Why Holder and Obama Have Not Fired the Bush Appointed, Rove-Vetted Department of Justice Attorneys

Crossposted at www.OpEdNews.com

It's an unprecedented outrage. There are scores of attorneys -- partisan ones -- engaging in serial prosecutorial misconduct, as in the cases of Gov. Don Siegelman and Cyril Wecht, and these Bush-appointees are still on the job, doing damage to the U.S, to justice and innocent victims.

I offer a theory explaining this breach of trust by Obama; why he has failed to do what every president before him has done.

The progressive media should be raising an outcry about this daily, pointing its light at the abuses of the individual prosecutors. The mainstream media should be covering the abuses. All the media should be asking "Why?"

Why are Holder and Obama not firing and replacing these attorneys, as every other president taking office has done? Why are they leaving these partisan appointees, the worst, most partisan bunch in recent history -- possibly ever?

I have a theory. Obama and his people, probably starting with Rahm Emanuel, are saving them to trade favors with key Republicans. You see these toxic, partisan attorneys have real value to Republicans, especially when you pair them with Bush appointed Federal judges. Put them together and they can prosecute a frog for hopping, and a public official who pissed off a Republican senator for breathing in the wrong direction. There are so many thousands of regulations and rules that a federal prosecutor inclined to abuse prosecutorial privilege can put the screws to the most honest person in the state.

If a senator -- often the most powerful party member in a state -- wants to take out the most powerful members, or most up and coming members of the opposition party, the DOJ attorney can be a powerful ally in making it happen. That's what happened to Don Siegelman and Cyril Wecht. They were targeted and accused with charges that were absolutely ridiculous and unreasonable. Wecht had the worst judge imaginable, who was later reversed by a Republican, Bush-appointee.

So, here's my guess on why Holder is holding back. Obama and his advisory team have decided that they can, when the crunch comes, for the next trillion dollar bailout, or when the final push comes to pass the health care bill, trade retention of a toxic Bush-appointed Federal attorney for a vote.

It's reprehensible, unacceptable, but, at a point when history has always seen the DOJ attorneys replaced, we must ask why this has not happened.

There's another hypothesis a colleague has offered -- that Obama is bending over backwards not to make waves, to remain non-partisan, or rather, to maintain the lie of non-partisanism in this increasingly ugly, toxic partisan milieu in which the 111th congress has been marinating.

I'm not satisfied with that explanation. It goes against history without enough of a possible payoff, without enough of a reason for keeping the actively destructive prosecutors in place.

One study shows that 85% of the targets of these prosecutors were Democrats. It is insane to leave them in place, doing the same dirty work when the nation elected a Democratic president.

Take Alabama, where the prosecutor who has vilified and terrorized Gov. Don Siegelman, is still at work. We have two republican Senators Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions. They had plenty to gain getting rid of a powerful and popular Democratic governor, hurting the state's top democratic leadership. They have plenty to gain keeping things that way. And hey, Shelby is ranking minority member of the senate Banking committee. See the possibilities?

To me, this has the fingerprints of Rahm Emanuel, who never met a conservative or DINO he wouldn't sell out a progressive for, all over it.

It's time that progressive talk radio hosts and TV personalities -- Maddow, Schultz, Ratigan and Olbermann -- start counting down the days that these rogue attorneys are still allowed by Holder and Obama to remain in office. They should not be accepted as viable chips to be cashed in. America deserves the DOJ attorneys they voted for as part of the package of electing a president.

Obama is letting us down one more way. His defenders say to give him time and that may be a fair request for some things. But he is way past the normal historical time for firing the past administration's attorneys. There's no excuse, no justification that is tolerable. They have to go.

The fruit is rotten, moldy and reeking, crawling with maggots and here, in late August, it is only going to get worse. The Rove-vetted, Bush appointed DOJ attorneys should be fired before the congress returns. Cyril Wecht suggests that the ones Rove had fired should be re-hired. They proved their integrity by refusing to serve their partisan bosses.

Follow Rob Kall on Twitter: www.twitter.com/robkall

Comments

[rocketman19]

obama and holder are gutless cowards.

[Intelligentia]

If these are attorneys are what you claim they are, why have you not been pushing to disbar them through their respective bar associations? If they are disbarred, they cannnot hold their jobs, right? What about OIG and OPR investigations if these attorneys violated the law? Why wait for Obama and Holder? Since it appears you have all the evidence that these attorneys are toxic ( does it mean they violated the law?), why don't you take that evidence and approach their respective state associations for disbarment. If you can't, then let Obama and Holder move at their pace. They know what they are doing.

[Toxictort]

I think it is an important distinction that is part of the Change that Obama promised to keep these people in their jobs, although I agree it is not politically expedient. It is this type of inherent decency in this administration, so lacking in any other part of our political landscape, that still gives me hope that they can do something. What should be noted as "historical" is not the time frame that the POTUS had to fire these people, but the fact that he didnt. Precedents are important in legal matters. I think that President Obama just established an important one.

[TrueSense]

Excus me !

You need to explain this. Governor Seigelman is about to go back to jail because of this idiocy. These hacks are getting to keep up their corruption and take another shot at him in this admin when he should have never been prosecuted in the first place.

The US AG in NOLA appears to be some kind of attack dog for the right wing and those that want to deprive working class and poor people of their housing rights. He seems to go after anyone or group that tries to assist them in their purge.

You are defending this ?

[GodBlessAmerica]

I think all the attorneys should be judged on their own merits, not just party affiliation. The Republicans made great headway with knocking Bill Clinton onto his heels, politically speaking, when Reno fired all the Bush 41 US Attorneys, a situation which was also used in justifying the absurd politicall­y-biased-f­acts-be-da­mned firings during Bush 43. I had more than one Republican friend say, "Don't you remember when Clinton and Reno fired the US Attorneys too? It's standard practice!" (Of course I told them to say no to drugs.)

That said, the ones in Arkansas and Alabama, guilty of the accusations in this post, deserve to be upended as soon as possible.

[ricmarc]

i think cyril wecht was properly charged and should have been found guilty. but, i think most of the celeb medical examiners are guilty, especially of perjury for defense teams.

[BurtonOerney]

There have been other outrages. Like how the federal reserve gave away so much money to UBS without getting any information about the accounts of potential tax cheats. Remember that?

Or how the treasury department was throwing money away on GM. They were being soft on their corporate buddies and their plan was sure to loot and destroy the company, right?

There was the outrage with the stress tests, whose weakness would cause all investors to sell bank stocks.

If we didn't nationalize the banks, toxic assets would never find buyers, all the banks would be insolvent and the credit market would remain frozen forever.

'Printing' money to fight deflation, shore up bank balance sheets and holding interest rates near zero was supposed to lead directly to hyper-inflation.

Of course, none of the disaster predictions came to pass. I'm sure we're supposed to just wait. Once the commercial mortgages start to default, then we'll really know what disaster is all about.

My favorite aspect of this article is that while it condemns Rove for twisting facts, it does a little fact twisting of its own. The author set up the premise by supposing that the president is using attorneys as bargaining chips. Then he brings it on home by boldly asserting that by using attorneys as bargaining chips, the president is letting us down. Oh, and he invites us to follow the made-up action on radio programs like his own.

[One more Thing]

One thing's for sure. The Obama Administration does have a plan. The longer that plan remains a secret the more effective it is.

Help keep it that way!

[Rob Kall - Huffpost Blogger]

Some would argue that republicans are blocking appointments. That is no excuse for not firing these toxic attorneys immediately, Believe me, victims like Gov. Don Siegelman, Cyril Wecht and others want them discharged immediately. They told me. Not being able to replace them is no excuse. They are bad news and are not worth keeping on.