Frauds

The pressure to bring voter fraud cases sure was intense. Of course, the last thing the GOP wants is, ahem, people voting.

“We would like to execute this on Thursday, Dec. 7,” Mr. Sampson wrote. Because some United States attorneys were still in Washington attending a conference, he planned to postpone telling them they were being fired. He wrote, “We want to wait until they are back home and dispersed to reduce chatter.”

Mr. Sampson predicted that dismissals might stir debate. “Prepare to Withstand Political Upheaval,” he wrote in describing what to expect as a result of the firings. “U.S Attorneys desiring to save their jobs aided by their allies in the political arena as well as the Justice Department community, likely will make efforts to preserve themselves in office. You should expect these efforts to be strenuous.”

Mr. Rove’s role in expressing concerns about prosecutors had emerged in recent days. The White House acknowledged Sunday that Mr. Rove had passed on complaints to Mr. Gonzales and Ms. Miers about David C. Iglesias, who was dismissed as the United States attorney in New Mexico. Mr. Rove’s role surfaced after the McClatchy Newspapers reported that a Republican Party official in New Mexico had complained to Mr. Rove in 2005 and again a year later about Mr. Iglesias’s failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation.

Concern about voter registration fraud turned political in several states in 2004 where there were close elections, including some lost narrowly by Republican candidates.

An associate of Mr. Rove said Monday that although he had learned in November that the prosecutors were being replaced, his conversation with Allen Weh, the Republican Party chairman in New Mexico, and subsequently with Mr. Gonzales, were brief exchanges at holiday parties and that they occurred after Dec. 7, when Mr. Iglesias and six other prosecutors were dismissed.

John McKay, the ousted United States attorney in Seattle, said last week while in Washington to testify before Congress that White House lawyers interviewing him for a possible federal judgeship had asked him why he had “mishandled” an investigation into voter fraud allegations in his state following the 2004 elections.

As noted last week, this is a situation that will only get uglier (the fact that the White House agreed to drop the clause in the Patriot Act allowing the DOJ to replace prosecutors without Senate confirmation is a sure sign of how hot this particular potato is perceived to be). Now that the president's been reported to have been involved it gets even more interesting. These people may serve "at the pleasure of the president," but this smacks even the most casual observer as a clear abuse of power and the politicization of the Dept. of Justice.

UPDATE: Fired Seattle prosecutor speaks (via TPM):

Had anyone at the Justice Department or the White House ordered me to pursue any matter criminally in the 2004 governor's election, I would have resigned," McKay said. "There was no evidence, and I am not going to drag innocent people in front of a grand jury."