Congress Demands Rove Testimony on Attorney Firings

By Paul Kane
The Washington Post

Monday 12 March 2007

Congressional committees are now demanding the testimony of President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, in the burgeoning investigation into the reasons behind the unusual firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has helped lead the Senate Judiciary Committee's examination of the dismissals of the federal prosecutors, cited new reports connecting Rove to those who wanted to oust at least one of the U.S. attorneys.

"There's an emerging pattern that is extremely disturbing and everyday the sanctity of U.S. Attorneys as neutral enforcers of law without fear or favor is diminished," Schumer said. "We will get to bottom of this."

The House Judiciary Committee is also requesting testimony from Rove as well, but it's unclear whether either of the panels will actually subpoena his appearance before the committees. Unlike Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose agency is directly overseen by the judiciary panels and can easily be compelled to testify in Congress because of the large sway they hold over his agency, Rove has no Capitol Hill committee with direct oversight of his work.

Rove allegedly spoke with the chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party in late 2005 about the performance of then-U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias, with the local official urging his ouster because of the pace of investigations into local Democrats.

Iglesias was fired on Dec. 7, along with six other prosecutors that day, and has since alleged that Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) pressured him regarding the same corruption probe as the local GOP official.

Domenici and Wilson have denied the charges, and the Senate Ethics Committee is examining the incident to measure the appropriateness of Domenici's phone call to Iglesias.

Last week, after a closed-door meeting in the Capitol with Schumer and other Judiciary Democrats, Gonzales agreed to allow five of his top aides to be interviewed by committee staff. The interviews will most likely be in private, and Schumer said last week he hopes to wrap them up within two weeks.

Now Schumer wants Rove added to the list along with those five staffers, who will be interviewed without facing subpoenas.

In addition, the House Judiciary Committee has also requested the testimony of former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, the onetime Supreme Court nominee whose office had a hand in at least approving of the prosecutor firings.

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White House Mulled Firing All Prosecutors
By Lara Jakkes Jordan
The Associated Press

Tuesday 13 March 2007

The White House considered firing all 93 federal prosecutors at the start of President Bush's second term, but yielded to Justice Department objections and eventually agreed to a smaller list of dismissals compiled by Justice officials, a spokeswoman said Monday.

Dana Perino also said President Bush may have informally passed on to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales complaints the White House was receiving about the performance of some of the U.S. attorneys.

She said then-White House counsel Harriet Miers raised the idea with Gonzales aid Kyle Sampson of asking all 93 U.S. attorneys to resign in 2004, wondering whether the start of a new White House term marked a logical time to start with a new slate of U.S. attorneys, who serve four-year terms at the pleasure of the president.

Sampson disagreed, saying a wholesale firing would be disruptive. Perino said deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, vaguely recalls telling Miers that he thought firing all 93 was ill-advised.

The Justice Department, however, was working internally on a shorter list of firings, and submitted that list to the White House in late 2006.

"At no time were names added or subtracted by the White House," Perino said. "We continue to believe that the decision to remove and replace U.S. attorneys who serve at the pleasure of the president was perfectly appropriate and within administration's discretion. We stand by the Department of Justice's assertion that they were removed for performance and managerial reasons."

Dating back to mid-2004, the White House's legislative affairs, political affairs and chief of staff's office had received complaints from a variety of sources about the lack of vigorous prosecution of election fraud cases in various locations, including Philadelphia, Milwaukee and New Mexico, she said

Those complaints were passed on to the Justice Department or Mier's office.

"The president recalls hearing complaints about election fraud not being vigorously prosecuted and believes he may have informally mentioned it to the attorney general during a brief discussion on other Department of Justice matters," Perino said, adding that the conversation would have taken place in October 2006.

"At no time did any White Hose officials, including the president, direct the Department of Justice to take specific action against any individual U.S. attorney," Perino said.

The Washington Post reported initially on the idea of dismissing all the prosecutors, saying it reviewed a number of internal White House e-mails preceding the final dismissals.

Sampson resigned Monday after acknowledging that he did not tell other Justice officials who testified to Congress about the extent of his communications with the White House, leading them to provide incomplete information in their testimony, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because Sampson has not announced his departure.

The new revelations Monday evening came after congressional Democrats earlier in the day singled out Rove for questioning about the firings of the eight prosecutors and whether the dismissals were politically motivated.

Those demands to question Rove signaled anew Democrats' shifting focus beyond the Justice Department and toward the White House in the inquiry.

Last week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said he would seek to interview Miers and deputy counsel William Kelly for insight on their roles, if any, in the firings.

Rove emerged as the Democrats' newest target after weekend news reports said the New Mexico Republican Party's chairman urged Rove to fire David Iglesias, then the state's U.S. attorney.

In a statement Monday, Conyers said stories about Rove's alleged link to Iglesias' dismissal "raise even more alarm bells for us."

"As a result, we would want to ensure that Karl Rove was one of the White House staff that we interview in connection with our investigation," said Conyers.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who is leading his chamber's probe into the firings, said he also wants to question Rove.

In an interview this weekend with The Associated Press, New Mexico GOP chairman Allen Weh said Iglesias' "termination had already occurred" by the time he spoke with Rove at a holiday party last December. But Weh made no secret of his dissatisfaction with Iglesias, in part from the prosecutor's failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation.

The White House has said previously that Rove wasn't involved in the firings, but did alert Miers to complaints about Iglesias. It was not immediately clear whether Rove also told Gonzales about the complaints.

Last week, Rove called the two-month controversy "a very big attempt by some in the Congress to make a political stink about it."

Schumer called it "almost unheard of" for a federal prosecutor with favorable reviews to be fired after a top presidential adviser like Rove received complaints about his performance.

"The more we learn, the more it seems that people at high levels in the White House have been involved in the U.S. attorney purge," Schumer said Monday.

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Associated Press Writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report from Merida, Mexico.