WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department announced Wednesday that an investigation into the firings of nine U.S. attorneys - including one from Arkansas - has concluded “no criminal charges are warranted” against the Bush administrations officials involved.
In a letter to Congress, the agency signaled the end of a special prosecutor’s investigation into the matter that cast a political cloud over the White House and Justice Department during the tenure of President George W. Bush and ultimately led to the resignation of several senior officials, including U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Administration officials initially claimed the dismissals were due to poor job performance, but evidence quickly surfaced that the moves had been politically motivated.
In Arkansas, Bud Cummins - who had been appointed by Bush - was forced out of his job as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansasin 2006.
Cummins was replaced by Tim Griffin, who was a former White House aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove. Griffin is now a Republican candidate for Congress in Arkansas.
Cummins and Griffin indicated Wednesday that they consider the case closed.
“We have all moved on from this,” Cummins said of himself and the other eight attorneyswho were dismissed. He keeps in touch with several of them, even forwarding an Internet link when the story broke Wednesday afternoon. “I don’t thinkanybody has been hanging on the outcome.”
Griffin agreed, saying the topic doesn’t come up frequently on the campaign trail. He is running against Democratic state Sen. Joyce Elliott for the 2nd Congressional District seat being vacated by Democratic Rep. Vic Snyder.
“It was done with me a long time ago,” Griffin said. “I was honored to serve, and I was honored to be asked. I think the story speaks for itself.”
The Justice Department action was announced in a letter sent Wednesday to Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, written by assistant attorney general Ronald Weich.
Special prosecutor Nora Dannehy was appointed in 2008 by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who followed Gonzales in the post, to examine not only whether any criminal offense occurred but also whether false statements were made to Congress.
The special prosecutor’s investigation focused specifically on the firing of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, where it found “evidence did not demonstrate that any prosecutable criminal offense was committed,” Weich wrote in the letter.
The investigation also determined that “the evidence did not warrant expanding the scope” of the criminal inquiry beyond the firing of Iglesias into the situations surrounding the other eight fired prosecutors, according to the letter.
In addition, the letter said the special prosecutor found “insufficient evidence” that any witnesses made “prosecutable false statements” to either Congress or internal Justice Department investigators.
However, the letter said the special prosecutor found that Gonzales and his top aides made statements after the firings that were “inaccurate and misleading.”
Gonzales responded to the report through his attorney, George J. Terwilliger III of White & Case LLP in Washington, according to Bloomberg News. The findings “vindicate” the position taken by Gonzales that he “did not engage in any wrongdoing in connection with the removalof U.S. attorneys,” Terwilliger said.
But Weich added in the letter that his boss, current Attorney General Eric Holder, “remains deeply dismayed” by the internal Justice Department report that raised concerns about how top officials had handled the firings. As a result, he wrote, Holder “has taken steps to ensure those mistakes will not be repeated.”
As the Bush White House replaced Cummins with Griffin, Arkansas’ senators - Democrats Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln - expressed concern about both the process and Griffin.
Ultimately, Griffin was appointed under provisions of the USAPATRIOT Act, designed for national emergencies, that at the time allowed the attorney general to make interim U.S. attorney appointments for an indefinite period without going through the normal Senate confirmation process. Previously, such appointments could last only 120 days.
That law subsequently was changed to limit such appointments. Griffin served in the U.S. attorney’s post six months before stepping down.
“This chapter in Arkansas has been closed for a longtime,” said Michael Teague, Pryor’s communications director. “It was closed the day Tim Griffin resigned as interim U.S. attorney and the law was changed to prevent future U.S. attorneys from being appointed indefinitely without going through the constitutional confirmation process.”
A September 2008 Justice Department report “concluded that Cummins was not removed for performance reasons, as initially suggested by the Department. ... Rather, the evidence shows that themain reason for Cummins’s removal, and the timing for his removal, was to provide a position for former White House employee Griffin.”
Cummins said the Justice Department should publicly retract all of the allegations against all of the dismissed U.S. attorneys.
“It’s obvious that performance was not behind” the dismissals, said Cummins, now senior adviser and general counsel at the Circumference Group in Little Rock. “But they’ve never said it.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/22/2010