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Fitz v. Rove, Part VI

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The suggestion that Bob Kjellander was working with Rove to have Fitz fired is not new.

In a hearing before court began, prosecutors said they hoped to call Ali Ata, the former Blagojevich administration official who pleaded guilty to corruption yesterday, to the stand.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Carrie Hamilton said she believed Ata would testify to conversations Ata had with his political patron, Rezko, about working to pull strings to kill the criminal investigation into Rezko and others when it was in its early stages in 2004.

"[Ata] had conversations with Mr. Rezko about the fact that Mr. Kjellander was working with Karl Rove to have Mr. Fitzgerald removed," Hamilton told U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve.

Back in the days when there was question whether Fitzgerald would be ousted in 2006 (before the USA purge broke), Chicago commentators regularly noted how badly Chicago pols–and Kjellander in particular–wanted to see Fitzgerald gone.

And there’s good reason to think he might be [fired], aside from the president’s non-assurance. One of the chief practitioners of Illinois establishment politics is Republican operative Bob Kjellander, who brags (whether true or not) about his friendship with Bush chief political strategist, Karl Rove. Despite Kjellander’s engineering Bush defeats in Illinois and other Midwest states, the White House (Rove?) thought he was pretty hot stuff and brought him to the Beltway where he is engineering who knows what political disaster.

Kjellander also will be credited with the coming GOP election disaster in Illinois, thanks to his help in selecting state Treasurer Judy Barr Topinka to run against incumbent Blagojevich. She’s a dear lady, a treasured "moderate," but not a gusty independent willing to stand up to the political establishment.

The point is that Kjellander (pronounced Shelander), a Republican national committeeman who has received $800,000 in unexplained fees through a state bond-borrowing deal engineered by Democrat Blagojevich, is no fan of Fitzgerald’s either. No one, in other words, in the political establishment in Chicago or Washington, is pushing for Fitzgerald’s reappointment. [my emphasis]

And after news broke last year that Fitzgerald had been on the firing list, at least one Chicago commentator predicted that Kjellander was the reason, and not the Plame case. Read more →

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DanA to TurdB: Yes, I Recognize Cheap Parsing When I See It

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So Dan Abrams took none too kindly to being accused of constructing fables by the Walt Disney of the Conservative Movement. In a response that is about twice as long as the Turdblossom’s tome, Abrams provides quote after quote to demonstrate that he had done the work Rove accused him of shirking. Abrams repeatedly pointed to the parts of his interviews where he challenged Don Siegelman and Dana Jill Simpson. Most of all, I like where Abrams provided a set of questions designed to expose Rove’s cheap parsing for what it is.

1) You say you "certainly didn’t meet with anyone at the Justice Department or either of the two US attorneys in Alabama about investigating or indicting Siegelman." Did you talk to, or otherwise communicate with, any of them about it even if you did not meet? Did you have any discussions with any of them about this topic?

2) What about your old friend Bill Canary, whose wife initially led the prosecution? Are you denying that you spoke with him about anything related to the case?

3) You worked for former Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor. Did you ever talk to him about anything related to the Siegelman matter?

4) Did you ever ask anyone else to communicate with any official in the Justice Department about the Siegelman investigation or case?

5) Do you know why your lawyer told us that you would testify about this case if you were subpoenaed but now, after you have been invited to do so, he states that there are issues of executive privilege: "Whether, when and about what a former White House official will testify … is not for me or my client to decide" he said.

6) You have said you never spoke with the White House about the case. If true, what is the possible "executive privilege?"

7) You ask why I did not further question one of my guests when he discussed your effort to help now Governor Riley in his campaign. Did you consult in any way with Riley or anyone else working with him on the campaign?

8) Did you ever discuss, with anyone, the possibility of media leaks about the Siegelman case? Did you speak with any members of the media about Siegelman during his campaign? [my emphasis]

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Turdblossom Writes Letters

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Dear Bob Novak:

It boils down to this: as a journalist, do you feel you have a responsibility to dig into the claims made by your sources, seek out evidence and come to a professional judgment as to the real facts? Or do you feel if a charge is breathtaking enough, thoroughly checking it out isn’t a necessity?

I know you might be concerned that asking these questions could restrict your ability to make sensational charges in your column, but don’t you think you have a responsibility to provide even a shred of supporting evidence before sullying the journalistic reputations of the Washington Post?

People used to believe journalists were searching for the truth. But your column increasingly seems to be focused on wishful thinking, hoping something is one way and diminishing the search for facts and evidence in favor of repeating your fondest desires. For example, while you do ask the CIA whether Ms. Plame sent her husband, you did not press Armitage and Libby when they said "Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger."

The difficulty with your approach is you reduced yourself to the guy in the bar who repeats what the fellow next to him says – “Wilson’s wife suggested sending him! Wilson’s wife suggested sending him!” – only louder, because it suits your pre-selected story line ("the CIA is attacking the Vice President") and you don’t want the facts to get in the way of a good fable. You have relinquished the central responsibility of an investigative reporter, namely to press everyone in order to get to the facts. You didn’t subject the statements of others to skeptical and independent review. You have chosen instead to simply repeat something someone else says because it agrees with the theme line your sources fed you, created the nifty counter-attack to shield the Vice President.

Oh I’m sorry. Did I say this was a letter to Novak criticizing him for his column outing Valerie Plame? I meant it was a letter to Dan Abrams to, once again, say things to the press Rove is unwilling to say under oath to HJC. (h/t TP)

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Conyers Calls Luskin’s Bluff on Rove Testimony

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Well, that didn’t take long.

ThinkProgress reports that Robert Luskin is already backing off his PR gambit promise to have Rove testify before Congress.

Yesterday, House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI), joined by members Linda Sánchez (D-CA), Artur Davis (D-AL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), wrote to Rove and requested that he testify before the committee about the politicization of the Justice Department, including the prosecution of Siegelman.

But now Luskin is saying that Rove won’t testify unless the White House says he can, claiming that MSNBC took his comments “out of context.” Roll Call reports:

MSNBC provided Roll Call with an e-mail exchange with Luskin that the network broadcast in which a producer asked, “Will Karl Rove agree to testify if Congress issues a subpoena to him as part of an investigation into the Siegelman case?”

“Sure,” wrote Luskin, according to the e-mail. “Although it seems to me that the question is somewhat offensive. It assumes he has something to hide.”

But in an interview with Roll Call, Luskin said that his MSNBC comments were taken out of context.

“Whether, when and about what a former White House official will testify … is not for me or my client to decide,” but is part of an ongoing negotiation between the White House and Congress over executive privilege issues, Luskin said.

See, Luskin, it’s not so easy to roll the press when someone can call you on your claims publicly.

Any bets how long it takes Conyers to get the subpoena pulled together? Hours? Days?

This also raises the likelihood that Solicitor General Paul Clement is hard at work inventing reasons why Rove can invoke executive privilege on an issue that he feels free to blab about in the press.

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Conyers to Turdblossom: If You’ll Talk to GQ and Fox, Why Not HJC?

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Conyers has issued another salvo in HJC’s investigation of politicized prosecution. Most notably, that includes an invitation to Karl Rove to come testify to HJC.

In any event, particularly since you have briefly commented on this matter in GQ and while serving as a commentator on Fox News, we believe the subject, like other seroius charges regarding the role of politics at the Department of Justice, should be addressed before a key investigating Committee of Congress.

Between Yoo and Rove, Solicitor Paul Clement is going to have to invent a whole new kind of privilege to protect those willing to blab to the press but not to Congressional committees.

Perhaps more interesting, HJC has released a report on politicized prosecutions, which includes some new information on the Siegelman affair. For example, it reveals that Scrushy’s lawyer Art Leach believed he had made a plea deal with the prosecutors, only to have that deal rejected by someone higher than Criminal Division head Alice Fischer.

Other evidence also supports the contention that senior officials at the Department or the White House pushed this prosecution. Mr. Leach described a notable conversation he had with the then-acting head of the Department’s Public Integrity Section, Andrew Lourie.83 According to Mr. Leach, he and Mr. Lourie met on April 6, 2006, to discuss the possibility of resolving the matter against Mr. Scrushy before trial. Mr. Leach states that he had worked out an arrangement that was acceptable to the line prosecutors working the case, and that the purpose of this meeting was to obtain approval for the deal. Mr. Leach recalls that the meeting went well, and he believed Mr. Lourie would approve the proposed resolution. A week later, however, the proposed deal was rejected. When Mr. Leach asked Mr. Lourie why he would not approve a deal that the local prosecutors had supported, “Lourie informed me that the decision was made over his head.”84 Mr. Leach asked if that meant the head of the Criminal Division, Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher, had made the decision, and was told “the decision had been made higher than the AAG for the Criminal Division.”85 Mr. Leach reports that he was “puzzled” by this response because he “could not imagine a decision like this rising to that level of the Department of Justice.”86 Read more →

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Haul Karl’s Ass into Congress

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Karl says he’ll testify.

As Governor Siegelman states, bring him in, let him swear on a bible and either testify or lie under oath.

Rove has, of course, reportedly lied under oath on two other occasions, once in Texas and once in the CIA leak case. He’s probably thinking "three’s a charm."

But let’s do it, this time, in front of the teevee cameras. I’m sure Artur Davis–of Alabama–would welcome Karl’s testimony. And while he’s there, you might ask him all the questions about the USA purge he has refused to answer.

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Rove Looking for an Underground Railroad, Again

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Scott Horton describes how the Alabama GOP has retracted their claims that Dana Jill Simpson never did anything for the state party.

What a difference 72 hours makes. Maybe they got around, in the three days after that “exhaustive search” to talking with Governor Bob Riley and Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh (the G.O.P. chair at the time of the events in question) about Jill Simpson? Maybe they recognized that it was going a bit far out on the ledge to deny that a former county co-chair was unknown to the party leadership? After all, an artful spinner of falsehoods knows that they must at least be somewhat plausible. Or maybe it was Simpson’s statement to NBC’s senior legal correspondent Dan Abrams, who has now adopted the Siegelman case as a staple of his “Bush League Justice” series, that she had confirming telephone records that gave Mr. Hubbard a bit of pause? In any event, what we see between these two statements looks remarkably close to a retraction. [my emphasis]

And then Hubbard turns around and asks for Simpson’s evidence.

Here’s what he says:

“Only the most committed anti-Rove/Bush activist could swallow such a tale,” party chairman Rep. Mike Hubbard, R-Auburn, wrote in the letter to “60 Minutes. If you are unable to publicly produce hard and convincing evidence that backs the outrageous charges you aired to millions of viewers across the nation, I ask that you publicly retract the story on your next broadcast.”

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Bullying CBS Didn’t Work Out So Well This Time, Did It Turdblossom?

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I noted that the two most important bits of 60 Minutes’ Siegelman piece that magically didn’t show when they were scheduled in Northern Alabama pertained to Bill Canary’s invocation of "his girls" and Karl Rove’s past work with Dana Jill Simpson on oppo research.

Karl Rove took to Fox today, channeling his best good ol’ boy, to defend his honor [my transcription throughout].

Ah did not ask her or anyone to dig up dirty photographs of the Governor.

[snip]

But she has never worked on any campaign in Alabama I’ve ever work on and I’ve never asked her to do a darn thing.

I found his answer to this question very interesting.

Did CBS News or 60 Minutes ever call you for comment? [inaudible]

Well, they called me five months ago about this and uh, my sense was it was an off the record conversation and I want to honor that but it seemed to me they were looking at the story. When they decided to go with the story CBS I would a thought would have called back and said "we decided to go with the story, would like to be, you know, would you like to have a comment?"and the first I heard about it is when they put out the news release on Thursday.

[snip]

They didn’t bother to call me after five months and the first I heard about it is when I read it on the AP news wire.

There are two things that are interesting about this. First, as a friend of the blog noted in an email, five months ago was maybe a month after Karl took time off to spend time with his son who had gone away to school.

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60 Minutes Goes Black–Who Does It Protect?

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As a number of you pointed out in the comments, 60 Minutes curiously went off the air in Northern Alabama last night for over half of the segment on Governor Siegelman. The station did rebroadcast the show at 10 PM last night. Still, the fact that just one station in Alabama lost the show just when it was showing a damning story on Alabama’s politicized prosecutions sure reeks, particularly given the way the local newspapers have buried the story.

Now it is possible that the station’s explanation–that its receiver went out–is true. But on the off chance that it’s not, I wanted to look at whom the Bush crony-Bass owned station might have been trying to protect, if the lost signal was intentional.

According to this comment from Mooncat, the broadcast picked up just past midway.

The first thing I saw was Doug Jones and this is the first bit I recall hearing (p. 3)

"They started over. People started getting subpoenas that had never gotten subpoenas before, for testimony, for records. The governor’s brother, his bank records started getting subpoenaed. The net was cast much wider than had ever been cast before," Jones says.

It may have been on for a few seconds before that, but not much.

Thus, the segment that showed included details about how DOJ got involved in the process:

Justice Department headquarters in Washington had ordered a top to bottom review of the case

And how Leura Canary oversaw a prosecution in which she had serious conflicts.

The prosecution was handled by the office of U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, whose husband Bill Canary had run the campaign of Siegelman’s opponent, Gov. Riley.

“Why would you do it that way?” Woods asks. “Why wouldn’t you say, ‘You know what? We’re going to bring in someone from another jurisdiction to do it.

So the blackout certainly didn’t protect Leura Canary. But it did leave out the damning comment from Canary’s husband, where he said "his girls" would fix his Siegelman problem.

Canary told her she didn’t have to do more intelligence work because, as Canary allegedly said, “My girls” can take care of Siegelman. Simpson says she asked “Who are your girls?”

“And he says, ‘Oh, my wife, Leura. You know, she’s the Middle District United States Attorney.’ And he said, ‘And then Alice Martin. She is the Northern District Attorney, and I’ve helped with her campaign,’” Simpson says.

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Yet More Communications Dirty Business: Karl Rove and Philip Zelikow

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By this point, it should surprise no one that Karl Rove does a lot of dirty business using his phone and blackberry. Apparently, that extends to softening the reports of the 9/11 Commission: a Philip Shenon book coming out in February will reveal that Rove carried on back-channel discussions with Philip Zelikow, the Commission’s Executive Director (h/t Steven Aftergood), for some time after the Commission told him to stop speaking with Senior Administration Officials.

In a revelation bound to cast a pall over the 9/11 Commission, Philip Shenon will report in a forthcoming book that the panel’s executive director, Philip Zelikow, engaged in “surreptitious” communications with presidential adviser Karl Rove and other Bush administration officials during the commission’s 20-month investigation into the 9/11 attacks.

[snip]

Karen Heitkotter, the commission’s executive secretary, was taken aback on June 23, 2003 when she answered the telephone for Zelikow at 4:40 PM and heard a voice intone, “This is Karl Rove. I’m looking for Philip.” Heitkotter knew that Zelikow had promised the commissioners he would cut off all contact with senior officials in the Bush administration. Nonetheless, she gave Zelikow’s cell phone number to Rove. The next day there was another call from Rove at 11:35 AM.

[snip]

In late 2003, around the time his involuntary recusal was imposed, Zelikow called executive secretary Karen Heitkotter into his office and ordered her to stop creating records of his incoming telephone calls. Concerned that the order was improper, a nervous Heitkotter soon told general counsel Marcus. He advised her to ignore Zelikow’s order and continue to keep a log of his telephone calls, insofar as she knew about them.

Although Shenon could not obtain from the GAO an unredacted record of Zelikow’s cell phone use—and Zelikow used his cell phone for most of his outgoing calls—the Times reporter was able to establish that Zelikow made numerous calls to “456” numbers in the 202 area code, which is the exclusive prefix of the White House. [my empahsis]

Click through for a description of how Zelikow was able to prevent the Commission from describing Condi as incompetent (I know–we all know it to be true, but it’d have been nice to get it in writing).

I’m particularly interested in the timing of this. Read more →

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