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Wednesday, March 14, 2007
But, But Clinton Did It Too!
Yesterday, Drudge posted a story (which I assume came directly from RNC or the White House) that Clinton had fired all 93 U.S. attorneys who had been appointed by the first President Bush, upon taking office in 1993. (Not surprisingly, this information was factually incorrect, as Clinton, with not a little bit of irony, kept on Michael Chertoff as U.S. Attorney in New Jersey at the request of Bill Bradley). This was somehow supposed to justify the Bush Administration's selective firing of 8 of its own appointees midway through Bush's second term.
However, as precedent goes, the RNC didn't need to look too far, as the New York Times reported on March 15, 2001 that George W. Bush fired all the U.S. attorneys (except for Mary Jo White in the S.D.N.Y) upon taking office himself:
March 15, 2001
Bush Chooses Chief for Federal Prosecutions
By DAVID JOHNSTON
President Bush today named Michael Chertoff, formerly chief Republican
counsel of the Senate's Whitewater inquiry and United States attorney in New
Jersey, to head the Justice Department's criminal division, a powerful post that
would place him in charge of all federal prosecutions.
If confirmed, Mr. Chertoff would oversee a broad portfolio of criminal
cases, including terrorism and bank robbery. He would play a significant role in
decisions relating to official corruption cases, including any prosecution that
might arise from the 177 pardons and commutations that President Bill Clinton
granted on his final day in office.
In recent years, Mr. Chertoff has switched from being a prosecutor to being
a defense lawyer in private practice at the firm of Latham & Watkins in
Newark.
At the same time, Mr. Chertoff has been special counsel to a New Jersey
State Senate committee that has examined inmate release policies of the state's
corrections system and accusations of racial profiling by the New Jersey State
Police.
In 1995, Mr. Chertoff played a major role in Senate hearings into the
Arkansas business dealings of Mr. Clinton and his wife, Hillary.
Mr. Chertoff, 47, the son of a rabbi and a gallery owner, is married with
two children. A former clerk for Justice William J. Brennan of the United States
Supreme Court, Mr. Chertoff graduated from Harvard Law School and spent more
than a decade as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey and New York.
In New York, he was the lead federal prosecutor in 1986 when the government
won convictions against Mafia bosses in a case that some law enforcement
officials described as a Waterloo for the New York Mafia.
Mr. Chertoff successfully prosecuted Mayor Gerald McCann of Jersey City in
1991 for fraud and tax evasion, and a consumer electronics retailer, Eddie
Antar, known as Crazy Eddie, for racketeering and fraud in 1993.
One of Mr. Chertoff's better-known cases was the prosecution of Sol
Wachtler, a chief judge of the New York State Court of Appeals, who was arrested
in 1992 on charges of harassing and attempting to extort his ex-lover. Mr.
Wachtler pleaded guilty to kidnapping threats.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said today that he had started to
replace the Clinton administration's 93 United States attorneys with Bush appointees, which Mr. Ashcroft said would be completed by June.
Asked about Mary Jo White, the federal prosecutor in New York, Mindy
Tucker, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ashcroft, said Ms. White would remain on the job
indefinitely. The reason, Ms. Tucker said, is ''primarily because of Ms. White's
involvement'' in the case of Osama bin Laden, suspected of orchestrating
terrorist acts, and not because of her office's investigation into the pardons
issued by Mr. Clinton.
Anybody want to guess when we're going to hear about this on Fox News?
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