More Documents In The US Attorney Scandal

Image credit: GWU National Security Archive

There's been a new document dump in the US Attorneys scandal, which I used to refer to as the "USA Eight" scandal before we knew there were something like nine or ten USAs who were fired for still mysterious reasons.

This group of documents are all e-mails, as have been many in this scandal. One observation we old-timers can make is that most communication these days is done by e-mail, not by letter. That's interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that communications often happen in minutes when they used to take hours or days, and that when there's no editing people say the darnedest things. But I digress.

I haven't looked at this new group of e-mails, which appear to be from Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor, who were subpoenaed today by the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. Fortunately, Marcy Wheeler has. She's found some juicy stuff:

There are some doozies in here--where Harriet talks about asking "the Chief" about something, where Kyle Sampson admits to deleting an email from Bill Kelley on the Pryor/Griffin affair, and Sara Taylor's repeated attempts to ram Tim Griffin into Arkansas at all costs.

The Secrets They're Still Protecting

She then goes on to ask the question that's on everyone's mind, one way or another:

But I find another question just as interesting. What are the emails that they're still refusing to turn over. After all, although the emails they had previously withheld are embarrassing and outline the White House's intimate involvement in the purge, they're still not that damning. So what is it that they're still keeping hidden?

The Secrets They're Still Protecting

Most of us would stop right there, but not the relentless emptywheel. She has gone on to build a table of interesting e-mails that appear to be missing. Check it out.

Meanwhile, Talking Points Memo is still on the case. They observe:

The subpoenas follow fast on Justice Department emails turned over to Congress last night that fattened the already substantial case that the White House was intimately involved in installing Timothy Griffin, a former aide to Karl Rove as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

The Justice Department, in a letter vetted by the White House, wrote Congress back in February that Karl Rove didn't play "any role" in Griffin's nomination -- a statement the Department has since admitted was false.

Committees Subpoena Former Rove Aide, Miers

Among other things, we're learning that when this Justice Department denies it's doing something, that doesn't mean very much.

Scarecrow makes some observations about what this Justice Department has become at FDL today:

The Justice Department has become so politically compromised that no one can assume its criminal prosecutions are based on facts instead of political motivations and furtherance of one-party rule. The civil rights division has turned into a perpetrator of civil wrong. Career attorneys who were dedicated to protect Americans’ right to vote have been pushed out and replaced by political operatives hell bent on denying likely Democratic voters the ability to even register. Honorable prosecutors have been replaced by White House loyalists and incompetent cronies. Men and women with integrity who would never sanction wholesale lawlessness by the executive or massive invasions of citizens’ privacy or sanction torture have been “retired” to make way for political operatives who justify felonies, illegal surveillance, torture, illegal kidnapping, indefinite detention and the imposition of military law on US residents.

America Under Siege, But It’s Just Politics

This has certainly been the trend. There are folks who've said this is all about vote fraud, or something else. My guess is that it's about many things, none of them good. Scarecrow listed them in that paragraph.

Keep in mind that Sara Taylor was one of Karl Rove's aides, and if emptywheel's observations are correct, one of those ambitious young people who sometimes reach a bit farther than they ought to. Maybe she'll be feeling like making amends. One can hope.

So read, enjoy. Try not to let it ruin your lunch.