TPM Muckraker has video of Feinstein on Senate floor, with full transcript.

And some additional background with list of prosecutors replaced.

Some of them were successfully investigating corruption; now being forced to resign.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002354.php

Lots at Dkos

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/1/17/101011/050
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/1/17/111247/445

Update: Specter Admits Role in Expanding WH Powers
By Paul Kiel - January 17, 2007, 3:33 PM

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) confirmed that as Judiciary Committee chairman last year he made a last-minute change to a bill that expanded the administration's power to install U.S. Attorneys without Senate approval.

Seizing upon the new authority granted by Congress last March, the White House has pushed out several U.S. Attorneys, and begun to replace them without the Senate's consent.

"I can confirm for you that yes, it was a Specter provision," a spokesperson for the senator wrote to me in an email earlier today, responding to repeated inquiries. Earlier we reported that Specter had been fingered for the last-minute change, made in a select Republicans-only meeting after the House and Senate had voted on earlier versions.

Still, a mystery remains: Why Specter wanted the change, which arguably weakened the Senate's role in selecting federal prosecutors.

more
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002357.php

I thought we were bad up here in Canada. You have corruption there served on your plate!
Will you ever impeach Bush?

_{repressive governments mix administrative clumsiness & inefficiency with authoritarian tendencies.}

X-Link

By Karoun Demirjian
Washington Bureau
Published March 6, 2007

Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON -- Several former U.S. attorneys told two congressional committees Tuesday that they felt political pressure from the Bush administration to remain silent about the circumstances of their firings.

H.E. "Bud" Cummins, ousted from his East Arkansas post last summer —and replaced by a former aide to White House political operative Karl Rove — told the Senate Judiciary Committee that in late February he received a troubling phone call from Mike Elston, chief of staff to deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty

"He indicated that if the controversy continued to be stirred up, more damaging information might come out," said Cummins, who passed on the conversation to the other dismissed U.S. attorneys in an email he presented to the committee. "It might have been a threat, observation, or prediction. But I was very concerned for my colleagues."

John McKay, a former U.S. Attorney in western Washington state and one of seven federal prosecutors told to resign on Dec. 7, said, "I took it to mean that any work with Congress or testimony would be seen as an escalation from the Department of Justice, and they would respond accordingly. I felt that was a threat and hugely inappropriate. But while it was a threat, I'm not intimidated and I don't think my colleagues are either."

McKay and Cummins were joined in their testimony by former U.S. Attorneys Carol Lam of San Diego, best known for her successful prosecution of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), and David Iglesias of New Mexico, a former Navy prosecutor who was the inspiration for Tom Cruise's character in "A Few Good Men." All four also testified before the House Judiciary Committee and were joined there by former U.S. Attorneys Daniel Bogden of Nevada and Paul Charlton of Arizona.

Their complaints about feeling pressured by the Bush administration to keep quiet about their dismissals are the latest chapter in what has incrementally grown into a serious political problem for the White House.

"There is so much evidence of the political interest of justice officials carrying weight over the career lawyers," said Thomas Mann, a political analyst with the Brookings Institution. "My view is that will potentially be quite harmful to the administration."

Over the weekend, Iglesias said he had received phone calls from his one-time mentor, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), asking if indictments in a high-profile political corruption case would be handed down before the November elections.

"Red flags went up," Iglesias said. "I felt sick."

The Justice Department confirmed that Domenici later contacted high-level department officials with complaints about Iglesias.

Iglesias' story comes only weeks after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he would "never, ever make a change in the United States attorney position for political reasons."

But shifting details in the administration's official explanations have convinced some Democrats that the attorneys in question were basically fired for political reasons.

"With virtually no documentary evidence on performance problems on the part of the fired U.S. Attorneys…what are we to think?" asked Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who chaired the Senate committee meeting.

U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, who is legally entitled to terminate an appointee's tenure for any or no reason.

"The Democrats are on the offensive against this president, who is a deeply politically vulnerable president," said Mark Moeller of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. "This is a good way for the Democrats to portray the president as a lawless president."

The White House continues to insist that in all cases apart from Cummins's, the firings were based on their poor job performance. Associate Deputy Attorney General William Moschella told the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday that several attorneys had not been diligent in pursuing Justice Department policies, such as Lam, whose gun prosecution numbers, he said, were simply too low.

"She only beat out Guam and the Virgin Islands in that area," he said.

Lam defended her record. "It's a balancing act, and it does concern me that lack of pursuit of one of 20 or 30 priorities would be used as a reason to dismiss a U.S. Attorney," she said.

When asked, all the former U.S. Attorneys rejected the notion that job-performance related issues could have precipitated their dismissals. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) suggested that the prosecutors may have been removed so the administration could appoint more political supporters, as was the case with Cummins's dismissal, by taking advantage of a little-known provision of the Patriot Act Reauthorization that allows the president to make indefinite interim U.S. Attorney appointments.

She and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) have drafted a bill, currently facing Republican opposition on the Senate floor, to reinstitute a 120-day time limit for presidential appointees to receive Senate confirmation.

"It would be helpful if the Department of Justice would be a little more sensitive about what they're doing," Specter said. "To replace seven U.S. attorneys all at once is not exactly a discreet thing to do."

kdemirjian@tribune.com

link

Posted on Sat, Mar. 10, 2007

Rove was asked to fire U.S. attorney

By Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state's U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.

In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

"Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.

"He's gone," Rove said, according to Weh.

"I probably said something close to 'Hallelujah,'" said Weh.

Weh's account calls into question the Justice Department's stance that the recent decision to fire Iglesias and seven U.S. attorneys in other states was a personnel matter - made without White House intervention. Justice Department officials have said the White House's involvement was limited to approving a list of the U.S. attorneys after the Justice Department made the decision to fire them.

Rove could not be reached Saturday, and the White House and the Justice Department had no immediate response.

"The facts speak for themselves," Iglesias said, when he was told of Weh's account of his conversation with Rove.

Weh's disclosure comes as Congress investigates the circumstances behind the firings of the U.S. attorneys, most of whom had positive job evaluations, including Iglesias. Democrats have charged the Bush administration tried to inject partisan politics into federal prosecutions in order to influence election outcomes.

Weh said he doesn't know whether Rove was directly involved in the firing or was merely advised of the decision.

Weh insisted this wasn't about partisan politics.

"There's nothing we've done that's wrong," he said. "It wasn't that Iglesias wasn't looking out for Republicans. He just wasn't doing his job, period."

But Iglesias, who was fired Dec. 7, said he believes politics was the driving force. He accused Republicans Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson of trying to pressure him to bring indictments against several Democrats in time for the 2006 congressional election.

Domenici and Wilson acknowledge calling Iglesias, but deny pressuring him.

Justice Department officials have revealed that Domenici repeatedly contacted officials within the department requesting Iglesias' removal. But when asked Friday whether he contacted Rove about the issue, Domenici said he could not remember.

Iglesias said Friday he believes the impatience of state Republicans raises the possibility that the Bush administration might have been more involved than officials have acknowledged.

"Part of the controversy behind this is prosecutorial discretion," Iglesias said. "What that means is it's up to the sole discretion of the prosecutor in the case of how to handle the indictment and when to issue it."

Former federal prosecutors and defense lawyers who've represented public officials in corruption cases say the allegations of political inference could undermine the reputation of U.S. attorneys as impartial enforcers of the law.

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