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Partisanship at Justice Dept. Is Nothing NewPosted on Mar 14, 2007By Joe Conason Someday, historians will wonder why the highest officials in the Bush Justice Department believed they could inflict heavy-handed political abuse on federal prosecutors—and get away with it. The punishment of the eight dismissed U.S. attorneys betrays a strong sense of impunity in the White House, as if the president and his aides assumed nobody would complain about these outrages or attempt to hold them accountable. The precedent for their misconduct was set long ago. There was once another Republican prosecutor who insisted on behaving professionally instead of obeying partisan hints from the White House. His name was Charles A. Banks, and his story begins in the summer of 1992, as the presidential contest entered its final months, with Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton leading incumbent President George H.W. Bush. Banks had already served for five years as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock. As an active Republican who had run for Congress and still aspired to higher office, he counted Clinton among his political adversaries. The first President Bush had recently selected him as a potential nominee for the federal bench. So nothing could have better served Banks’ personal interests than a chance to stop the Clintons and preserve the Bush presidency. In September 1992, a Republican activist employed by the Resolution Trust Corporation provided that opportunity by fabricating a criminal referral naming the Clintons as witnesses in a case against the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association (the small Arkansas savings and loan owned by Whitewater partner and Clinton friend James McDougal). The referral prepared by L. Jean Lewis lacked merit—as determined by Banks and the top FBI agent in his office—but she commenced a crusade for action against the hated Clintons. The FBI repeatedly rejected or ignored her crankish entreaties. Eventually, however, officials in Washington heard whispers about the Lewis referral—a document that might save the president from defeat in November by smearing the Clintons as participants in a sweetheart land deal. That fall, Edith Holiday, secretary to the Bush Cabinet, asked Attorney General William Barr whether he knew anything about such a referral. Although Barr knew nothing, he quickly sent an inquiry to the FBI. Weeks later, the president’s counsel, C. Boyden Gray, posed a similar improper question to a top Resolution Trust Corp. official. Those queries and hints from above created intense pressure on Banks to act on the Lewis referral despite his opinion, shared by the FBI, that her work was sloppy and biased. After Barr ordered him to act on the referral no later than two weeks before Election Day, he replied with a roar of conscience. “I know that in investigations of this type,” Banks wrote in a remarkable memo to his boss, “the first steps ... will lead to media and public inquiries of matters that are subject to absolute privacy. Even media questions about such an investigation in today’s modern political climate all too often publicly purport to ‘legitimize what can’t be proven ... .’ “I must opine that after such a lapse of time, the insistence for urgency in this case appears to suggest an intentional or unintentional attempt to intervene into the political process of the upcoming presidential election ... . “For me personally to participate in an investigation that I know will or could easily lead to the above scenario ... is inappropriate. I believe it amounts to prosecutorial misconduct and violates the most basic fundamental rule of Department of Justice policy.” The Whitewater case didn’t save the first President Bush, although it was later revived as a costly pseudo-scandal. More pertinent today is what happened to Banks and Lewis—and the U.S. attorney’s office in Little Rock. The honest Banks forfeited his promised judgeship and returned to private practice with his political career ended. The incompetent Lewis appeared before the Senate Whitewater Committee, where she lied repeatedly before “fainting” under examination by the Democratic counsel. She then disappeared from public view until 2003, when the White House rewarded her with an important federal job. Those who had observed Lewis in action were astonished when she was named chief of staff to the Pentagon inspector general, at a salary of $118,000 a year. An ugly sequel occurred last December, when the Justice Department ousted H.E. “Bud” Cummins III—another upstanding and competent Republican prosecutor in Little Rock—so a crony of Karl Rove could replace him in the U.S. attorney’s office.
Was this what George W. Bush meant when he promised to return “integrity” to the Oval Office?
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By Adam Smith, March 29, 2007 at 3:39 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
It’s a pretty simple case. The attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. Maybe that’s a bad thing, but it’s a fact. The same partisans carping about Bush firing the attorneys never once cared about Clinton’s firing of 93. I’m no Bush supporter, and in fact, he’s mostly been a disaster. However, it’s another thing to lie about him or to make him into a monster. Incompetent, yes, but near as I’ve been able to tell, he’s about the most honest president we’ve had. Many of you people are so filled with hate that you’re willing to believe anything negative. Your objectivity is shot. I’m convinced Mr. Bush is a decent man who wants the best for the country because it’s thoroughly evident in his actions. However, his inexperience and unwillingness to acknowledge problems have created a mess that only time will truly reveal.
Report thisBy morgan lamberth, March 21, 2007 at 9:50 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
What would one otherwise expect of Cheney -Bush ? Look at their FISA, renditions and no justice for Gitmos prisoners .
Report thisBy Greg Bacon, March 18, 2007 at 1:48 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
What!!!! President Bush lies?????
What’s next, you going to tell me there’s no Santa Claus?
What????!??!?!?!?
Yes Virginia, there was a Santa Claus until he got shot down over southern Irag by one of our F-16’s patrolling the “No-Fly Zone”
Report thisBy Hondo, March 16, 2007 at 8:27 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
When I saw the headline of this article, “Partisanship at Justice Dept. Is Nothing New,” I thought that I was about to read about how Clinton fired 93 U.S. Attorneys while president. Or about how Chuckie Cheese Schumer harassed the Justice Department in the beginning stages of the Plame affair. But no, sadly, the article was just more liberal blather.
Report thisBy Joe, March 15, 2007 at 11:37 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
In a similar review of old history.
In 1990 in the presentation to the U.N. just before the vote on Gulf I, Bush Sr. had presentation for the U.N., similar in some ways to Colin Powell’s. This included portraying the Iraq’s soldiers as inhuman. Iraqi troops were taking babies out of incubators in hospitals in Kuwait, then throwing them on the floor, then shooting them.
This was portrayed by a nurse in the hospital that saw the whole thing. Later we learn, it was all made up.
She turns out to be the niece of a friendly Saudi, just helping us out.
The vote was taken right after the presentation. There was no time to check out the validity of anything. The U.N. voted for war based on these fabrications, the U.S. get’s all these nations to join the coalition. And off we go to battle.
To bad the scam was realized some time later after the war.
That sounds like Gulf War 11?
Report thisBy republicanSScareme, March 15, 2007 at 6:49 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
People defending Bush say that Clinton fired all the State Attorneys when he took office. But, was that necessary to get rid of them (probably all dubious Republicans)? As four-year appointees, wouldn’t their terms have run out, or haved ended at the same time as the Presidents’?
People aren’t idiots. Most of us can figure out that politics is involved. Politicians appoint people they think agree with them, especially if they are are campaign donors or friends, or both.
Nonetheless, once they take their oath of office...they swear to uphold the law...the people who appointed them must respect their right to integrity. That’s much more important than doing political favors, especially illegal favors. They must respect the honor of the people they appoint.
Do political favors when people’s constitutional rights aren’t violated.
The people Bush fired got rousted. Harrassed. Threatened. Kind of like The Mob.
Do we want thugs like that serving us?
Push To Impeach!
Report thisBy Quy Tran, March 15, 2007 at 10:32 am #
(Unregistered commenter)
There’s absolutely no “integrity” to the Oval Office as Bush kept saying but only flatterers at every corners of his Whore House.
Report thisBy TAO Walker, March 14, 2007 at 11:39 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)
And of course, as the Great Confabulator liked to remind everybody, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Actually, us Indians got a good long look right down the barrel of it awhile back, and against all odds lived to tell the tale. (In fact, here’s some chapter-and-verse of the story now.)
The Gypster wasn’t talking to us free wild natural people, anyway, having already consigned us to the ever-growing realm of “ancient history,” along with everyone and anything else that was around before he was hired by Gen’l Electric to be its very own talking head. (That he was himself amongst ‘us could help to explain the fella’s chronic disorientation in......well, time.)
It looks like the original script for the Bush crime family’s remake of “Dynasty” called for yet a third administration under Jeb, who would then raise the ante (on their customary abuse of U.S. Attorneys) to the limit. But that was before his older (but not wiser) brother got tricked (by Dick) into going “all-in” on his own supposed-to-be-place-holding watch. This has thrown the whole program off-schedule, and its privateering perpetrators into a panic.
Which probably explains their increasingly frantic efforts to pick-off the Dickster before he drives young George all the way to Armageddon....and abandons him there, the victim of another one of those “Iranian” EFP-type IEDs. Somebody, maybe it was Hunter S. Thompson, warned the Bushes way back when Cheney chose himself to run Dubya....uh, that is, run WITH Dubya. (Or is that just two different ways of saying the same thing?) Anyway, somebody, it might’ve been Maureen Dowd or even Ellen Goodman, wrote at the time, “Be afraid, Bushes, be very afraid!”
Well they sure as hell are, staring into a big black hole of “nothin’” right this minute that’s about to swallow-up the whole damned barrio-bombing, election-stealing, Lady Liberty-fucking bunch. But these gangbangers can screw-around with the roster at the “Justice” Department all they want, trying to make sure it’s packed with “team players.” Justice Herownself will see the theft of her sister Liberty’s honor and virtue does not go unpunished....to the full extent of Nature’s unbreakable (because they are completely self-enforcing) laws.
HokaHey!
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