What Is US Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan Still Doing in Obama's Justice Department? Using Cell Phones To Track People

At BuzzFlash, Christine Bowman writes:

BuzzFlash and a few other progressive news sites have noted that the Obama Administration is not in the least free yet of the legacy of the US attorney firing scandal of 2007 known as Prosecutorgate. Sure, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was forced to exit in disgrace. Bradley Schlozman, Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson also gained notoriety due to Congressional hearings. But the legacy of a deeply politicized Department of Justice (DOJ) remains. More independent-minded former US attorneys David Iglesias and Carol Lam
, who failed to target Democrats for prosecution, are out. Prosecutors like Mary Beth Buchanan and Leura Canary, who have energetically targeted Democratic office holders, are in and still causing trouble.

US Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan, still heading up the Western District of Pennsylvania office, certainly personifies the problem if any one attorney does. In December 2008, having served since September 2001, Buchanan declared herself unwilling to give up her office -- Alice Martin of Birmingham, AL also refuses to bow out -- in defiance of the long-standing tradition that US Attorneys tender their resignations at the start of every new administration.

Yet Scott Horton writing at The Daily Beast notes:

In the key period of 2004-05, while groundwork was laid for what later became the U.S. attorney's scandal, Buchanan served as director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, the key position at Justice that oversaw all the 94 U.S. attorneys. A later internal Justice Department probe, in which Buchanan figures prominently, highlights the role played by that office in Karl Rove’s plan to sack U.S. attorneys.

What is Buchanan's agenda as a prosecutor? From the get-go in 2001, she pursued obscenity cases and chased down marijuana dealers -- and high-profile drug paraphernalia vendor Tommy Chong, as BuzzFlash reported -- very publicly and aggressively advancing a right-wing "values" agenda. She "took the directives from Washington to heart," as Charlie Deitch, writing for the Pittsburgh City Paper, put it.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette further describes Buchanan as a person of "hard-driving ambition," and quotes Thomas J. Farrell, a former assistant federal prosecutor, as saying, "whether you like her or not, she probably will end up being one of the most influential U.S. attorneys we've had."

Reagan and G. H. W. Bush Attorney General and former PA Governor Dick Thornburgh saw problems with Buchanan's partisan approach when he was on the defense team of one of her Democratic targets, Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril H. Wecht. In addition to Wecht, Buchanan has tenaciously pursued a Democratic Pittsburgh mayor, a Democratic sheriff, and a Democratic county judge, but not Republicans -- not even former Senator Rick Santorum, whose several ethics issues helped him lose his reelection bid. (Santorum had enthusiastically supported Buchanan's nomination and confirmation as a US attorney.)

Buchanan's current passion is apparently to chip away at privacy protections that are guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. She's all for warrantless wiretapping, but also for using cell-site location information (CSLI) -- in other words, accessing cell phone company records to pinpoint any cell-phone user's past or present whereabouts. Talk Left reports that Buchanan wants that power not only in national security or terrorism-related cases, but for just any old criminal prosecution like a narcotics case.

At issue in the Pennsylvania case is "historical" cell phone location records. Buchanan argues it's no different than pen registers and trap and traces because it doesn't intercept the voice. Scholars and many other judges have disagreed, saying when you use the cell phone to determine location, it's like a tracking device. The law requires probable cause for tracking devices....

It should be a no-brainer that when the Government seeks information about your location from your cell phone they need a warrant based on probable cause, not some boiler-plate statement to the judge that the information is relevant to an ongoing investigation.

The lower court's opinion in the Pennsylvania case is here (pdf). The Obama Justice Department briefs, filed by Buchanan, are here (pdf) and here (pdf). The second was filed just last week.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union, and Center for Democracy and Technology have argued that a showing of probable cause is needed before a cell phone service provider could be compelled to disclose geographic data about a subscriber, according to arstechnica.com.

Meanwhile, prominent and powerful Western PA US Representative John Murtha, a Democrat, is finding himself, or at least his friends, the target of investigations, as David D. Kirkpatrick reported in The New York Times April 25. Not only have prosecutors "raided the offices of the PMA Group — a lobbying firm founded by a former Murtha associate" [but] ... "Reports of the PMA investigation coincided with the news that federal agents had also raided Kuchera Industries, a Johnstown, Pa., company built on Mr. Murtha’s patronage whose owners held a fund-raiser for him on their private game ranch." Murtha is the top Democrat on the House Defense Appropriations Committee which oversees huge earmarks for military spending.

A writer at Firedoglake speculated in February that Buchanan intends to hang on beyond her welcome as US attorney in order to get Rep. Murtha:

But I think she's got much bigger Democratic fish she wants to stick around to fry: Jack Murtha. The NYT follows up on what ABC reported earlier: that investigators conducted two raids on entities associated with Murtha. ...

Note the timing: Murtha wins his closest election in years in November. And then the Feds raid a lobbying firm closely connected to him. In December, Buchanan refuses to step down. And in January the FBI raids Kuchera--a company that has no clear ties to PMA, but is closely associated with Murtha.

Mind you, Murtha has long been acknowledged to be one of the most corrupt Democrats in Congress. I'm sure there's at least something that Buchanan used to justify this investigation.

But just as Murtha has long been acknowledged to be one of the most corrupt Dems, Buchanan has been acknowledged to be one of the most corrupt US Attorneys. Which means, given Buchanan's obstinate refusal to leave, this one may blow up into a full-fledged political witch hunt.

As yet there seems to be no news to contradict the "Get Murtha" theory. Of course, Rep. Murtha became a magnet for right-wing hate when he called for bringing American troops home from the Iraq War in 2005. That seems as likely an underlying reason for a sudden attack as earmarks or campaign contributions.

Will Eric Holder's Justice Department bring Buchanan's anti-Democratic, anti-progressive era to an end? The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported on several possible replacements for her back in March. How about picking one and moving on? Justice still has lots of repairs to its integrity to undertake.

Official: Justice Department Slowed Probe Into Phone Jamming

McClatchey reports:

The Justice Department delayed prosecuting a key Republican official for jamming the phones of New Hampshire Democrats until after the 2004 election, protecting top GOP officials from the scandal until the voting was over.

An official with detailed knowledge of the investigation into the 2002 Election-Day scheme said the inquiry sputtered for months after a prosecutor sought approval to indict James Tobin, the northeast regional coordinator for the Republican National Committee.

The phone-jamming operation was aimed at preventing New Hampshire Democrats from rounding up voters in the close U.S. Senate race between Republican Rep. John Sununu and Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen. Sununu's 19,000-vote victory helped the GOP regain control of the Senate.

While there were guilty pleas in the New Hampshire investigation prior to the 2004 presidential election, involvement of the national GOP wasn't confirmed. A Manchester, N.H., policeman quickly traced the jamming to Republican political operatives in 2003 and forwarded the evidence to the Justice Department for what ordinarily would be a straightforward case.

However, the official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, told McClatchy that senior Justice Department officials slowed the inquiry. The official didn't know whether top department officials ordered the delays or what motivated those decisions.

The official said that Terry O'Donnell, a former Pentagon general counsel who was representing Tobin, was in contact with senior department officials before Tobin was indicted.

In October, the House Judiciary Committee opened an investigation to determine whether partisan politics undermined the federal probe.

The official said that department officials rejected prosecutor Todd Hinnen's push to bring criminal charges against the New Hampshire Republican Party.

Weeks before the 2004 election, Hinnen's supervisors directed him to ask a judge to halt action temporarily in a Democratic Party civil suit against the GOP so that it wouldn't hurt the investigation, although Hinnen had expressed no concerns that it would, the official said.

Paul Twomey, a lawyer for the state Democratic Party, said the delay spared Republicans embarrassment at the peak of the campaign because a pending deposition would have revealed that several state GOP officials knew about the scheme, which was hatched by their executive director, Charles McGee. The delay also stalled the case beyond its statute of limitations, depriving Democrats of full discovery, he said.

Citing longstanding policy, spokesman Peter Carr said the Justice Department wouldn't comment on its investigation.

Four men have been convicted in the scandal, including McGee and Republican consultant Allen Raymond, who arranged to jam the phones. Their cooperation led to Tobin's indictment.

In mid-October 2004, Tobin resigned as the Bush-Cheney campaign's regional director after a news report disclosed allegations of his involvement. Bush narrowly lost New Hampshire, the only state he won in 2000 that went for Democrat John Kerry.

Hinnen, now an aide to Democratic presidential candidate and Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, said he couldn't comment on the investigation.

Tobin was convicted in December 2005 of charges related to the scheme, but won a new trial on appeal. His lawyers didn't respond to e-mailed questions.

National Republican committees have paid more than $6 million to Washington law firms to defend Tobin and fight the civil suit, raising suspicions that there's more to the scandal.

Rep. Paul Hodes, a New Hampshire Democrat who requested the House inquiry, said he considers the delay in indicting Tobin to be ``a miscarriage of justice.''

At the outset, the federal investigation hit a snag when Thomas Colantuono, the U.S. attorney for New Hampshire, withdrew from the case in early 2003 because his wife was a Bush-Cheney campaign worker. Justice Department officials then assigned the case to Hinnen, a prosecutor in the Computer Crimes Section.

HOW THE INVESTIGATION BEGAN

The official with detailed knowledge of the case gave this account of how the case unfolded:

In early 2004, Hinnen got approval from John Malcolm, the deputy chief of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, in early 2004 to investigate Tobin. Malcolm left the department soon afterward.

Hinnen then sought approval from Malcolm's successor, Laura Parsky, to prosecute Tobin but wasn't told until late summer to write a formal, detailed prosecution memo, which he did in early September.

On Oct. 1, 2004, Hinnen got the green light to prepare an indictment, but was directed to first give Tobin lawyer O'Donnell a chance to make his client's case. O'Donnell requested delays and then told Hinnen, Parsky and other senior officials that an unidentified lawyer had advised Tobin that the jamming was legal.

Hinnen argued to his superiors that it was irresponsible for the department to allow Tobin to serve as a Bush campaign official when it had evidence that he'd hindered people from voting.

In late October 2004, Justice Department officials told Hinnen it was too close to the election to bring such a politically sensitive indictment, putting it off until late November.

In early 2005, Hinnen submitted a lengthy memo arguing for a criminal indictment treating the New Hampshire Republican State Committee as a corporate entity. Hinnen noted that the party lacked an ethics policy at the time of the phone jamming and that its officials had refused to share with prosecutors the results of an internal investigation of the scheme.

Craig Donsanto, the chief of the department's Election Crimes Branch, objected to an indictment, arguing that the state GOP's ``shareholders'' are the voters.

Ultimately, John Keeney, a career deputy assistant attorney general, directed Hinnen to drop the idea.

Keeney, Donsanto and Parsky, now a San Diego County judge, didn't respond to phone calls.

In August, 2005, Hinnen was detailed for 18 months to a National Security Council job in the White House, leaving other prosecutors to handle Tobin's trial.

Mukasey Rejects Call for CIA Tape Details

The Washington Post reports:

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey today sharply rebuffed congressional demands for details about the Justice Department's inquiry into the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes, saying that providing such information would make it appear that the department was "subject to political influence."

In letters to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee and others, Mukasey also reiterated his opposition to appointing a special prosecutor to the tapes investigation, saying he was "aware of no facts at present" that would require such a step.

"At my confirmation hearing, I testified that I would act independently, resist political pressure and ensure that politics plays no role in cases brought by the Department of Justice," Mukasey wrote. "Consistent with that testimony, the facts will be followed wherever they lead in this inquiry, and the relevant law applied."

One letter was sent to Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Similar correspondence was sent to Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and to House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and other House Democrats.

The three letters represent an attempt by Mukasey to push back against growing pressure from lawmakers, primarily Democrats, who have showered the Justice Department with demands for investigations or information on topics ranging from the baseball steroids scandal to allegations of rape by a former military contractor employee.

The letters also are an assertive move by the new attorney general, who was confirmed last month with the lowest level of Senate support in the past half century because of his refusal to say whether a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding amounts to torture under U.S. law.



Mukasey replaced former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, who left office in September after the furor over his handling of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys and allegations that he misled Congress in sworn testimony.

The CIA disclosed last week that it destroyed videotapes in 2005 depicting interrogation sessions for alleged al-Qaeda operatives Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, commonly known as Abu Zubaida, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Administration officials have said that lawyers at the Justice Department and the White House, including former counsel Harriet E. Miers, advised the CIA against destroying the tapes but that CIA lawyers ruled their preservation was not required.

The Justice Department announced Saturday it had joined the CIA's inspector general in launching a preliminary inquiry into the tape destruction, and prosecutors asked the CIA to preserve any related evidence.

Leahy and Specter asked Mukasey on Dec. 10 for "a complete account of the Justice Department's own knowledge of and involvement with" the tape destruction. The two senators included a list of 16 separate questions, including whether the Justice Department had offered legal advice to the CIA about the tapes or had communicated with the White House about the issue.

Durbin had sent a letter to Mukasey Dec. 7 asking whether an investigation into the tape destruction would be pursued. Conyers and three other House Democrats authored a similar letter on the same day.

Mukasey wrote to the lawmakers that Justice "has a long-standing policy of declining to provide non-public information about pending matters.

Selective Justice in Alabama?

TIME reports:

On May 8, 2002, Clayton Lamar (Lanny) Young Jr., a lobbyist and landfill developer described by acquaintances as a hard-drinking "good ole boy," was in an expansive mood. In the downtown offices of the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, Ala., Young settled into his chair, personal lawyer at his side, and proceeded to tell a group of seasoned prosecutors and investigators that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to some of the biggest names in Alabama Republican politics. According to Young, among the recipients of his largesse were the state's former attorney general Jeff Sessions, now a U.S. Senator, and William Pryor Jr., Sessions' successor as attorney general and now a federal judge. Young, whose detailed statements are described in documents obtained by TIME, became a key witness in a major case in Alabama that brought down a high-profile politician and landed him in federal prison with an 88-month sentence. As it happened, however, that official was the top Democrat named by Young in a series of interviews, and none of the Republicans whose campaigns he fingered were investigated in the case, let alone prosecuted.

The case of Don Siegelman, the Democratic former Governor of Alabama who was convicted last year on corruption charges, has become a flash point in the debate over the politicization of the Bush Administration's Justice Department. Forty-four former state attorneys general — Republicans and Democrats — have cited "irregularities" in the investigation and prosecution, saying they "call into question the basic fairness that is the linchpin of our system of justice." The Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney's office strongly deny that politics played any part in Siegelman's prosecution. They say the former Governor, who recently began serving the first months of his more than seven-year sentence, got exactly what he deserved. But Justice officials have refused to turn over documentation on the case requested by the House Judiciary Committee, which scheduled a hearing on Siegelman's prosecution for Oct. 11.

Now TIME has obtained sensitive portions of the requested materials, including FBI and state investigative records that lay out some of Young's testimony. The information provided by the landfill developer was central to roughly half the 32 counts that Siegelman faced for allegedly accepting campaign contributions, money and gifts in exchange for official favors. (Siegelman was acquitted on 25 of those counts and convicted on seven. Young pleaded guilty to bribery-related charges and, in recognition of his cooperation with the government, received a short two-year sentence and fine.) But what Young had to say about Sessions, Pryor and other high-profile Alabama Republicans was even more remarkable for the simple fact that much of it had never before come to light.

The Young transcripts will probably add fuel to charges that the Bush Administration pursued selective justice in Alabama. Leura Canary, the U.S. Attorney whose office drove Siegelman's prosecution, is married to Bill Canary, Alabama's most prominent political operative and a longtime friend of Karl Rove's. In May an Alabama lawyer and Republican activist named Dana Jill Simpson gave a notarized statement that she heard Canary say Rove "had spoken with the Department of Justice" about "pursuing" Siegelman, with help from two of Alabama's U.S. Attorneys. Bill Canary called her charge "outrageous," and other alleged participants in the phone conversation issued similar denials. (The White House declined to comment, citing Siegelman's pending appeal.) But last month Simpson testified behind closed doors before the House Judiciary Committee. Sources tell TIME that, under penalty of perjury, she repeated her allegations about Canary and Rove.

Alabama is as red a state as the clay in its earth. After the years of rule by Southern Democrats, Republicans have now taken up residence in the Governor's mansion, as well as most statewide offices and congressional seats. In the 1990s Rove helped orchestrate a G.O.P. near sweep of the Alabama Supreme Court.

In this new Republican landscape, Siegelman emerged as one of the few Democratic stars, winning the Governor's race in 1998. He lost the seat in a close and contested race in 2002, but polls in 2003 showed that he had a good chance of recapturing the governorship. Then came the first indictment from the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, charging Siegelman with using his position to rig a state bidding process. A judge dismissed the case in 2004 for lack of evidence. Just as Siegelman was preparing to run for Governor again, a second round of charges was brought in 2005 by the U.S. Attorney's office in Montgomery. His trial in 2006 overlapped with Alabama's Democratic primary, in which Siegelman had initially been a heavy favorite.

The investigation into Siegelman began as an inquiry into a contract held by Young to build a state warehouse in Alabama. Young was a well-liked figure in Montgomery who, by his own account, was in the habit of handing out cash, checks, rides on his private airplane and other goodies to members of both political parties. In return, he apparently hoped to receive favorable treatment for his garbage dumps and other lucrative state-related business.

Young testified that he had furnished Siegelman with an all-terrain vehicle and a motorcycle, lavishing money on the Governor and his aides. But he was an equal-opportunity influence monger. Early in the investigation, in November 2001, Young announced that five years earlier, he "personally provided Sessions with cash campaign contributions," according to an FBI memo of the interview. Prosecutors didn't follow up that surprising statement with questions, but Young volunteered more. The memo adds that "on one occasion he [Young] provided Session [sic] with $5,000 to $7,000 using two intermediaries," one of whom held a senior position with Sessions' campaign. On another occasion, the FBI records show, Young talked about providing "$10,000 to $15,000 to Session [sic]. Young had his secretaries and friends write checks to the Sessions campaign and Young reimbursed the secretaries and friends for their contributions."

If true, Young's statements describe political money laundering that would be a clear violation of federal law. In 1996, when Young said he had made the contributions, it was illegal to give a candidate more than $1,000 for a primary or general campaign. None of the individuals Young named as his intermediaries in making the donations are listed in Federal Election Commission records as contributors to Sessions' 1996 U.S. Senate race. "We have on record a $1,000 contribution from Mr. Young during the 1996 election cycle and no record of any other contribution from him," says a spokesman for Sessions.

Young also openly offered details about what he said were donations totaling between $12,000 and $15,000 to Pryor's campaign for state attorney general. Once again, Young had used the friends-and-colleagues maneuver. According to the FBI record, "Young advised that during Pryor's 1998 campaign, he contributed money through other individuals." Young named four people who "all wrote checks to Pryor's campaign and were reimbursed by Young for their contributions." At one point in the conversation, Young seemed particularly eager to tell all. "This was not just for the Governor's [Siegelman's] campaign," he told investigators. "It was also for the attorney general's campaign ... I gave you the example of five checks totaling $25,000. If I was there, I would write them out or just sign them, and they would fill in who it was to or whatever." According to Young, a top official on Pryor's campaign "would call and say, 'I need money for this, this or this,'" and Young would take care of the request. ("I do not have a recollection of the amounts that you describe as having been contributed by Lanny Young or his associates to my campaign," Pryor wrote in an e-mail to TIME.)

But it wasn't always as impersonal as handing over a stack of bills or checks. Among the illegal actions alleged in Siegelman's indictment was his acceptance from Young of thousands of dollars' worth of free T shirts and hundreds of specially embossed coffee mugs to give away as Christmas presents. The freebies were popular, said Young. "I had got them coffee cups and stuff before and shirts, and I had the same thing for Bill [Pryor]." Young estimated the value of the mugs at $13,000 to $15,000, and he even offered to share the extras with his inquisitors: "I've still got a case of his [Pryor's coffee cups] ... if y'all want to come get them." ("I don't think we want to touch them right now," an investigator replied.)

This evidence was heard by lawyers from U.S. Attorney Canary's office, representatives of Alabama's Republican attorney general and an attorney from the Justice Department's public-integrity unit in Washington. But in an unusual exercise of prosecutorial discretion, nearly all the payments and donations went uninvestigated. And when Siegelman's defense team, which had obtained Young's statements amid tens of thousands of documents provided in discovery, raised his accusations briefly in court, a judge quickly ruled them irrelevant.

Legal experts say prosecutors enjoy wide latitude in deciding whom to charge in criminal cases. But according to Laurie Levenson, a former assistant U.S. Attorney and a prominent expert in legal ethics at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, there are limits. "Certainly prosecutors would face a professional obligation to check out or verify the allegations in this case," she says. "Not doing so would represent a potential abuse of prosecutorial discretion." The key, she adds, is whether prosecutors chose not to pursue evidence of criminal activity by Republicans because of political bias or a conflict of interest. Sometimes prosecutors have a more benign motive; they may simply verify that allegations are untrue or be unclear on how to categorize the offense or the relevant statute of limitations. Certainly in Young's statements about Sessions and Pryor, he did not allege a quid pro quo for his money laundering of their campaigns. And whatever the involvement of their campaigns, Sessions and Pryor both assert they were completely unaware of his confessed chicanery. But the U.S. Attorney's office chose to prosecute Siegelman in no small measure on the basis of Young's word and chose not to investigate Sessions and Pryor — or their campaigns — on the basis of that same word.

Several people involved in the Siegelman case who spoke to TIME say prosecutors were so focused on going after Siegelman that they showed almost no interest in tracking down what Young said about apparently illegal contributions to Sessions, Pryor, other well-known figures in the Alabama G.O.P. and even a few of the state's Democrats. "It just didn't seem like that was ever going to happen," said an individual present during key parts of the investigation. "Sessions and Pryor were on the home team."

That description is not just a metaphor: several of the lawyers involved in the Siegelman investigation were from Pryor's office and had worked for Sessions as well when he held the post. In such circumstances, say experts on legal ethics, it is nearly always incumbent on investigators to inform a third party and recuse themselves from further questioning to avoid a conflict of interest. In this instance, it appears the investigators chose not to recuse themselves but to simply ignore the allegations. (Steve Feaga, an assistant U.S. Attorney in Canary's office, says, "I'm confident that we investigated every viable federal crime and prosecuted them.")

The fact that most of Young's claimed contributions apparently went unrecorded raises the possibility that he never made them, that he was merely boasting. But it would also mean that he had lied to federal agents, which is a felony, and Young was never charged with that crime. If he had lied, that would also have diminished Young's credibility as a key government witness against Siegelman. One of Young's lawyers tells TIME, "There was never the slightest suggestion by prosecutors that the information my client provided about contributions to Sessions and Pryor was in any way untrue." The judge in the Siegelman case also seemed to find Young credible: he stated at sentencing that he had increased the sentencing guidelines for the Governor on the basis of a prosecution memo that alleged "systematic and pervasive corruption" and cited a "criminal relationship with Lanny Young."

The controversy surrounding the case in Alabama is not that Siegelman went to prison and his Republican colleagues didn't. Without an investigation or even questions being asked, it's impossible to know whether any of them committed illegal acts. The issue is that some of the same allegations that led to Siegelman's indictment never merited so much as a follow-up when raised in connection with Republicans.

U.S. Attorney Canary has vigorously rejected the suggestion of any political influence on the case. She has pointed out that the investigation of Siegelman originated not with her but with her Democratic predecessor as U.S. Attorney and in the office of Alabama's then attorney general, Bill Pryor. Moreover, she notes that she was in charge of the case for only eight months, long before indictments were handed down, and then publicly recused herself to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Yet Canary was in charge when Young spoke about his payments to the Sessions and Pryor campaigns and to other Alabama Republicans. At the same time, her husband's consulting firm, Capitol Group LLC, was being paid close to $40,000 to advise Pryor. A source who held a senior post in Canary's office during the long-running investigation into Siegelman says it's almost inconceivable that Canary would not have been informed of Young's charges against prominent Republican officeholders and candidates. Canary denied that to TIME. The fact that those charges were never looked at will only heighten suspicions that the Siegelman prosecution was a case of selective justice and that in the Bush Administration, enforcing the law has been a partisan pursuit.

Documents Show DOJ Considered Political Credentials In U.S. Atty Firings

• Nearly 2,394 pages of e-mails, schedules and memos released Friday
• Chart of prosecutors listed political credentials, Federalist Society membership
• Papers show replacements chosen by Justice officials nearly a year beforehand
• Rove didn't delete e-mails in case of eight fired prosecutors, lawyer says

The AP reports:
The Justice Department weighed political activism and membership in a conservative law group in evaluating the nation's federal prosecutors, documents released in the probe of fired U.S. attorneys show.

The political credentials were listed on a chart of 124 U.S. attorneys nominated since 2001, a document that could bolster Democrats' claims that the traditionally independent Justice Department has become more partisan during the Bush administration.

The chart was included in documents released Friday by the department to congressional panels investigating whether the firings last year of the U.S. attorneys were politically motivated -- an inquiry that has Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fighting for his own job.

"This is the chart that the AG requested," Monica Goodling, Justice's former liaison to the White House, wrote in a February 12 e-mail to two other senior department officials. "I'll show it to him on the plane tomorrow, if he's interested."

Goodling resigned last week, refusing to testify to Congress about her role in the firings and citing her constitutional protection against self-incrimination.

The 2,394 pages of e-mails, schedules and memos released Friday included a few hand-scribbled pages of notes of reasons why some of the eight were ousted -- notes that Justice officials confirmed were written by Goodling.

Under Iglesias' name, Goodling wrote: "Domenici says he doesn't move cases" -- a reference to Sen. Pete Domenici, the six-term Republican from New Mexico accused of pressuring the prosecutor on a political corruption investigation. That allegation has been one of the factors driving Democrats' claims that the firings were politically motivated.

The documents also included indications that senior department officials had replacements in mind for the outgoing prosecutors nearly a year before the ousters, seemingly contradicting testimony last month by Gonzales' former top aide.

The new batch of documents -- adding to more than 3,400 previously released -- came amid questions about missing White House e-mails, including some from presidential counselor Karl Rove and other administration officials. The Democratic-controlled Congress is seeking those e-mails as evidence for its inquiry into the firings. (Full story)

Private attorney Robert Luskin denied that Rove intentionally deleted his own e-mails from a Republican-sponsored computer system. He said President Bush's political adviser believed the communications were being preserved in accordance with the law.

Democrats are questioning whether any White House officials purposely sent e-mails about official business on the RNC server -- then deleted them, in violation of the law -- to avoid scrutiny.

White House officials said the administration is making an aggressive effort to recover anything that was lost. "We have no indications that there was improper intent when using these RNC e-mails," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

The new documents also show Justice efforts to tamp down the controversy by meeting with congressional aides they considered potentially sympathetic to their viewpoint -- including a staffer to Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who has been one of Gonzales' most vocal critics.

Additionally, the documents include correspondence from some prosecutors complaining about being ensnared in the political storm.

The chart underscores the weight that conservative credentials carried with the Justice Department.

The three-page spreadsheet notes the "political experience" of each prosecutor, which was defined as work at the Justice Department's headquarters in Washington, on Capitol Hill, for state or local officials, and on campaigns or for political parties.

Several of the 124 prosecutors on the list were also members of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. The group was founded by conservative law students and now claims 35,000 members, including prominent members of the Bush administration, the federal judiciary and Congress.

How the information was used by the administration isn't clear.

One of the eight attorneys fired in December -- Kevin Ryan, the prosecutor in San Francisco -- was a Federalist Society member.

Two others, David Iglesias in New Mexico and Bud Cummins in Little Rock, Arkansas, held Republican Party posts or ran for office before being tapped as U.S. attorneys, the chart shows.

New contradiction

The documents reveal a new contradiction in officials' accounting of the firings, indicating that replacements for those dismissed were chosen by Justice officials nearly a year beforehand.

Beginning with a January 2006 e-mail to White House Counsel Harriet Miers, former Justice chief of staff Kyle Sampson proposed replacing U.S. attorneys in San Diego, California; San Francisco, California; Michigan; and Arkansas.

The replacements were to include Rachel Brand, who heads the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, to oust Margaret Chiara in Michigan, and Tim Griffin, a Rove protege who now is acting U.S. attorney in Arkansas.

But Sampson, who resigned under fire last month, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 29 that "I did not have in mind any replacements for any of the seven who were asked to resign" last December 7.

Gonzales is to explain his role in the firings to the same panel next Tuesday -- an appearance that even Republicans say is crucial to restoring his shaky credibility amid growing calls for his resignation.

"The contradictions continue to pile up," Schumer told reporters Friday. "The questions for the attorney general continue to mount."

Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse maintained that, except for Griffin, no replacements were selected before the prosecutors were told to resign.

"The list, drafted 10 months before the December resignations, reflects Kyle Sampson's initial thoughts, not preselected candidates by the administration," Roehrkasse said. "Sampson's initial thoughts were just that."

Sampson attorney Brad Berenson said his clients' testimony was "entirely accurate." He said that "some names had been tentatively suggested for discussion much earlier in the process, but by the time the decision to ask for the resignations was made, none had been chosen to serve as a replacement."

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers said the new documents "were not a complete response to our subpoena request,"

"I expect that the attorney general, as the nation's chief law enforcement officer, will be respectful of his obligations under the committee's subpoena and respond in full by Monday," said Conyers, a Michigan Democrat.

Some of the documents released could prove embarrassing.

An October 2, 2006, e-mail to Brand, for example, derides Chiara as "Miss Margaret," an insensitive manager who announced in an all-staff meeting which employees would be receiving bonuses and outstanding staff evaluations. The sender's name on the e-mail was stripped from the document.

And in a February 28, 2007, e-mail, Griffin complained to Justice headquarters that he was being maligned as a White House pawn in the media.

"Someone at DOJ left the press with the impression that Harriet Miers vouching for me was some sort of extraordinary event," Griffin wrote to three senior Justice officials. "It wasn't."

Responded Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling: "Not sure your assertion is accurate. Someone at DOJ merely recounted the facts. ... Your point is well taken, however, in that we need to emphasize the normalcy of the process in your case. I think we are ready to do that."