Prosecutor Questions Rove On Fired US Attorneys at Pat Dollard

Prosecutor Questions Rove On Fired US Attorneys

May 15th, 2009 (7) Posted By Erik Wong.

http://www.breitbart.com/

By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) – Former White House aide Karl Rove faced questions Friday from a special prosecutor weighing whether to bring criminal charges against Bush administration officials for the politically charged firing of U.S. attorneys.

Rove met with prosecutor Nora Dannehy at the office of his lawyer, Robert Luskin. Rove did not speak to reporters as he entered the downtown Washington law office and neither did investigators who arrived about a half hour later.

Rove has said he will cooperate with the investigation, which is being conducted to determine whether Bush administration officials or congressional Republicans should face criminal charges in the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.

Rove and other Republican officials refused to be interviewed in an earlier Justice Department inquiry, which concluded that despite Bush administration denials, political considerations played a part in the firings of as many as four prosecutors.

U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president, but cannot be fired for improper reasons. Bush administration officials at first claimed the attorneys were let go because of poor performance.

The internal Justice Department investigation recommended a criminal inquiry, saying the lack of cooperation by Rove and other senior administration officials left gaps in their findings that should be investigated further. Then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey responded by naming Dannehy, the acting U.S. attorney in Connecticut, as special prosecutor in September.

Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers also have agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee under oath about the firings in closed depositions. As president, Bush had fought attempts to force them to testify.

In July, U.S. District Judge John Bates rejected Bush’s contention that senior White House advisers were immune from the committee’s subpoenas, siding with Congress’ power to investigate the executive branch. The Bush administration had appealed the decision. The agreement for Rove and Miers to testify ended the lawsuit.

___

Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.

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Jarhead68

So when Clinton fired ALL of the US attorneys to cover up the fact that he wanted the one in charge of Whitewater to be let go, that doesn’t qualify as a scandal to the media?
Jarhead68

“U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president, but cannot be fired for improper reasons.”

Where is the “but” in the statute? When this story broke 3 years ago, I remember reading the language of the law and there was no “but”. And who gets to decide what’s proper or improper? A law would never be written with such vague terms…unless it was written by a Harvard-educated lawyer who’s only real job was community organizer.

Jarhead68

Make that “whose”…

http://Hey serfer62

“U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president, but cannot be fired for improper reasons” by nedler pickler.
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Nedra (your parents must have hated you with that name) the law does not state that. They can be fired for any reason all or one at a time. Dummy.
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ref…see Clinton 1992 who fired 96 for no reason…well actually it was to stop an investagation into him as govornor…
TerryTate

More Democrat fantasyland bullshit…

If people are prosecuted over this, that is when the law will actually have been violated for political means.

PURE BULLSHIT.
Phil Byler

This is stupid. Didn’t the Bush people learn their lesson with respect to Liddy?

The President has the right to fire. U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. You have, however, hard core left wingers in the Justice Department who will always seek to go after Republicans.

I dispute the notion that “improper motive” can invalidate a firing. One can always claim an “improper motive,” which is what the left wingers in the Justice Department will do in order to attack the firing of a U.S. Attorney for not implementing the President’s agenda.

Former AG Michael Mukasey was a nitwit for appointing a special prosecutor. Mukasey did not pursue the Ohio vote fraud case in October 2008 because he did not want to seem partisan, even though by not acting he helped the Democrats. The Ohio GOP had correctly won, under federal votng law, an injunction against the abuses being committed by Democrat Ohio Secretary of State; the U.S. Supreme Court vacated on “standing grounds” that a private party could not bring such a suit; the AG could have remedied that problem easily in order to enforce federal law; Mukasey, however, did nothing. But as bad as that failure was on Mukasey’s part, the appointment of a special prosecutor for the non-issue about firing U.S. Attorneys will in time be the real black mark against Mukasey.

Phil Byler

That’s Libby.