In an email with the subject-line, "Question from Karl Rove," an assistant counsel at the White House wrote to Justice noting that Rove had "stopped by and asked how you plan to proceed," according to Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman. The email makes no mention of Rove expressing any opinion, Fratto said Thursday, but rather notes that Rove had asked, on Jan. 6, "What is the plan for attorneys, what do you guys plan to do?… Are you guys talking about all of them, or are you talking about doing something else?"
Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff at the Justice Department, responded to an email, including that information and forwarded to him by David Leitch, an assistant counsel at the White House, by discussing the ramifications of the dismissals.
"Judge and I discussed (this) briefly a couple weeks ago," Sampson replied, in an email obtained Thursday by the Tribune, with a reference to Gonzales, a former Texas judge. He then went on to discuss the legal and historical customs for how long U.S. Attorneys serve and when and how they are replaced.
"As an operational matter, we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current U.S. Attorneys—the underperforming ones," Sampson wrote in this email to the White House aide. "The vast majority of U.S. Attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc."
"This e-mail does not contradict anything we have said," Fratto said in describing the e-mail about Rove, which the White House has not publicly released. "Not only is there no characterization of what the judge thinks of it" in the e-mail exchange, he said, "there is no characterization of what Karl thinks of it."
And didn’t Bush say yesterday, "I’ve heard those allegations about political decision making — it’s just not true."? And didn’t we read today that Samson said, "As an operational matter, we would like to replace 15-20 percent of the current U.S. Attorneys—the underperforming ones. The vast majority of U.S. Attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc."?
I guess it comes down to what Rove meant by ‘it’s done’? and what Samson meant by ‘loyal Bushies’? I suppose we’ll hear Fratto or Snow explain that to us tomorrow. Frankly, I’d like to see the Congressional Investigation widened to include the "80-85 per cent" of "loyal Bushies." They’re the ones we really need to worry about…
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.