The Rachel Maddow Show: House Releases New Evidence in U.S. Attorney Scandal
By Heather Thursday Aug 13, 2009 6:00am
Rachel reports on the latest revelations to come out of the U.S. Attorney firings scandal.
Maddow: In 2006, nine U.S. federal attorneys, prosecutors, were surprisingly and suddenly fired by the Department of Justice under George W. Bush. U.S. Attorney Paulson Charlton of Arizona was fired while he was in the midst of building a case against Republican Congressman Rick Renzi for an allegedly illegal land swap deal that would eventually lead to a 35-count indictment, including charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and extortion.
And in San Diego, U.S. Attorney Carol Lam had spearheaded the corruption investigation that brought down Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham, who eventually pled guilty to accepting at least $2.4 million in bribes. The "Dukester" is still doing more than eight years in prison for that.
And then there was U.S. attorney David Iglesias. And Mr. Iglesias' dismissal really caught people's attention and the House Judiciary Committee has been looking into his case and the cases of the eight attorneys for more than two years now.
Well, today, that committee released emails and transcripts of closed-door testimony by Bush's White House counsel, Harriet Miers, and Bush's political guru, Karl Rove. Ms. Miers testified that the White House, specifically Karl Rove and his staff, were intimately involved in the decision-making process about whether or not the supposedly independent U.S. attorneys, the supposedly apolitical prosecutors, were going to be allowed to keep their jobs.
Ms. Miers told the committee that she received a call from Mr. Rove, in which he said that the U.S. attorney in New Mexico, Mr. Iglesias, was, quote, "a serious problem and he wanted something done about it." Miers told the committee, quote, "My best recollection is that he was very agitated about the U.S. attorney in New Mexico."
Why would Karl Rove be so agitated about David Iglesias? Why was Iglesias such a serious problem, according to Karl Rove? Well, e-mails released today from the committee showed Rove's deputy, a man named Scott Jennings, explicitly saying that Iglesias should be fired and complaining that Mr. Iglesias was, quote, "shy about doing his job on Madrid."
Madrid is Patricia Madrid, a Democratic candidate for Congress who Republicans were hoping the U.S. attorney would target with an election eve voter fraud indictment.
Iglesias didn't do that to Patricia Madrid. The Bush White House and Republicans were apparently furious about that, and then David Iglesias got fired.
The federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy continues to work on this case.
She will decide ultimately whether criminal charges will be filed.
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If they take down Rove I have a feeling he will take other people down with him. This could be interesting.
You know how this works. There are plenty of smaller fish to throw to the wolves long before anyone of REAL importance is prosecuted.
Scooter Libby got his. My money is that either Rove or Gonzales is next.
The confusing thing for me is why Yu hasn't been indicted. My only guess is he has pictures of certain high level Administration officials in compromising positions with small animals.
The difference between kinky and perverted is....when you're kinky...you use a feather. When you're perverted, you use the whole chicken.
.
Is that another chicken joke?
Not for the chicken!
If we tell you it is, will you tell us you get it?
Scooter Libby was willing to be eaten without offering up Cheney/Bush/others because he relied on Cheney/Bush to get him a get out of jail free card and to ultimately pardon him. The fact that Bush cared more about covering his political arse than pardoning Scooter demonstrates how self-destructive it can be for little fish to trust big fish.
If Rove and or Miers and or Jennings gets indicted, there are no big fish in a position to get them out of jail or pardon them.
We have heard it straight from Obama mouth.... He is illegally censoring information about the prior administration criminal crimes,,, and is trying to stop any prosecution of Bush administration criminal crimes.
What do you believe Americans will believe about Bush when a democrat president and a democrat senate / house not only refuses to investigate and prosecute the criminal crimes but arrogantly put road blocks by censoring their criminal crimes we have records of...
Obama , Emanuel , Blue dogs and other democrat leaders could be no more republicans in their deceit and BS then if they were republicans. Are they???
this drama has been kicking around for years - with obvious and overt evidence that the bush admin acted illegally... still no trial, no convictions...
Republicans will say if they have committed crimes the democrats would have surely prosecuted him,, them what ever..
It is almost if Obama , Emanuel and some other democrats have promised and made deals with Cheney's hit squad not to prosecute them..
I think if Rove FALLS he'll start a domino effect. I LOVE dominos- the game not the pizza. Ug: cardboard with tomato sauce and cheese-substitute. I don't even want to think what their "meat" is.
and only because she probably was going to be a scapegoat for everything treacherous that went down during the Bush Administration if she didn't start singing like the proverbial canary.
Harriet was sitting on shit like this and she could have been a Supreme Court Justice? Jesus what a mess. Now we have Cheney turning against bush and basically calling him a wuss. Only in America could someone like Cheney make someone like bush look better. Cheney is the only one who could possibly save bush's legacy. Or maybe that's the plan, who knows.
This is most likely the reason she was nominated for the Supreme Court!
she was the bait and switch nominee.
But Bush took a lot of flack from conservatives for it, plus its such an obvious payoff for silence that I wouldn't discount the possibility. Bear in mind, Bush had been refused almost nothing, no reason he wouldn't think he could've named Chuck Norris to the SCOTUS and get away with it.
...selected. We could now begin impeachment proceedings and get another Obama appointment on the court.
..requires 2/3 of the Senate.
That means at least 7 Republicans. OK, name me 7 Republican Senators who wouldn't be traitors to the constitution, or who would throw one of their own in jail.
Did you forget the principle of IOKIYAR?
... because obviously the Dems have the testicular fortitude to put forth such a process. I am sure Roberts and Alito are "quaking" in their boots, right?
At least we have an Attorney General willing to seek out any wrongdoing and carry out the fullest letter of the law, regardless of political...oh, what's that? Never mind, we'll probably just find the first Lyndie England-level patsy to bear the full brunt of this and act like we sent Al Capone away.
Busy jousting with the ACLU? Go ahead Eric, take a chance, do your job.
Every day we find another turd hidden in the White House, left behind by the dogs of the Bush Administration.
... you can take one step inside the White House without stepping in one.
Someone needs to check the VP's office for urine stains on the wall. I can just see ol' Dick marking his territory.
Blaming people for things they did in the past would be seen as politically divisive. *sigh* Remember when people who broke rules were punished?
Why won't Obama's housekeepers clean up those turds?
Grannys plug
Just to show my support for the screaming people at the town hall meetings, this morning I pulled the plug on my toaster.
To show my support for the "Concerned Citizens," I'm having all the walls in my house done up in new death paneling.
It only comes in worm wood, you know.
Absinthe?
As in absinthe makes the heart grow fuzzier?
absinthe keeps your palms from growing fuzzier.
Karl Rove could write a book entitled: "How I Engaged In Criminal Activity In The Bush White House...and Got Away With It!"
and the response would be [crickets].
and it seems to be the IQ and attention span of the average American reporter and his or her audience. It is a low number.
Like Karl's math in the 06 election? How did that work out for him? I think he needed new batteries in his abacus.
but the wrong yo-yo.
Rove will probably be laughing about this all the way to the bank with his check from Fox news gripped tight in his chubby little fist.
whether the fired USAttys were doing their jobs.
It was then--and is now more than ever, since so many of them have NOT yet been replaced by the Obama/Holder DoJ--
WHAT DID THE ONES WHO KEPT THEIR JOBS HAVE TO DO TO KEEP THEM?
The ones fired were accused by Rove and Beto Gonzales of insufficient ardor in preserving Rove's eternal GOPUKE majority. Iglesias in particular, was fired because "Leather" Heather Wilson complained to her patron, Pajama Pete Domenici, woh complained to Rove and Beto, that Iglesias wasn't tarring Dims enough in the Courts in advance of the election.
WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE STILL BUSHEVIK US Attys IN OFFICE?
That's the question you should be asking...
for permission to send Karl Rove a strongly worded letter!
These Clowns are interested in one thing only SOCIALIZING the CORPORATIONS and setting up a Totalitarian Theocratic government. Why do you think these MORONS are trying to control the BALLOT BOX, why to you think they are SCARED to DEATH of Democracy, People of color and Immigrants. They screwed up with Mr. Iglesias because he was the one they made a MOVIE about using Tom Cruise in a Few good Men. NOT prosecuting these criminals is telling me I DO NOT HAVE TO CONVICT ANYONE when called to JURY DUTY and selected. In fact as of this writing I have friend who has been summoned and I requested that person talk to the JURY pool and EXPLAIN why should we convict when CRIMINALS like rove, miers, cheney, bush, addington etc..... walk around free.
They want someone to tell them what to do, and don't really care about rights.
They're violent, delusional, and are not concerned with facts or actually doing what's morally right.
They're very sick, and dangerous people. We should stop treating them like they're mildly deluded.
How much would you like to bet that none of these criminals will go before a court of law?
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