Legal News

New Docs Point to Rove in Prosecutor Firings; But What Will Come of It?

By Ashby Jones

In our posts on the U.S. attorney-dismissal story, we used to run a photo of the Energizer Bunny to symbolize the staying power of the saga: it kept going, and going, and going. Well, here we are in mid-2009. The bunny has long worn out its battery (and welcome), yet the dismissal story still, yes, goes on.

The latest: A whole bunch of emails were released recently showing that Karl Rove and other Bush administration heavies may have played a more extensive role in the firings of the U.S. attorneys than had been previously known. Click here, here and here for stories from the WSJ, NYT and WaPo, respectively.

Among the new details were emails that appeared to bolster allegations that David Iglesias, the former U.S. attorney in New Mexico, was fired for partisan reasons. The emails showed that as early as May 2005, White House political aides were discussing possible replacements for Mr. Iglesias, who, the emails suggested, had fallen into disfavor with the Bush administration for declining to bring vote-fraud cases as local Republicans wanted. Iglesias has said he didn’t bring the cases because there wasn’t sufficient evidence.

Responded Iglesias, to the NYT about the exhcange: “The amount of backstabbing and treachery involved is just breathtaking. It's astounding that without reviewing the evidence or talking to the F.B.I. or anything, the White House would assume that these were provable cases and that I needed to file them for the political benefit of the party. That's not what U.S. attorneys do.”

Rove said he welcomed the release of the documents. “They show politics played no role in the Bush administration’s removal of U.S. attorneys, that I never sought to influence the conduct of any prosecution, and that I played no role in deciding which U.S. attorneys were retained and which replaced,” he said.

Despite the new developments, it remains far from certain whether the newly available information contains anything that would help prosecutors bring criminal charges against Rove or against any other former Bush officials.

A Justice Department internal investigation in 2008 concluded that improper “partisan political considerations played a part in the removal of several of the U.S. attorneys,” but was unable to conclude whether any crime was committed. A criminal prosecutor is still investigating the matter.

Photo: AP

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 12, 2009 (boomark / email).