We have been so focused on finding out the whole truth about the eight fired U.S. Attorneys that no one considered there could be more. It turns out that Western Missouri prosecutor Todd Graves was told to resign several months before the rest were forced out. He left quietly back in March of 2006. So why has he come out now and spoke up about the dismissal? It seems Graves has a few things in common with the others.
From The Washington Post:
The former prosecutor's disclosure, in an interview on the eve of a second appearance today by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales before lawmakers investigating the firings, means that the administration began moving to replace U.S. attorneys five months earlier than was previously known. It also means that at least nine prosecutors were asked to resign last year, a deviation from repeated suggestions by Gonzales and other senior Justice officials in congressional testimony and other public statements that the firings did not extend beyond the eight prosecutors already known to have been forced out.
(snip)
The characterization -- that Graves was being moved out simply to give someone else a turn -- is practically identical to the explanation that Bud Cummins, the former U.S. attorney in Little Rock, has said he was given last June, when he, too, was asked to leave. He was replaced by a former aide to President Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove. The seven other U.S. attorneys were dismissed on a single day in December.Graves said his conversation with Battle "made clear to me the fact I was getting a push."
"I felt like I was no longer welcome in the department," he said. "It wasn't like I was trying to hang on."
Well that was the main story about the others when we heard about this whole mess in the first place. Then the tale got more twisted as Gonzales lied with abandon and leaks started springing bits of truth. All eight initial attorneys had been investigating issues of voter fraud that could have been bad news for the Bush Administration. So was Graves onto the same thing?
The same month he was asked to step down, Graves's name was included in a Jan. 9, 2006, list assembled by Gonzales's then-chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, of seven U.S. attorneys the administration was considering forcing from their jobs. That April, Sampson sent another e-mail noting that two of the prosecutors on that list had already left. Three names, including Graves's, were redacted when Justice officials released the January list.
Graves said yesterday that he never knew he was on the list and was not given a specific reason he was asked to leave.
During the spring of 2005, an aide to Bond urged the White House to replace Graves, because the prosecutor's wife and brother-in-law recently had been given state patronage contracts to run private offices for driver's licenses and other motor vehicle services. A spokeswoman for Bond confirmed that interaction but said Justice officials later told the senator's staff that the contracts issue was not why the administration wanted him to leave.
Graves acknowledged that he had twice during the past few years clashed with Justice's civil rights division over cases, including a federal lawsuit involving Missouri's voter rolls that Graves said a Washington Justice official signed off on after he refused to do so. That official, Bradley J. Schlozman, was appointed as interim U.S. attorney to succeed Graves, remaining for a year until the Senate this spring confirmed John Wood for the job. Wood was a counselor to the deputy attorney general and is a son of Bond's first cousin, although the senator's spokeswoman, Shana Marchio, said Bond did not recommend him for the job.
So was it purely a political patronage thing or voter rolls...or maybe even both. Either way, Graves was kicked to the street while another attorney was picked for the job. Who is that new guy by the way? None other than Bradley Schlozman, the guy that rushed after A.C.O.R.N. activists right before the November election. Those Bushies sure do know how to pick the winners, don't they?
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