Leopold: DOJ Emails Illustrate Plan to Mislead Congress

Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his closest advisers have stated repeatedly over the past two months that the selective firings of eight United States attorneys last year were justified because President Bush has the authority to purge federal prosecutors at will, a fact that is not under dispute.

However, the common thread in the thousands of pages of documents released by the Department of Justice in conjunction with a Congressional probe into the US attorney dismissals is that top officials in the DOJ who worked behind the scenes believed that they were doing something improper in selectively dismissing the attorneys and acted with a clear intent to deceive lawmakers if any questions into reasons for the firings arose.

Instead of pointing to the president's broad discretion to fire the prosecutors, Justice officials conceived a plan that they would execute on a specific date and time, and then cooked up a story that they all agreed upon in the event that their actions were scrutinized. Simply put, some former US attorneys argue, the emails and other documents released last week demonstrate that prior to the day the firings took place, officials in the Justice Department appeared to be acting under a guilty state of mind.

The state of mind of officials involved in the firings is part of the reason the US attorney purge has turned into a full-blown political scandal and has led to Congressional hearings.

There "seems to be an awareness that the various officials involved in the process knew they were putting out misinformation in large measure; that is, this is evidence of an intent to deceive," said Michael E. Clark, a former US attorney for the Southern District of Texas. "It may not be criminally actionable, but arguably there could be a civil remedy available to those who were on the receiving end - such as for defamation of character. This episode has gained traction in my eyes for the same reason that spelled the fate of former President Nixon during Watergate. The deception is inexcusable, and particularly so when it wasn't necessary; instead, had Gonzales and others been more forthright, then this could have been a tempest in a teapot."

Other former federal prosecutors said the fact that Justice Department officials drafted a document titled
"Plan for Replacing Certain U.S. Attorneys" and then allegedly fabricated a set of talking points for the media and lawmakers in the form of employment evaluations showing that the eight US attorneys in question were performing poorly is a clear indicator that DOJ officials knew what they were doing was questionable at best.

On Tuesday, during a news conference in Chicago, Gonzales said he wanted to "reassure the American people that nothing improper happened here."

But it's the appearance of impropriety that has angered Congress and members of the legal community.

Indeed, some of the emails into the activities that predated the firings show that White House officials communicated with DOJ staffers about the attorney purge, using email accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee.

Using alternative email accounts also creates the appearance of impropriety, lawmakers charged Monday, because it allows White House officials to avoid the usual archival process and the automatic paper trail that is established when they use White House email servers to conduct business. Emails sent through the RNC server can be destroyed. More on the story.

Great job, Jason.. I am sure that there are more damaging emails that were sent through the RNC server that can bring down the Administration... This is certsinly a violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. What is the Presidential Records Act?

The Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978, 44 U.S.C. ß2201-2207, governs the official records of Presidents and Vice Presidents created or received after January 20, 1981. The PRA changed the legal ownership of the official records of the President from private to public, and established a new statutory structure under which Presidents must manage their records.