Time to Impeach Gonzales

An article in Thursday's New York Times officially confirms that at least one more U.S. Attorney, Todd Graves of Missouri, was forced out of office last year by the Bush administration. What did Graves do to warrant dismissal? Well, much like his colleagues, it appears Graves was unwilling to initiate meritless lawsuits and prosecutions solely to enhance the election prospects of Republican candidates. According to the Times:

In one case, Mr. Graves said, the civil rights division had wanted him to sue the State of Missouri for what federal officials thought was its failure to purge voter registration roles of people who had died, changed addresses or left the state.

Mr. Graves said he believed the suit would not succeed because local governments are responsible for registration records. After his refusal to sign off, the lawsuit was authorized by Bradley J. Schlozman, then the acting chief in the civil rights division in Washington. The department named Mr. Schlozman as Mr. Graves’s interim successor.

Graves was right. The case was quickly dismissed.

Mr. Graves said he might also have alienated officials in Washington by giving Claire McCaskill, a Democrat who has since been elected to the United States Senate from Missouri, a letter in 2004 saying there had been insufficient evidence to file charges in a case from the 1990s that involved her office manager. Last year, Ms. McCaskill unseated Jim Talent, a Republican.

Mr. Graves said that in retrospect, he might have been seen as too independent and unwilling to push causes important to the Republican Party unless he felt action was merited by his reading of the law.

Apparently the White House didn't like the fact that Graves had confirmed there was no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of a McCaskill staffer. After all, it would have been much easier to smear McCaskill had the facts remained a little more murky.

How many more stories like this need to surface before people stop claiming that there is nothing rotten in the Department of Justice? There is a clear and unmistakable pattern here of improper political interference with prosecutorial decision-making. Gonzales has allowed the DOJ to be used as a political arm of the White House. He has allowed federal prosecutors to be intimidated, bullied, and even fired for refusing to cast aside their independent prosecutorial judgment, for refusing to engage in meritless partisan witch hunts or choosing to pursue meritorious prosecutions against Republican officials. That is entirely unacceptable in a free society, and it is grounds for impeachment.

Lest there be any doubt about that, I suggest reading this post by Marty Lederman which discusses Gonzales secret order delegating enormous discretion over the hiring and firing of DOJ personnel to Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling. In short, Gonzales publicly revoked the authority that had traditionally belonged to the Deputy Attorney General and Associate Attorney General and, at least publicly, reclaimed that authority for himself. He then issued a secret follow up order re-delegating that same authority to Sampson and Goodling. This second order was apparently so secret that even the Deputy Attorney General, the person who used to have this authority, was not informed of it. As Marty explains:

The problem here is that this important function has now been delegated to persons having virtually no tie to the cadre of professionals in the Department -- young attorneys who had no background, experience or qualification to evaluate candidates for senior law enforcement positions except their political connections and loyalty to the White House. But the fact that the DAG's traditional responsibility was transferred lock, stock and barrel to these two people, of all the officials in the Department, makes clear that the only relevant considerations for hiring were to be partisan political considerations, not performance.

This was clearly done in order to allow the White House to have complete control over the hiring and firing of Justice Department officials. It was a nakedly political move (hence the secrecy). There is no question that under Gonzales' stewardship, the Justice Department has become politicized to a degree that cannot be tolerated in a society that purports to value the rule of law and the impartial administration of justice. Gonzales must go. Immediately. And if he doesn't resign, he should be impeached. We need to have an Attorney General who at least has some minimal amount of integrity and independent judgment. Gonzales is not that man.