The Post has an editorial this morning criticizing Karl Rove (natch) and others for not cooperating with an internal Justice Department probe of the firing of 9 US Attorneys. A couple of things should be remembered as one thinks about this issue.
1) US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. If he does not like the way they comb their hair, if he does not like the dress they wear, if he does not like the way they spell their names....he may fire them at will, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. This is of course, behind the practice of firing every single US Attorney in the land upon turnover to a new Presidential Administration. No one bats an eye at this. The job is a political appointment, and part of the job is to carry out the priorities of the Justice Department he or she serves. Those priorities are a reflection of....here it comes.....the politics of the President.
2) Several of the US Attorney's fired appear to have been fired for not initiating investigations in matters that the White House considered to be priorities. The Attorney's exercised their "prosecutorial discretion", which is their right. The President exercised the option to fire them, which is his right. Even if the US Attorneys involved believed that the motives behind the White House's desire for the investigations was political....they do not get to not carry out administration priorities. If you can't carry the water for the guy who gave you the job, then you don't get to have the job.
3) The exception here is if the firing was intended to in some way impact an ongoing investigation. This is illegal; I believe it is known as "obstruction of justice". I don't doubt that there is some evidence of this in at least one of the firings, and it should be fully investigated.
4) The hacks in the White House really screwed this up. By pointing to "performance issues" with the US Attorney's (who weren't carrying out White House priorities), they went in a direction they never should have gone. They simply should have fired the US attorneys and cited a desire for change. Period. End of story.
We'll keep hearing about this (with a Democratic Congress), and they may even find some folks culpable...which wouldn't bother me much. But no one should believe (nor should it ever come to pass) that US Attorneys are some kind of "free agents". They're not. They get appointed because of their political connections, and their jobs are at least partially political.
Coincidentally, a lady of the Lib/Dem persuasion was ranting about President Bush’s firing of these US Attorneys and incredibly asked the question "What do you think the Republicans would have said if President Clinton had fired US Attorneys?" When I pointed out exactly what you said that they serve at the pleasure of the president and that in point of fact, President Clinton had cleaned house of US Attorneys. Naturally being a well informed Lib/Dem, she called me a liar.
ReplyDeleteAs for the reason for firing you are correct, when one serves at the pleasure, no reason is required. But if they stated performance as the issue, I would hope that they have documented evidence.