Justice Dept. Would Have Kept 'Loyal' Prosecutors
The Justice Department advocated in early 2005 removing up to 20 percent of the nation's U.S. attorneys whom it considered to be "underperforming" but retaining prosecutors who were "loyal Bushies," according to e-mails released by Justice late yesterday.
The three e-mails also show that presidential adviser Karl Rove asked the White House counsel's office in early January 2005 whether it planned to proceed with a proposal to fire all 93 federal prosecutors. Officials said yesterday that Rove was opposed to that idea but wanted to know whether Justice planned to carry it out.
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None of the three new e-mails is from Rove himself. They are part of a string of e-mail correspondence between other officials that ended with Sampson, at the time counselor to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, offering the White House counsel's office four reasons the notion of removing all of the country's chief federal prosecutors was a bad idea.
Instead, Sampson wrote, "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., etc."
[link|http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/14/AR2007031400519.html|Washington Post story]