FLASHBACK: Clinton White House Fired All Prosecutors...

[dirty]

ATTORNEY GENERAL SEEKS RESIGNATIONS FROM PROSECUTORS

*Please Note: Archive articles do not include photos, charts or graphics. More information.
March 24, 1993, Wednesday
By DAVID JOHNSTON, (Special to The New York Times); National Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 1, Column 1, 1053 words
DISPLAYING ABSTRACT - Attorney General Janet Reno today demanded the prompt resignation of all United States Attorneys, leading the Federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia to suggest that the order could be tied to his long-running investigation of Representative Dan Rostenkowski, a crucial ally of President Clinton. Jay B. Stephens, the ...
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[dirty]

Feinstein Has Short Memory on Prosecutor Firings

Posted Jan 18th 2007 2:40PM by NixGuy
Filed under: President Bush, Dem Agenda, Investigations
US Attorneys, like much of the executive branch, serve at the pleasure of the president. They are not protected by civil service laws. However recently Dianne Feinstein and a quite a few left-leaning Democrats and bloggers have forgotten this, but that's not all they've forgotten.

This NYT Article explains the situation. Quite a few prosecutors have been fired. Their priorities are not the AG's priorities, so he fired them. Cue the indignation on the left, see here, here and this:

TPMmuckraker has been following the administration's mass firing of U.S. attorneys around the country. Seven, possibly eight, prosecutors have left office in the past five weeks, some being forced out by the administration all for unknown reasons. According to Senator Feinstein, the White House has informed her that they will be replacing as many as 10 attorneys with interim appointees.

Note that seven or eight equals "Mass Firings." Please. On that scale what's happening at GM and Ford must equal a holocaust.Andrew McCarthy at the National Review throws just a little bit of logic and rationality into this story being fanned by forced outrage.

One of President Clinton's very first official acts upon taking office in 1993 was to fire every United States attorney then serving - except one, Michael Chertoff, now Homeland Security secretary but then U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, who was kept on only because a powerful New Jersey Democrat, Sen. Bill Bradley, specifically requested his retention.

Were the attorneys Clinton fired guilty of misconduct or incompetence? No. As a class they were able (and, it goes without saying, well-connected). Did he shove them aside to thwart corruption investigations into his own party? No. It was just politics, plain and simple.

Patronage is the chief spoil of electoral war. For a dozen years, Republicans had been in control of the White House, and, therefore of the appointment of all U.S. attorneys. President Clinton, as was his right, wanted his party's own people in. So he got rid of the Republican appointees and replaced them with, predominantly, Democrat appointees (or Republicans and Independents who were acceptable to Democrats).

I will stipulate for the sake of argument that Bush may be firing these fine upstanding attorneys for purely political reasons.

But for me to take this story seriously, everyone pushing this, from Dianne Feinstein on down, must first state for the record that Janet Reno was wrong in 1993 when she fired every US Attorney.

Then, they may be permitted to criticize Gonzalez for firing seven or eight US Attorneys.

[doc mercer]

Nice try .... it was the beginning of his 1st term

Once again .... L-A-M-E effort!!

[doc mercer]

Clinton did, and just as many presidents do, particularly when party control changes.

Bush was proposing doing it in the MIDDLE of his presidency, which is utterly unprecedented.

As is removing the 8 he ultimately DID end up removing.

Timing is everything. Doing it at the start of your presidency: usual and customary. Doing it in the middle when performance was not an issue, unprecedented.

[doc mercer]

http://www.mahablog.com/2007/01/18/u...lacing-stupid/

Likewise, in 2001 the Bush Administration replaced Democratic prosecutors with Republican prosecutors. This was expected


http://www.usdoj.gov/dag/testimony/2...y_070206_1.htm

Written Statement of Deputy Attorney General Paul J. Mcnulty to the Senate
Judiciary Committee for Hearing on Appointments and Resignations of U.S. Attorneys
Washington, DC
February 6, 2007

...When a presidential election results in a change of administration, every U.S. Attorney leaves and the new President nominates a successor for confirmation by the Senate...

[dirty]

Did The Clinton Administration Fire all the Prosecutors or not

[doc mercer]

Can you read???

Its common practice AT THE BEGGINING OF A NEW ADMINISTRATION


READ AGAIN .... Clinton did, and just as many presidents do, particularly when party control changes.

Bush was proposing doing it in the MIDDLE of his presidency, which is utterly unprecedented.


NO COMPARISON!!! AND YOU SEEM SMART ENOUGH TO GRASP THAT ..

[dirty]

Firing Prosecutors is firing Prosecutors no matter when it is Doc.... What if Bush Kept on some at the beginning instead of replacing them then decided to get rid of them... What if he made bad decisions.... should he not be able to replace them as he sees fit as President... It does not matter if Me, you, or anyone else agrees with it... That is his perogative....

[doc mercer]

Bullshit ...

for once ACT SMART .... Gonzales lied and Rove is tied into this shit so save the bullshit for Nicolas cause it dont fly with me

What BUSHCO did was UNPRECEDENTED so live with those facts are your
heroes go down in flames!!!

“The White House and the Attorney General have dodged Congress’s questions and ducked accountability as if they still were dealing with a rubberstamp Congress. They are discovering that those days are gone.

“I am outraged that the Attorney General was less than forthcoming with the Senate while under oath before the Judiciary Committee. It is deeply disturbing that this plan appears to have originated from high-ranking officials at the White House and executed in secret with a complicit Department of Justice.

“This is not how justice is served, nor is it how our system of checks and balances is designed to work. It is an abuse of power committed in secret to steer certain outcomes in our justice system, and then to dust over the tracks. The President of the United States and the Attorney General are responsible for setting the moral standard for this Administration. Apparently this matter does not bother them but it does bother me, and we will summon whoever we need in our hearings to get to the bottom of this.”

partyparty

[dirty]

hey doc... When you get fired do you lose your Job


does it matter when it happens...early in the AM, at the end of a Long day, on a Holiday, Middle of the night, etc... I don't think so... You are still without a Job

[The Devil]

I STILL THINK DOC SHOULD MOVE FROM AUSTIN TO WACO......

I LIKE THE WACO WACKO NAME FOR HIM........

[doc mercer]

Hello ..... Dirty ... what part of the puzzle is stumping you??

Clinton did, and just as many presidents do, particularly when party control changes.

Bush was proposing doing it in the MIDDLE of his presidency, which is utterly unprecedented ...

“The White House and the Attorney General have dodged Congress’s questions and ducked accountability as if they still were dealing with a rubberstamp Congress. They are discovering that those days are gone.

“I am outraged that the Attorney General was less than forthcoming with the Senate while under oath before the Judiciary Committee. It is deeply disturbing that this plan appears to have originated from high-ranking officials at the White House and executed in secret with a complicit Department of Justice.

“This is not how justice is served, nor is it how our system of checks and balances is designed to work. It is an abuse of power committed in secret to steer certain outcomes in our justice system, and then to dust over the tracks. The President of the United States and the Attorney General are responsible for setting the moral standard for this Administration. Apparently this matter does not bother them but it does bother me, and we will summon whoever we need in our hearings to get to the bottom of this.”

[doc mercer]

Gonzales Chief Of Staff Rebuts Rove Claim That Clinton Purged Prosecutors Too

At a speech last week in Little Rock, Karl Rove described the Bush administration’s purge of federal prosecutors as “normal and ordinary,” claiming that Clinton did the same thing. “Clinton, when he came in, replaced all 93 U.S. attorneys,” Rove said. “When we came in, we ultimately replace most all 93 U.S. attorneys — there are some still left from the Clinton era in place. … What happened in this instance, was there were seven done all at once, and people wanted to play politics with it.” Watch it:

But in an e-mail to Harriet Miers on Jan. 9, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s chief of staff Kyle Sampson (who resigned yesterday) admitted that the Clinton administration never purged its U.S. attorneys in the middle of their terms, explicitly stating, “In recent memory, during the Reagan and Clinton Administrations, Presidents Reagan and Clinton did not seek to remove and replace U.S. Attorneys to serve indefinitely under the holdover provision”:

Former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta previously told ThinkProgress that Rove’s claims that the Clinton administration also purged attorneys is “pure fiction.” He added, “Replacing most U.S. attorneys when a new administration comes in — as we did in 1993 and the Bush administration did in 2001 — is not unusual. But the Clinton administration never fired federal prosecutors as pure political retribution.”
(The Gavel has more.)

[dirty]

Doc... who cares when they were fired...Fired is fired.. who cares if it is Unprecedented... Seems to me you and the media are making this a Huge deal... bottom line in this world is .. if you work for someone else you can be terminated at any time...


THAT IS THE FACTS... Not some left wing sour grapes witch hunt

[doc mercer]

The Media???

Nice try since even REPUBLICANS are after this lowlife