General
US prosecutors serve at the pleasure of the President
What part of the headline do not the Ny Times and the Washington Post NOT understand?
None of it apparently. I’ve read through the emails helpfully linked to by Jill, but I am having a lot of trouble figuring out exactly what the scandal is here. I see a lot of CYA going on over the fact that they are making it a political move, but they don’t want it to look political because being political is bad somehow. Is there an actionable felony here? I’m not seeing it.
But lesson number one here for the White House, more transparency would have been helpful. Fire the attorneys and explain why: You didn’t like their attitude.
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Update: Discussion in the comments and this by Mark at redstate.
Sen. Domenici recommended the former prosecutor for his job. Now Domenici is under fire for complaining about the prosecutor’s performance to the White House and the Justice Department. It seems a little too precious to me that United States Attorneys can be appointed based in part upon the recommendation of politicians and politically connected people in the district, but they cannot be removed for the same reason. Either insulate all Federal prosecutors from the political process, or accept that they hold political positions and will sometimes become the victim of political winds.
That’s an excellent point, and reading further this morning it seems there are two components to this, one is the firings themselves which are no big deal, but the other component is that Gonzalez was caught (discussion at CQ) being very disingenuous to senators. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Don’t do that, and if you do, don’t get caught!
Another lesson here, if you ever get a Washington job, assume all emails are read immediately at the WaPo.
Discussion
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Hmm, okay. Well, let’s say I agree with you about how these hirings and firings are allowed to be political and therefore there’s nothing really wrong.
All 93? At the same time? Many of whom the President himself had appointed?
What if it were Clinton and the charges were reversed? Or Obama?
I don’t know - I’m not denying your logic, I’m not denying that things can be legal. But just because something is legal doesn’t make it okay to do - you know?
I’ve been trying to think of a case where a scandal erupted without a crime. Can’t think of one, but maybe it’s because It’s late.
Every scandal I think of ends up with prosecutors and someone going to court. Can’t see how this ends up there right now unless someone perjured themselves in congressional testimony (which could be the case)
I know you know this, but Clinton fired all 93 and there was indeed a hue and cry about it. Not about the firings themselves, as it was clearly legal, but about what it meant.
With the document dump today, the reasons for these firings are pretty obvious: The administration did not like the priorities of certain US Attorneys. That’s not enough for a scandal.
Hmm - well - okay - let’s say I buy the argument too that it’s enough for a scandal. Personally, I think it’s newsworthy and it’s true not even everything that is newsworthy equals scandal - thank goodness we can still say that, more or less (hmm can we?!).
No! I actually didn’t know about Clinton - my bad. Was it also because he didn’t like their priorities?
Shaking my head - I guess I just have a hard time with people not trusting others, but then requiring us, the American public, to have so much trust in them - those that make these decisions. That’s just not something I typically like - it feels too much like blind faith.
I’ve been in the position of being a lawyer using my legal skills and coming up with opinions my employer didn’t like and telling them to go ahead and fire me but I wasn’t compromising what I said.
But I wasn’t employed by the gov’t in a job that should be nonpartisan.
Just doesn’t feel right somehow, Dave - do you get that feeling at all? even a little bit?
That should read - the first sentence?
That it’s NOT enough for a scandal - sorry! I should be asleep!
I don’t get the U.S attorney “scandal,” either. They are all presidential appointees. They can be removed at any time — just like the a.g., the secy of state, Rove, — any non-civil service government worker can have his presidential commission jerked by the president.
U.S. Attorneys always change — when a new administration is elected, or a different party takes over. The two in Ohio now are GOP appointees who replaced Dems. The scandal seems to be that the WH wanted some people out but would not say WHY it wanted them out. It really didn’t have to answer that question, but tried and flubbed it, I guess. Reagan was the Great Communicator. This guy looks like the Late Communicator.
Agreed that the point in your update, Dave, is a good one. Make it one way or the other, make it transparent as to which it is and be consistent in how whichever method is chosen is applied/implemented. If someone doesn’t like the method, that’s a different story (for ex: I hate electing judges - old boy appointment network isn’t necessarily much better but the electing thing bugs me more).