From LoftyDonkey.com
The Arizona Democratic Party has just sent out a press release about Renzi investigator Paul Charlton being fired. The press release is below and our commentary is below the release.
[Entry below the fold]
Arizona Democratic Party Press Release
Questions Into Firing of Renzi Investigator Left Unanswered
Unnamed "priorities" and "performance" issues cited for ousting
Senate hearings into the removal of the U.S. Attorney investigating Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) has done little but raise further questions into the motivations behind his move. Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton was "investigating charges involving land deals and influence peddling against of [sic] Republican Congressman Rick Renzi" when he resigned.
Charlton’s removal came "amid a cloud of controversy over whether he was forced out by the Justice Department along with a number of colleagues nationwide during a political purge by the Bush administration."
See: Center for American Progress, and Arizona Republic
The Judicial Committee hearing did little to assuage the concerns of the Committee Chair Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY). According to the Arizona Republic, "Schumer said Tuesday that the ousters don’t appear to be an orderly and natural replacement of underperforming prosecutors: ‘It sounds like a purge.’"
See: Arizona Republic
Testifying before the Committee on Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty claimed that the six federal prosecutors had been asked to resign for "performance-related" reasons. However, when the Committee Chair threatened to subpoena the performance evaluations, McNulty claimed that those "evaluations do not necessarily speak to whether the prosecutors were satisfactorily carrying out various Justice Department ‘priorities’, something that could have played a part in some of their ousters."
See: Arizona Republic
What "priorities" prosecutors may have had that clashed with the Justice Department were not made clear.
Charlton was not the only prosecutor who was forced out after making it priority to investigate prominent Republican lawmakers who were under scrutiny for misconduct. The group also included the Carol Lam, U.S. Attorney from San Diego who "won a bribery case against then-Rep. Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham, R-Calif," an investigation which is ongoing. McNulty also admitted that one of the prosecutors, H.E. Cummings III of Arkansas, was not removed for poor performance, but to give the post to a former aide to Karl Rove.
See: Arizona Daily Star
The firings of between 7 and 10 federal prosecutors has under scrutiny since the attorneys, many of whom had exemplary records, were all replaced by Attorney General Roberto Gonzales under a little-know provision of the Patriot Act to "assign replacements without Senate scrutiny or approval."
See: Arizona Republic
Charlton’s investigation into Renzi’s land dealings is ongoing and the department has yet to make any findings public. The investigation into a deal which "ultimately netted the business partner a $3 million profit" surfaced last October, but has been kept under the radar since.
See: Washington Post, and Prescott Daily Courier
Since 2005, Renzi has spent over $100,000 from his campaign committee on legal bills. On January 30, 2007, Renzi reported a debt of $100,159.74 to Patton Boggs LLP for "legal services." [Federal Elections Commission]
So we here at Lofty Donkey broke a story about a federal investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi back in October. We discovered that an investigation into a shady land-swap deal, as well as accepting bribes, was underway but was not likely to be pursued until after the 2006 election. We may have been a little hard on US Attorney Paul Charlton for postponing the investigation but now we can understand why. Charlton was removed not because of "priorities" and "performance" issues, but because he was actually attempting to do his job impartially. The Bush administration has been firing US attorneys left and right when it looks like they may be on to something criminal about a Bush ally, and with all the criminal activity that Bush’s allies are up to, that is a lot of firings.
So Bush’s Justice Department claims that SEVEN US attorneys all happened to be underperforming at the same time, yet refuse to release their job performance reviews.
A DailyKos Diary breaks a comment by the US Attorney of Western Washington that was fired:
"I was ordered to resign as U.S. attorney on Dec. 7 by the Justice Department...I was given no explanation. I certainly was told of no performance issues."
Something needs to be done here. We have reached a level of corruption where Bush’s cronies are protected and not even charged even after everyone knows what they have done.