It’s The Reason, Stupid

by digby

The WSJ editorial page published a typical fun-house mirror version of reality this morning when they wrote about Clinton’s firings, suggesting that he did it in order to stop the Rostenkowski prosecution and Whitewater investigations. They gloss over the salient fact that Rosty went to jail — and that even a partisan Republican independent counsel with a blank check couldn’t find any wrongdoing in Whitewater.

Regardless of the WSJ‘s distortions about Clinton, as Joe Conason points out in his column today in the NY Observer there was a precedent for the particular brand of politicization of the Justice Department we are seeing today. Poppy had a little episode that might have been the prototype:

There was once another Republican prosecutor who insisted on behaving professionally instead of obeying partisan hints from the White House. His name was Charles A. Banks, and the Washington press corps said nothing when he was punished for his honesty by the administration of the first President Bush.

The cautionary tale of Chuck Banks begins during the summer of 1992, as the Presidential contest entered its final months with Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton leading incumbent President George H.W. Bush.

At the time, Mr. Banks had already served for five years as the United States Attorney in Little Rock. As an active Republican who had run for Congress and still aspired to higher office, he counted Mr. Clinton among his political adversaries. The first President Bush had recently selected him as a potential nominee for the federal bench. Nothing could have better served Mr. Banks’ personal interests than a chance to stop the Clintons and preserve the Bush Presidency.

In September 1992, a Republican activist employed by the Resolution Trust Corporation provided that opportunity by fabricating a criminal referral naming the Clintons as witnesses in a case against the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association (the small Arkansas savings and loan owned by Whitewater partner and Clinton friend James McDougal).

The referral prepared by L. Jean Lewis lacked merit—as determined by both Mr. Banks and the top F.B.I. agent in his office—but Ms. Lewis commenced a persistent crusade for action against the hated Clintons. The F.B.I. and the U.S. Attorney repeatedly rejected or ignored her crankish entreaties.

Eventually, however, officials in the Bush White House and the Justice Department heard whispers about the Lewis referral. Obviously, that document had the potential to save the President from defeat in November by smearing the Clintons as corrupt participants in a sweetheart land deal. (They had actually lost a large sum of money in Whitewater.)

That fall, Edith Holiday, secretary to the Bush cabinet, asked Attorney General William Barr whether he knew anything about such a referral. Although Mr. Barr knew nothing, he quickly sent an inquiry to the F.B.I. Weeks later, the President’s counsel, C. Boyden Gray, posed a similar improper question to a top Resolution Trust Corp. official.

The queries and hints from above created intense pressure on Mr. Banks to act on the Lewis referral despite his opinion, shared by the F.B.I., that her work was sloppy and biased. After Mr. Barr ordered him to act on the referral no later than two weeks before Election Day, he replied with a roar of conscience.

“I know that in investigations of this type,” he wrote in a remarkable memo to his boss, “the first steps, such as issuance of … subpoenas … will lead to media and public inquiries of matters that are subject to absolute privacy. Even media questions about such an investigation in today’s modern political climate all too often publicly purport to ‘legitimize what can’t be proven’ ….

“I must opine that after such a lapse of time, the insistence for urgency in this case appears to suggest an intentional or unintentional attempt to intervene into the political process of the upcoming presidential election ….

“For me personally to participate in an investigation that I know will or could easily lead to the above scenario … is inappropriate. I believe it amounts to prosecutorial misconduct and violates the most basic fundamental rule of Department of Justice policy.”

Needless to say, Banks no longer had a career in GOP politics. And L. Jean Lewis later gave one of American history’s most memorable testimonies before congress when she “fainted” under Democratic questioning. (She and her husband were both rewarded with jobs in the Junior Bush administration.)

Unfortunately the GOP spin is penetrating. I was talking to a fellow liberal this morning who has received all his news about the US Attorney scandal from TV and this is what he said, “Well, they all do it, right? Didn’t Clinton fire all the prosecutors so he could put his own people in?”

So, I would suggest that we stop discussing this in terms of a “purge” or “firings” because the truth is that the firings in themselves are not the problem. It’s the reasons for the firings. These prosecutors were removed because they failed to prosecute Democrats for political reasons — or they insisted on prosecuting Republicans on corruption charges. (One was removed in order to give a patronage job to Karl Rove’s little buddy and the fact that it was in Arkansas should not be ignored. Hillary Clinton is running for president, after all.)

And you have to wonder how many other GOP prosecutors played ball with Karl Rove on this stuff. I think a cloud hangs over the whole department in light of this. These recent firings aren’t the only cases of political interference:

Former Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) said Tuesday that White House political adviser Karl Rove told him in the spring of 2001 that he should limit his choice for U.S. attorney in Chicago to someone from Illinois.

According to Fitzgerald, who was determined to bring in a prosecutor from outside the state, Rove “just said we don’t want you going outside the state. We don’t want to be moving U.S. attorneys around.

Fitzgerald said he believes Rove was trying to influence the selection in reaction to pressure from Rep. Dennis Hastert, then speaker of the House, and allies of then-Gov. George Ryan, who knew Fitzgerald was seeking someone from outside Illinois to attack political corruption.

Fitzgerald said he announced his choice, Patrick Fitzgerald (no relation), a New Yorker, on May 13, a Mother’s Day Sunday, to pre-empt any opposition.

A year or so later, according to Peter Fitzgerald, Rove “said to me that Fitzgerald appointment got great headlines for you, but it ticked off the base.” Peter Fitzgerald said he believes the “base” was Illinois Republican insiders upset at the prosecutor’s assault on corruption.

Aides to Hastert say they never heard about any directives regarding the appointment.

“He [Sen. Fitzgerald] set up his own process, never talked to anyone about the process and then released the name before he told the president,” said Mike Stokke, who was Hastert’s deputy chief of staff at the time.

Oh, the irony.

Update: The WSJ says that the Washington State US`Attorney is a Democrat:

But it should have been enough to prompt Mr. McKay, a Democrat, to investigate, something he declined to do, apparently on grounds that he had better things to do.

Mckay is a Republican, isn’t he?

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