Slashdot Mirror
Not All the DOJ Missing Emails Are Missing
Hylas sends us to Democracy Now for a newscast on the missing emails, an interview with investigative journalist Greg Palast. Here's Palast talking about the fired US attorney from New Mexico, David Iglesias: "Iglesias believes the real reasons for the firings are in what are called the missing emails, emails sent by the [White House political advisor Karl] Rove team using Republican Party campaign computers, which Rove claims can't be retrieved. But not all the missing emails are missing. We have 500 of them. Apparently the Rove team misaddressed their emails, and late one night they all ended up in our inboxes in our offices in New York City." This story has had zero play in the US media; it's been being carried on the BBC.
A bit of history on Greg Palast; he's the guy who, on the BBC, broke the story about election irregularities in Florida before the 2000 election. Admittedly, a few days before, but it's still a bit of a scoop.
It is much better than this!p alast+2000&search=Searchp alast&search=Search
He investigated the contract Jeb Bush gave to a company to filter out from the voter rolls the people who had no right to vote. He got their listings printed, and found out that they had prevented tens of thousands of african-americans from voting for no legal reason! As everyone knows african-americans almost always (95%) vote for the democrats. That is how the 2000 election really was stolen, and all US corporate media boycotted what he found, which only aired on the BBC.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=greg+
For more great videos by Palast about the 2004 election and more:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=greg+
Also do a serch on emule for other exclusive materials.
Nice troll. Too bad it's not correct.
You are correct when you say the US Attorneys serve at the will of the President. Bill Clinton, when he came into office, fired all 83 US Attorneys and replaced them. So did Reagan and Bush, Sr.
Bush, however, not only did not do that, he waited until two years into his second term to fire eight attorneys which he had previously appointed!
Further, as is now becoming clear, the firings were not for performance reasons, but political reasons. In one case, the attorney was told he was being fired to make way for a former aide to Karl Rove. In another case, Iglesias, he was specificaly told his firing was not for performance reasons but political yet the White House and Gonzales kept saying, and still say to this day, that the firing was for performance issues.
As Iglesias said on Fox Noise, and as the transcript above shows, he asked for and was given permission to use the DOJ as a reference. If he was fired for performance reasons, why bother to give him a recommendation?
So what we have is an Attorney General who has been lying under oath about an incident which he apparently knew nothing about even though he heads the department. Let's see, lying under oath, can't recall information, doesn't know what's going on. Why does that sound familiar?
Keep up the trolling. We need the laughs.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
U.S. Attorneys are usually all replaced at the beginning of an administration. They are not supposed to be replaced in the middle of a term in order to obstruct justice.
While they are political appointees they do not occupy political positions. Supreme Court judges are political appointees too. They can't simply be yanked off the court by the president if he or one of his friends loses a court decision.
To get on the Supreme Court, a nominee has to be approved by Congress. Ordinarily that applies to U.S. Attorney nominees as well. (Even though they serve "at the pleasure of the president".) Specter's little Patriot Act amendment put an end to that. So now the president can simply fire a prosecutor if he or one of his friends get prosecuted, replace him with whomever he likes, and nobody can say a thing.
Now we have people in the president's own party demanding that his prosecutors bring bogus charges against their political opponents, rushed in time for elections. (Historically prosecutors have usually waited until after elections to avoid tainting them.) We have people in the president's own party having the prosecutors investigating them fired. We have prosecutors being replaced by guys who compile lists of registered voters in minority districts for mass voter challenges. We have prosecutors being replaced for investigating real crimes instead of wasting their time harassing voters with imaginary "voter fraud" cases. We have a Department of Justice that launches more than six corruption investigations of local Democratic politicians for every single investigation of a Republican. If you think this is a "non-story" you're out of your mind.