Department who appears to have played a significant role in the firings of the prosecutors. They have all insisted that the actual decisions about whom to fire came from somewhere else. It is increasingly clear that the somewhere else was the White House. If Congress is going to get to the bottom of the scandal, it has to get the testimony of Mr. Rove, his aides Scott Jennings and Sara Taylor, Ms. Miers and her deputy, William Kelley. The White House has offered to make them available only if they do not take an oath and there is no transcript. Those conditions are a formula for condoning perjury, and they are unacceptable. As for documents, the White House has released piles of useless e-mail messages. But it has reported that key e-mails to and from Mr. Rove were inexplicably destroyed. At the same time, it has argued that e-mails of Mr. Rove’s that were kept on a Republican Party computer system, which may contain critical information, should not be released. This noncooperation has gone on long enough. Mr. Leahy should deliver the subpoenas for the five White House officials and make clear that if the administration resists, Congress will use all available means to get the information it needs. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/08/opinion/08fri1.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Oh..it's ON!!! BREAKING: Top White House Officials Subpoenaed Over Attorney Scandal Former White House counsel Harriet Miers and former top Karl Rove aide Sara Taylor, who served as White House political director before resigning last month, have been issued subpoenas over their connections to the U.S. attorney scandal. UPDATE: These are the first subpoenas delivered to the White House regarding the attorney firings. The House Judiciary Committee issued the subpoena to Miers, and the Senate Judiciary Committee issued the subpoena to Taylor. Emails showing Taylor and Miers deeply involved in the Justice Department’s response to the scandal were released last night. UPDATE II: The AP reports, “The Senate Judiciary Committee’s subpoena for Taylor compels her to testify on July 11, while the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena for Miers compels her testimony the next day.” UPDATE III: CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin reports, “The White House has made clear it will cite executive privilege for conversations that took place within the White House on the U.S. attorney matter, and if the people with those conversations happen to have subsequently left the White House, that doesn’t matter. They’re still going to cite executive privilege, and these people are not going to be allowed to testify anytime soon, it appears, if the White House remains as it has been. … Even if they want to testify.” http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/13/breaking-top-white-house-officials-subpoenaed/#comment-3855070
UPDATE IV: Statement from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI): “Let me be clear: this subpoena is not a request, it is a demand on behalf of the American people for the White House to make available the documents and individuals we are requesting to help us answer the questions that remain. The breadcrumbs in this investigation have always led to 1600 Pennsylvania.” Statement from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT): “The White House cannot have it both ways — it cannot stonewall congressional investigations by refusing to provide documents and witnesses, while claiming nothing improper occurred. … Some at the White House may hope to thwart our constitutional oversight efforts by locking the doors and closing the curtains, but we will keep asking until we get to the truth.”
while the rest of the country fights the war on terror, the mc libs continue their anti-bush surge. glad to see you've got your priorities straight.
the mc kos playbook: highlight american casualties trumpet all enemy attacks thwart any new bush-led initiatives in congress keep the admin tied up in subpoenas so they can't concentrate on the war on terror wash rinse repeat did i leave anything out?
How is that different than the White House Playbook? lie to justify war stonewall when confronted refuse to testify under oath keep your presidential papers hidden for 50 years wash rinse repeat
the one I bolded has to be the silliest. It is not up to congress not investigate wrong doing so that Bush can fight the war on terror. It is up to Bush to follow the laws and rules, so that he can run the govt. efficiently. It is amazing and very telling that you would criticize someone(congress) in govt. for doing their jobs, while Bush has made such a huge mess out of this war.
While the small percentage of people like basso, prefer to ignore gross violations of ethics, and crimes committed by those in charge of our nation's executive branch, because that tiny percentage wants the President to continue onward with a strategy that has proven to be a failure time and time again, the rest of us will be happy that at last congress is trying to force some type of accountability.
It's very simple Have Chimpy McFlysuit resign and then maybe we can continue the real war on terror in a responsible fashion.
That you are incredibly shallow and a disappointment to a lot of people here on the board. Nothing of substance, everything increasingly straight out of the Bush/Cheney/Rove Rush spin cycle. Sad and pathetic.
