Fact Primer on the Attorney Firings

Folks seem to be really confused as to why this is a big deal. Quite a few of you are repeating the Republican ‘talking point’ that: “Clinton fired all 93, so what’s the big deal about Bush firing 8?”

OK. Listen up and I’ll tell you.

First: it is normal for an incoming President to fire all 93 US Attorneys and then replace them with his/her own people. Everyone does it. Clinton did it and so did George Bush when he first came to power.

Second: it is extremely abnormal to fire anyone mid-term. Research shows that only 10 US Attorneys have been fired mid-term in the past twenty five years and most, if not all, of them were fired for obvious reasons [one of them was fired because he bit the arm of a stripper in a strip club!]. So the current circumstance of a mass firing during mid-term is extremely odd and is bound to engender questions.

Third: those questions are bound to get sharper when it turns out that one of the fired Attorneys [Carol Lam] was working on a nationally prominent corruption case involving several well connected Republican congressmen. That firing alone looks suspicious. In the interests of propriety we need to make sure that Lam was fired for a proper reason and not because she was about to uncover a deeper rooted scandal.

Fourth: the reasons given for the firings are flimsy and have been changed when the public outcry showed that they were a sham. For instance: David Inglesias was fired, according to the Attorney General, because he was not diligent or competent in pursuing immigration cases. Yet it turns out that Inglesias was the most qualified immigration attorney on the staff of the Department of Justice … he was the person they turned to to educate the others on how to do it! It is this kind of clear falsehood that has everyone’s attention.

So the issue is not that the Attroneys were fired, although that in itself is odd, it is why they were fired.

And so far the White House has not felt able or willing to answer that question clearly. The original reasons have all been shredded by simple follow up research. Bush’s attempt to stall for time is a sign that there is more to this story than he wants to tell. For instance: was he personally involved in giving the Ok for the firings? If so was he aware of the reasons? And are those reasons acceptable?

Deliberately employing US Attorneys to do the bidding of the Republican party during a close election is a debasement of our justice system and neeeds to be punished. Lying to Congress is a felony. So far the evidence is mounting that more than one person at the Department of Justice has lied to Congress, and it is beginning to look as if Bush himself was involved in perverting the justice system. [That Bush was involved is suggested by this ‘coincidence’: the infamous 18 day gap in the e-mail trail that all the commentators are pointing to, is precisely the same three weeks period that Bush was either traveling or taking his Thanksgiving holiday; as soon as he arrived back in the White House the e-mail activity started up again, and the Attorneys were fired within days!]

I doubt that impeachment is possible because of the time left in Bush’s term, and the lack of sufficient votes in the Senate. But the offense sure looks impeachable.

So, notwithstanding Fox news and the right wing pundits, this really is a big deal. We need to get to the bottom of it quickly; and, if need be, we need to get those subpoenas out to force testimony from those who can shed a light on what happened.

This is a big deal, and will get bigger the longer Bush tries to stall, and the more the Republicans huff and puff about partisan witch hunts. There’s smoke at the end of that gun barrel. We need to know who pulled the trigger.