A Sidelight on the U.S. Attorney Uproar

That the President dismissed political appointees for political reasons is a pretty lame scandal. Of course, the political reasons could themselves raise questions. For instance, suppose that he had fired the U.S. attorney in his home town and appointed a personal friend to fill the slot at a time when he himself was a potential target of investigation for financial corruption. Oh, wait! That was not a scandal. Just ask any Democrat.

The supposedly scandalous subtext of the President’s now controversial decision to fire eight U.S. attorneys (all his own appointees) is that they were punished for failure to pursue vote fraud allegations aggressively. Note the unspoken assumption behind the accusation: that investigating fraud at the polls is a partisan, anti-Democrat course of action – which makes sense only if Democrats are fraud’s willing beneficiaries. I wouldn’t have thought them eager to trumpet that distinction.

Pushing prosecutors to ferret out real crimes is scandalous only in the make-believe world of the Left. It’s not quite the same as (link above) –

Jay Stephens, then U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia, was investigating then Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, and was “within 30 days” of making a decision on an indictment [when he was fired by President Clinton]. Mr. Rostenkowski, who was shepherding the Clinton's economic program through Congress, eventually went to jail on mail fraud charges and was later pardoned by Mr. Clinton.

The troublesome aspect of this affair is the ineptitude on display at the Justice Department. The attorney-general certainly looks like a bungler or a liar. OTOH, it’s not easy for an outsider to evaluate his management skills on the basis of what is probably a very partial, and perhaps a grotesquely distorted, picture of events. From my own days as a federal bureaucrat, I have an idea of how far press accounts can stray from any version of reality.

Addendum: OpinionJournal Political Diary (worth a lot more than Times Select and cheaper, too) offers this insight into one of the victims of the “massacre”:

Take the case of John McKay, a Seattle lawyer and Democrat who parlayed his connections with GOP Rep. Jennifer Dunn to follow his older brother’s footsteps and become the U.S. Attorney in Washington State. During the contentious recounts surrounding the razor-thin 2004 governor’s race there, Mr. McKay stood on the sidelines and adamantly refused to investigate evidence that King County election officials were breaking the law in how they chose to conduct the recount. Clear evidence had surfaced, for instance, that ballots from 170 unregistered voters were unlawfully counted and that King County officials may have covered up that fact. The race was eventually decided in favor of Democrat Christine Gregoire after the third recount gave her a 139-vote lead over Republican Dino Rossi.

Tom McCabe, head of the Building Industry Association of Washington, wrote to GOP Rep. Doc Hastings calling for the White House to replace Mr. McKay. I [John Fund, author of the invaluable Stealing Elections] was copied on Mr. McCabe’s letter, and spent some time reviewing the evidence he had accumulated. While it’s true Mr. McKay had a full docket of cases at the time, his complete lack of interest in voting irregularities during the recall battle certainly was odd.

That’s also the judgment of Michael McDonald, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who authored a liberal Brennan Center report last year that debunked vote fraud allegations by the New Jersey Republican Party. While Mr. McDonald believes that Washington State’s 2004 election did not turn up evidence of significant voter fraud, he says he finds it “curious that McKay decided not to prosecute the 40 (some) felons who provided sworn affidavits of casting fraudulent votes that the Republicans offered as evidence in the gubernatorial recount trial.” Mr. McKay himself told the Seattle Times this week: “We never found any evidence of criminal conduct.” That is clearly belied by the facts.

Stealing votes is a far bigger threat to our country than anything that Scooter Libby ever did. If getting rid of eight Presidential appointees was part of a White House effort to address it, the only valid criticism is that much more ought to have been done.

Comments

[KL duPre']

Couldn't agree with you more.