Attorney Firings Get Just Four Pages in Rove Memoir
The U.S. Attorney firings controversy didn’t get much play in Courage and Consequences, former White House adviser Karl Rove’s 520-page memoir released today.
Main Justice said four pages of the book were devoted to the scandal. It reports that Rove said the White House had a minor role in the decisions to fire nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.
“Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and top aides removed the attorneys after a two-year review of all U.S. Attorneys that began after the 2004 election,” Rove wrote. “They made the decision because the attorneys were not performing well or were going to leave anyway, not because they were disloyal to the Republican party. No one at the White House compiled a list of U.S. attorneys to be removed or ordered the Justice Department to add a name to the list.”
Rove says in his book that he forwarded complaints about New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to the Justice Department (he also said as much to the New York Times last year) and defends his decision to do so, but he doesn’t say who complained to him about Iglesias.
Iglesias declined to file an indictment against several state Democrats accused of involvement in a kickback scheme until after the November 2006 election.
“I could understand not issuing a politically charged indictment a few days before the election,” Rove wrote of Iglesias. “The timing of Judge Walsh’s indictment of former Reagan defense secretary Caspar Weinberger just days before the 1992 presidential election was egregious. But sitting on an indictment for nine to twelve months, allegedly because of political considerations, seemed inappropriate.”
Main Justice notes that Rove didn’t mention his interview with Connecticut U.S. Attorney Nora Dannehy about the firings. But Rove wrote that he thought U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, the chief interrogator during his closed session testimony on the firings in July 2009, was unprepared.
“The committee staff drew up questions, many of them duplicative, and Schiff appeared to be seeing them for the first time when he sat down,” Rove wrote. “There were long pauses as he silently read the questions before repeating them to me. At times, the questioning veered close to lunacy.”
