WASHINGTON — The probe into the Bush administration’s firings of U.S. attorneys intensified Monday as lawmakers ordered two more ousted officials to tell their stories and the Justice Department said Republican Sen. Pete Domenici had complained repeatedly to the attorney general about one of the prosecutors. The administration has said eight prosecutors were told to leave, all but one for performance-related reasons. However, Democrats have suggested ever more pointedly that politics was behind many of the dismissals, and the Domenici revelation fueled that idea. Six of those fired, meanwhile, issued a stiff defense of their conduct and implied that they had had differences with Justice Department officials in Washington. ‘We leave with no regrets, because we served well and upheld the best traditions of the Department of Justice,’ the group said in a joint statement released in advance of a Tuesday hearing by a House subcommittee. The Justice Department, besieged by charges of cronyism, acknowledged that lawmakers had complained about several of the eight. One, David Iglesias of New Mexico, was the subject of four phone calls from Domenici, R-N.M., to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his deputy questioning whether the prosecutor was ‘up to […]
Tuesday, March 6th, 2007
Probe of Prosecutor Firings Intensifies
Author: LAURIE KELLMAN
Source: Houston Chronicle/The Associated Press
Publication Date: March 5, 2007, 6:12PM
Link: Probe of Prosecutor Firings Intensifies
Source: Houston Chronicle/The Associated Press
Publication Date: March 5, 2007, 6:12PM
Link: Probe of Prosecutor Firings Intensifies
Stephan: This is classic Bush Administration undermining of the structures of government for ideological purposes, all done under the media radar, for the most part. This is how women's health issues were once overseen by a born-again Religious Right woman vet, instead of an M.D.; how FEMA was given to 'Brownie;' and, how EPA policy was written by energy lobbyists.