Archive for category: Law

This is my general review of the interim report on the USA Purge. If you haven’t already done so, make sure you read the post on the Iglesias cover-up, which I believe to be the most important aspect of the report.

The report on the findings to date in the USA purge lists the following crimes and violations that may have been committed in the course of the USA firings:

• Obstruction of justice, attempted obstruction of justice [18 USC 1503, 1505, 1512(c)(2)]
• Criminal Hatch Act violations [18 USC 606]
• Presidential failure to ensure that laws are faithfully executed [Constitution, Article II, Section 3]
• Civil Hatch Act violations [5 USC 7323(a)(1)]
• Federal Civil Rights laws [18 USC 242]
• Conspiracy [18 USC 2, 371]
• Perjury [18 USC 1621]
• False Statements [18 USC 1001]

For a number of these potential crimes (particularly obstruction and criminal Hatch Act violations), the report cites multiple possible violations. This is a list that bloggers on this topic need to keep ready at hand, because it puts in concrete terms what this whole investigation is about. This report, for the first time, makes clear that Congress is investigating real criminal violations, that evidence suggests a crime was committed, and that by invoking executive privilege, the White House is obstructing the investigation into potential crimes.

I guess it’s my day to be underwhelmed.

I find it really hard to get excited over SJC issuing Rove a subpoena today. That’s partly for tactical reasons. Until we get the Sergeant at Arms to arrest Harriet and hold her in contempt, after all, it doesn’t make sense to subpoena Rove because we don’t have the tactically proven tools to enforce such a subpoena.

But it’s also a question of focus. We’ve got a well-supported claim against Alberto Gonzales moving foward right now. And we should have the same on Cheney–there is the same richness of evidence to go after Cheney. Whereas with Rove (with the exception of Presidential Records violations on the RNC emails and, eventually, Abramoff) we don’t have that evidence. And without tactical tools to force him to turn over the evidence …never mind, I’m going in circles.

So without that evidence, we’re forced to make claims that, I suspect, aren’t entirely well-founded. For example, Leahy states the following in his statement on the subpoenas.

What the White House stonewalling is preventing is conclusive evidence of who made the decisions to fire these federal prosecutors.  We know from the testimony that it was not the President.  Everyone who has testified said has said that he was not involved.  None of the senior officials at the Department of Justice could testify how people were added to the list or the real reasons that people were included among the federal prosecutors to be replaced.  Indeed, the evidence we have been able to collect points to Karl Rove and the political operatives at the White House.

I find the list of briefings on the domestic wiretap program as instructive for what it tells us about the program itself (and Bush’s dealings with Congress) as it is as proof that Gonzales is full of shit. In no particular order or structure, here are some thoughts:

Citizens and Voters Need Not Know

This document was declassified on May 17, 2006, before the midterm elections. But this is the first we’re hearing of it. I rather think that John Laesch would have liked to be able to tell voters that Denny Hastert had approved warrantless wiretapping of American citizens three times. I’m sure that Marcy Winograd would have liked to be able to tell voters that Jane Harman had signed off on wireless wiretapping on eight separate occasions. Why didn’t we get this list earlier? (Nevermind … I think I know the answer to that.)

See cboldt for this correction. This list has been available…

Venue

They started having briefings on the Hill after Risen and Lichtblau revealed the program on December 16, 20065. Perhaps that’s because (as Gonzales likes to repeat endlessly) Bush had confirmed the program and it no longer had to be secreted away inside the situation room.

Funding

They’ve conducted three briefings for leaders of defense appropriations subcommittees:

• December 4, 2001, for Daniel Inouye (then-Chair of Senate Appropriations, Defense Subcommittee) and Ted Stevens (Ranking Member of the same subcommittee)
• February 28, 2006, for Bill Young (then-Chair of House Appropriations, Defense Subcommittee) and John Murtha (Ranking Member of the same subcommittee)
• May 11, 2006 for Young and Murtha again

I’m really curious about these briefings. How detailed were they (a particularly pertinent question since Murtha, Young, and Stevens are among the most corrupt members of Congress)? Why did the Senate get briefed once, close to the inception of the program, and the House get briefed almost five years later, when it was under fire (and when, because of Duke Cunningham, the Appropriations Defense Subcommittee was itself under fire)? I assume the program is funded out of some kind of black budget. So why brief the Appropriations leaders at all? Was there some kind of expenditure that was public, that needed approval?

One more detail about the Ashcroft and Gonzales guidelines on contacts between DOJ and the White House. While the latter explicitly gives Cheney the authority to communicate with DOJ about ongoing cases, I don’t believe it gives Karl Rove–or any of the people who work in Office of Political Affairs save its head–that authority. When the more expansive Gonzales memo lays out whom the AG and his staff may communicate with, it says:

Notwithstanding any procedures or limitations set forth above, the Attorney General may communicate directly with the President, Vice President, their Chiefs of Staff, Counsel to the President or Vice President, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, Assistant to the President and Homeland Security Advisor, or the head of any office within EOP regarding any matter within the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice. Staff members of the Office of the Attorney General, if so designated by the Attorney General, may communicate directly with officials and staff of the White House Office, the Office of the Vice President, the National Security Council, the Homeland Security Council, and the Office of Management and Budget.

Now, Karl Rove is Senior Advisor to the President and I think he retains the title Deputy Chief of Staff, but he lost his Policy portfolio in April 2006, when Josh Bolten was named Chief of Staff. He has headed Political Affairs, Office of Public Liaison, and Office of Strategic Initiatives. As the head of these offices ("head of any office," he presumably could interact with the Attorney General if the AG initiated the communication. But he doesn’t serve in that role anymore, and the Deputy Chief of Staff (unlike the Chief of Staff) is not named among those the AG can choose to communicate with. Nor does Karl fall under the subordinate offices (NSC, HSC, OMB) with which AG staff members can communicate. And Karl certainly doesn’t fall under the list of people who can communicate about an ongoing criminal investigation.

…all initial communications that concern or may concern such an investigation or case pending at the trial level should take place only between the Office of the Counsel to the President and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG)…

Now, before I move on to the ways that Karl can communicate with DOJ, let me point out that what holds true here for Karl also holds true for Scott Jennings and other other lower ranking members of the Office of Political Affars. If I’m reading Gonzales’ memo correctly, the only people who get to communicate with the AG are heads of offices. So Sara Taylor would have counted, back when she headed the Office of Political Affairs, but her subordinates like Jennings would not.

DiFi has a habit of using hearings to introduce new allegations against DOJ and she has done so again today. Here’s Christy’s version of the interchange:

Read to you what has been dropped from the earlier addition of the DOJmanual.  (1) restriction on bringing a voter fraud case close to anelection.  (2)  Care for overt investigations in the pre-electionperiod and while election is underway.  “Most if not all prosecutionsand investigations should await the end of the election.” — underlinedin the prior volume — has been removed.  Reason for that was to notimpact the election.  Gonzales, predictably, has no idea what Feinsteinis talking about and can’t answer why those changes were made.

The issue is that DOJ has recently revised the US Attorney’s (I think) manual. And they weakened–and in one important case–removed the restrictions on taking voting rights cases in the days leading up to an election.

In other words, DOJ just made it easier to tamper with elections by taking political cases against organizations like ACORN.