The Justice Department identified five Bush administration insiders as replacement U.S. attorneys almost a year before most of the prosecutors were fired, contrary to repeated claims that no such list had ever been drawn up, according to documents released today.
E-mails sent to the White House in January and May of 2006 by D. Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, list potential replacements for U.S. attorneys in San Diego, San Francisco, Grand Rapids, Mich., and Little Rock, Ark.
The replacements on the list were all high-level administration insiders, including two who have gone on to different U.S. attorney postings: Jeff Taylor, now chief prosecutor in the District, and Deborah Rhodes, now U.S. attorney in Alabama. The others were Rachel L. Brand, currently head of the Office of Legal Counsel, and Daniel Levin, a former senior Justice and White House official, the memos show.
Read the full article here.
This comes two weeks after Sampson, testifying under oath, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had no one in mind to replace any of the dismissed prosecutors.
Considering this administration's past record, I can't say that I was totally surprised.
No comments:
Post a Comment