I would never, ever make a change in the United States attorney position for political reasons.Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, to a Congressional Committee in February:
When I hear you talk about the politicizing of the Department of Justice, it's like a knife in my heart.An e-mail from Kyle Sampson, Mr. Gonzales' Chief of Staff, from January 2005, as Mr. Gonzales was preparing to become Attorney General:
If Karl [Rove] thinks there is the political will to do it, then so do I.Why the press didn't immediately see this as vintage Rove is absolutely mind-boggling. This is a guy who was know for pushing prosecution of Democrats on trumped up charges right before election time in Texas, only to see those charges fall by the way-side right after they lost to Rove's Republican candidate.
Rove was the epicenter of this U.S. Attorney purge from the word go. The guy is obviously pathological. Every one of the attorneys fired was a Republican. The reason they were let go was because there was no evidence of wrong-doing against Democratic candidates in their jurisdiction and they wouldn't trump up charges at Rove's request. Of course, that wouldn't matter to Karl. The issues are rarely on their side so better to find a way to steal elections.
And then for Rove and the White House to insist this whole thing was Harriet Miers' idea (Bush's outgoing White House counsel). The poor woman had little, if anything, to do with this.
Gonzales is obviously on his way out. With both Democrats and Republicans calling for his head, I don't think he can hang on too much longer. But Rove has to go, too. The man has become a danger not only to the President politically, but our system of government as a whole.
