Unasked questions in the U.S. attorney firings
John McKay's tireless public campaign of outrage against the Justice Department and the White House might well be righteous. But there are questions that remain to be asked of, and anwered by, McKay himself.
Never have so many words been recorded that said so little that was new. I'm talking about the local media blitz this week by fired Western Washington U.S. Attorney John McKay, now a Seattle University law professor, who was joined there for a symposium by David Iglesias of New Mexico and Paul Charlton of Arizona. These are three of nine fired U.S. attorneys whom Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may or may not recall having heard of.
The Seattle Times got first crack at McKay and Iglesias, who agreed to an interview, the audio of which was posted with a story. Then KUOW-FM (on Weekday) and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (with a story and audio) got time with the pair.
To be sure, this controversy has laid bare inattention to what's important at the Justice Department in D.C. But the relentless effort by McKay and his colleagues to keep this on the public agenda opens the door to some interesting questions:
- Why is it OK for them to implicitly accuse the White House of orchestrating their dismissals as political payback without citing specific evidence? "It seems that given that no one takes credit at the Justice Department, that it can only be coming from one place, and that very strongly means the White House," McKay told the Times. That's pretty vague coming from a former prosecutor. Does he know something the rest of us don't? Let's hear it.
- And what about the 2004 gubernatorial election in Washington? It's time to pursue disclosure of the evidence McKay and the FBI reviewed, to put to rest once and for all accusations by some that electoral corruption went unpunished. McKay has said that lots of evidence was considered and he came to a decision that there wasn't enough to make a case. It sounds like a judgment call, which is his job to make. But if we are to believe that McKay's firing was punishment by the Republican party, his decision not to prosecute becomes relevant to the public: Was it the right decision? Let's see the evidence. This would probably involve a months- or years-long documents request under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
I hope to speak with McKay at the Mainstream conference next weekend. I'll ask him, among other things, to explain why hundreds of illegally counted ballots are not evidence of election crimes, but that telephone calls are evidence of obstruction of justice.Put that way, the question sounds pretty rhetorical. But it's an increasingly fair one to ask.
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Comments:
Posted Fri, May 11, 6:02 p.m. Inappropriate
US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States. I seem to recall that President Clinton shared his displeasure with some 93 of them (that the number?) by sacking the lot.
I've been a corporate headhunter for 25-years. In that time, I've known lots and lots of fired guys and gals who've dropped their resumes off to me through the transom. One bit of advice for all of them applies also to Mr. McKay: don't bad-mouth your ex-boss in front of your new boss because she or he won't like it; eventually she or he will be your next ex-boss.
McKay is displaying all the bad signs of a disgruntled former employee.
Thanks, Chuck Taylor, for asking some tough questions...
The Piper
McKay seems to have a terminal case of sour grapes.
Posted Fri, May 11, 6:56 p.m. Inappropriate
If you think John McKay hasn't been asked the right questions, why didn't you go over to Seattle U. and ask them? Or call in to KUOW? Or get the House Judiciary Committee to make accessible copies of Justice Department e-mails that it has uncovered?
David Brewster seems up to the job, breaking stuff on the Seattle School Board and being brilliantly spun on the viaduct by Sandeep Kashek at Ron Sims' office.
Why not more from his supporting cast? Get out from behind your computers and into the community.
Posted Fri, May 11, 7:10 p.m. Inappropriate
As for bad-mouthing your old boss, that is good advice and is something that I struggle with sometimes. That said, in the case of McKay he isn't Bush's employee, he's the country's employee--same as Bush. So in that sense it is his duty to speak out. Just as it is the duty of any government official if they believe that their superior is conducting themselves in a way that threatens the principles of our government.
Considering the nature of this entire situation I think that all of the Attnys are being very selective in what they quote publicly about this. While I think it is going to eventually come out, I don't think that the analogy that this post makes between McKay's public statements regarding this scandal and statements he would make as a prosecutor in a trial is accurate.
Look no further than the Libby trial and Fitzgerald for an example of how a competent prosecutor interacts with the media. He had loads of evidence and facts but made little to no public statements before or during the trial. It didn't mean that he didn't have those statements, it meant that he was reserving facts for use in the trial. In fact he probably has lots of evidence that more directly implicates Cheney however he has continued to keep it confidential.
I saw an article in the Seattle Times recently (possibly from the interview mentioned in this piece?) in which it was suggested that criminal charges in this scandal would be possible if not likely. If that is the case then the limited statements made by all of the fired attnys would make sense in that they would not want to threaten evidence or testimony that they might need to make in court by making public statements.
The fact that McKay's statements over time have been very purposeful is, to me, an indication that he's a smart guy who knows that where really counts is in testimony under oath either in front of congress or a federal judge and jury.
Until there is a trial, I wouldn't expect detail from anyone involved in this.
This whole thing stinks, so I don't see need to rush information out to stir the pot. Going through the system will yield much better results.
Posted Fri, May 11, 8:20 p.m. Inappropriate
hearstscribe can't spell: It's Kaushik, as in K-A-U-S-H-I-K. But I still love you, Joel.
Posted Fri, May 11, 8:35 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: Update that resume...: Salon.com has a nice essay about how Republicans just don't get it. It being the politicization of the Justice Department and the damage it has done to that department and the country. If this twisted Clinton did it too argument is all they can come up with they are through as a party.
Posted Fri, May 11, 8:37 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: hearstscribe can't spell: Hey Sandeep, I know who you are. As a columnist at The Stranger, you advised Gregoire to concede the Governor's race to Rossi. Sims was so impressed with your political wisdom that shortly after that he offered you a job. I hope you are doing well.
Posted Fri, May 11, 8:39 p.m. Inappropriate
Maybe I missed it.
Posted Sat, May 12, 7:25 a.m. Inappropriate
The evidence for all this is drawn from a lot of material, and I can't summarize it here. McClatchy has done a lot of good stories on this, and I seem to remember good stories in the Washington Post and the New York Times. A good aggregator website for this story is Talking Points Memo, which did some of the earliest work on it (sorry; I don't know how to make links appear here). They have links to both the relevant documents and the newspaper stories. Ignore their commentary if it is too liberal for you; they are honest in collecting and reviewing the evidence.
And as to the problems in the King County elections office, the previous commenter was right. Go do the FOIA request and then tell us what you find. McKay was looking for evidence of fraud, not just a poorly-run office, and the local FBI, who did the actual investigating, apparently agreed with him on this case.
Posted Sat, May 12, 7:46 a.m. Inappropriate
You've got to be kidding me. There's no question the white house ordered the firings.
Were they politically motivated? Ok, no one has found the email that says "fire these guys for political reasons", probably because it's among the months of emails that were mysteriously lost. But the timing and circumstances of the firings, the senate testimony from justice department employees, not to mention this administration's well established record of politically motivated retaliation (remember Valerie Plame?) would suggest McKay isn't just a wild eyed conspiracy theorist. Spend half an hour reading up on the subject, and it becomes obvious that the white house has more questions to answer than does McKay.
Speaking of wild eyed conspiracy theories, is there any evidence for a democrat-orchestrated conspiracy to keep Rossi out of office? Anything at all? If a tiny percentage of miscounted or invalid votes constitutes fraud, then every large scale election in the country is fraudulent.
Keep up the hard hitting investigative journalism. [/sarcasm]
Posted Sat, May 12, 7:57 a.m. Inappropriate
Is no one safe from your scorn and contempt? The guy simply corrects a misspelling of his name, and you pounce on him like Ron Sims on a tax dollar! What's next? Blame the misspelling on Bush/Cheney?
The Piper
Posted Sat, May 12, 10:57 a.m. Inappropriate
• Moose and Sean, there's lots and lots of evidence but so far not a shred of proof. I have no doubt it will all come out, and I'm pretty sure it will come out as you see it. What I am wondering is what McKay thinks he's constributing at this point. His behavior seems like, well, political payback. I understand his emotional reaction, but I'm not sure I understand why he's channeling it this way. It just seems over-the-top, that it undermines his moral authority.
• All, I've done many FOIA requests over the years and know from personal experience what's involved. The Freedom of Information Act might as well not exist, it's that useless to a journalist. For historians, possibly it's useful. For journalists, completely useless. That said, who said I wasn't going to put in my own FOIA request?
• One last thought: I knew this post would lead some to believe I was conservative, simply because I was questioning McKay's behavior. I wish people would stop trying to discern a motive from every piece of journalism they encounter. I dislike ideologues at both ends of the spectrum. They cancel each other out. This isn't about the political holy war. It's about integrity in government.
Posted Sat, May 12, 5:37 p.m. Inappropriate
I have shared Mr. Taylor's sceptism, even filing a recent grievance against McKay before the Washington State Bar. Although I do not rank as high as Sharkansky in the world of digital scribblers he has done much worthy of support.
My sceptism for Mr. McKay was piqued by the rather strange 'bi-partisan' support for him appearing in the mainstream media. His own defense, including the corroboration of his fellow SU collegians and other dismissed US Attorney's speaks more truthfully to the facts.
I think the conclusion that the upper echelons of the Bush Administration are power mad control freaks that will attempt to 'screw over' anyone who 'messes ith them' is one not hard to reach, regardless of what sort of evidence you specifically seek. Although I applaud Mr. Taylor's dedication to evidence such is only required in criminal or civil matters - of which termination of employment is not - even if you are the President, or Vice-President.
We do need to see the evidence arranged against Gregoire, but even if it was the case that there was not evidence sufficient to warrant criminal action that does not preclude, by any means, McKay's responsibility to act in the matter. Consulting an Attorney only when you face a criminal action would be a foolish strategy and as such his responsibility for holding up the integrity of our electoral system is critical.
Failing to insure that integrity may not fall under the rubric of white collar crime, but it definitely is something worth taking other approaches, as well as getting damn pissed about.
McKay has a potential future, that ball is now in his court. And hopefully he, as well as both political parties of this State, will stop being so naive about our involvement in the worst of DC - as well as being complacent accomplices in some rather complicit actions locally, including a grand strategy of electoral and financial manipulation of our government's purse.
-Doug
Posted Sun, May 13, 8:06 a.m. Inappropriate
Great, then go look at it. If you've never heard of Google, then Wikipedia might be a good place to start, with jumps to all of the sources. The Republicans laid out every piece of "evidence" they could find, loudly and publicly, for the benefit of the court and the media. No one, least of all the Republican party, is hiding anything from you.
So, was there any indication of fraud? Survey says -- X. The Republicans had nothing, and the court told them as much. McKay is under no obligation to go on a fishing expedition just because you don't like the outcome of an election. If he has any obligation, it's to ignore frivolous partisan cases such as this and focus on areas where there is reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed.
And Chuck, the difference between a moderate journalist and a conservative shill is that the journalist won't air propaganda from a well known conservative partisan hack without at least examining whether there is anything to it. There are already thousands of conservative shills in the media parroting the party line. In fact, there is a cable news network devoted entirely to them! I hope crosscut is aiming higher than that.
Posted Mon, May 14, 8:53 a.m. Inappropriate
People around here keep touting how special they are and what a special, unique, above-it-all place this is. Frankly, it sounds as though they're beginning to believe their own press clippings.
A genuinely sophisticated community has a sense of humor about itself, and this berg is singularly lacking in that regard. You all take yourselves so seriously! When anything outside the ken of your personal opinion or experience is voiced, the resulting eruption dwarfs Mt. St. Helens. Speaking as one who lived in Longview during that eruption, that's saying something indeed.
Poor Chuck Taylor. He asks a couple fairly obvious and innocuous questions about what's really motivating John McKay while acknowledging that others are asking similar questions (namely Stefan Sharkansky at Sound Politics), and you'd think he was denying an element of some holy political trinity!
Too many of the comments on this blog smack of political correctness and narrow-mindedness at its worst. The casting of accusational stones is done with a fury born of political blood lust that's...bizarre. Because Chuck Taylor doesn't subscribe to your POV or he dares make mention of some contrarian or Republican or conservative or whomever who doesn't march lock or goose stepped to the beat of your "progressive" drummer without first damning him and consigning him to the furthest of the outer reaches where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, he is himself so damned and so consigned.
How stupid is that?
Want real diversity? Open your minds to something other than your own POV. Consider that the frothier you appear around your lips, the goofier - and hickier, if there is such a word - you appear to others. It's OK - good, even - to take what you do seriously, but never, ever, ever take yourself seriously, because when you do you become exactly what you claim you hate the most: a narrow-minded bigot.
There's room at the table for a lot of POV's. Voice yours as you are called to do. But respect the right of the other fellow to voice his. And if you want Crosscut or the P-I or Soundpolitics or The National Review to parrot yours, then scrape up the coin and buy the damn thing! Otherwise, cut Chuck some slack and let him do his work.
The Piper
PS: How about that Jim McDermott? Talk about how many federal courts say he violated the law! Uff da!
Posted Mon, May 14, 12:56 p.m. Inappropriate
Chuck Taylor was exactly correct. Both issues -- McKay's termination and the 2004 election -- (which may or may not be related) are about integrity in government more than they are about partisanship.
It might be more comforting for some people to dismiss me as a partisan shill than to consider the facts that I present, but my only motivation has been to discover and report the truth about election administration.
Those who say that Judge Bridges ruled that there was no fraud in the election are not correct. He ruled (I paraphrase) that no evidence of fraud had been presented into testimony in the trial. But my blog post (http://www.soundpolitics.com/archives/008195.html) about "hundreds of illegally counted ballots" that Taylor linked to, is all about illegal votes that I discovered only AFTER the contest trial and were not known to the litigants and were not seen by Judge Bridges and were not considered in his ruling.
I don't know how many (if any) of these hundreds of illegally counted votes were the result of fraud. The most generous thing that anybody can say about them is that they were the result of negligence in the elections office that might have changed the outcome of the election, and that elections officials did not disclose them to the public or the litigants before the trial. (And it took me two years to get sufficient responses to my public records requests to compile all of the documentation)
The only public statements that I've heard McKay make about investigating the election relate to what he did about information that came out during the trial. What did McKay do to investigate the illegalities that were discovered after the trial? I haven't heard. I just want to know what he did to investigate them and how he formed his conclusion that there was no evidence to act on.
But even if we assume the most charitable explanation that none of the illegally counted ballots were the result of criminal activity, and were attributable to simple negligence by election workers. Do we really want elections to be decided by negligence in the elections office?
Shouldn't we want the elections office to disclose the mistakes they made and explain what they're doing to prevent similar mistakes from occuring?
Sadly, that hasn't been done either.
Posted Mon, May 14, 5:17 p.m. Inappropriate
Whaaa?
If he was fired as punishment by the Republican party for not pursuing "voter fraud" cases, then he has to prove he was correct in pursing the job?
Put another way - if he was fired illegally, he now has to prove that he was making the right decisions on his job?
You've got this all backwards, sir. If he was fired as punishment by the R's, then the question becomes this - why was the Republican party involved in the hiring and firing of U.S (not Republican Party) attorneys?
Let's think about the much-flogged line about how U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. I don't see anything in there about "the President and his party's henchmen". He was accountable to the president and to the DOJ, not to the Republican - or any - party.
If he was a smart and capable prosecutor, then he has to be given the space and faith to do his job. If he was fired for political reasons, the onus is not on him to prove his case in the court of public opinion. He doesn't have to prove anything about any of his cases. If he was fired for illegal reasons, then that's it - there's nothing more that has to be proven. Game over.
Posted Mon, May 14, 5:39 p.m. Inappropriate
RE: Good point, but completely wrong.: You have a point, but it's completely wrong. I'm not saying McKay has to prove he made the right decision. I'm saying the public has an interest in knowing if he did. It might be moot, but you never know what's in a document until you read it. I'm always interested in knowing the whole story.
Posted Tue, May 15, 7:56 a.m. Inappropriate
Is this infinitesmally small error rate an abberation? Is it higher than normal for an election this size? Lower? Any evidence these votes would have changed the outcome of the election. Any evidence of malicious intent?
I wouldn't expect the conservative shill to bother with these pesky questions, but I would expect a moderate journalist to do so.
Posted Tue, May 15, 8:27 a.m. Inappropriate
There used to be a commercial on TV for, I think, IBM. It had to do with the efficiency of their technology in the processing of checks, and the guy in the ad made the point that they process billions of individual transactions one at a time with their goal being zero defects, 100% accuracy. They wouldn't tolerate or be satisfied with anything less. And he said that's where they were at.
In the Rossi-Gregoire contest what the evidence showed even to the most casual or cyncical observer was an appalling lack of competence in King County. Indifference, sloppiness, negligence, arrogance, breathtaking incompetence, and more. At some point in time and at some level, it's not inconceivable that this type of behavior can, and in fact has historically, rise to the level of official or even criminal misconduct.
My United States Marine Corps son was one of many, many, many service men and women absolutely screwed out of their right to vote by the sloppy and reprehensible practices of King County Records and Elections. The attitude demonstrated towards our military personnel and their right to vote was disgraceful! Maybe it was intentional, though, since soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coasties tend to vote overwhelmingly conservative, and in King County, as well as in Sean's lexicon, conservative is a dirty word. Can't have dirty words voting, can we?
Sean, you may think there's an acceptable level of error, but I don't! Next time you fly, think of how many parts there are in an airplane and assume that your acceptable level of error standard applies. What part or parts would you like to see fail? Next time you see a doctor, will you be satisfied with a misdiagnosis or malpractice when it's explained away with an acceptable level of error argument? Get real!
Your specious rationalization of an arguably fatally flawed outcome that suits you coupled with your pejoratively snide digs at those who won't kowtow to your POV causes you to stand condemned out of your own mouth.
Remember...at some point in time, the acceptable level of error may not be in your favor. When that time comes, I hope you remember and stay true to your current cynicism by holding your tongue. You'd do us all a favor.
The Piper
Posted Tue, May 15, 9:23 a.m. Inappropriate
If you actually cared about the principle of election integrity, you'd be focused on the 2000 presidential election, which was stolen out of the hands of voters by a conservative leaning Supreme Court and a senseless electoral college system. But you're not, you're just upset that your candidate lost.
If you're going to single out King County, please provide some evidence that it's actually worse than any other county of comparable size. And how exactly was your son screwed out of his voting rights? Who, specifically, displayed the bad attitude are you referring to? I'd love to hear the details.
100% error free elections is a noble (if somewhat idealistic) goal. I wonder if, as a conservative, you'd be willing to vote for the tax increases needed to finance the necessary improvements? Ready to put your money where your mouth is, or do you expect this to magically happen for free?
Posted Tue, May 15, 11:20 a.m. Inappropriate
You betray the root of all your efforts: lingering bitterness over the 2000 election. Say what you will about it, I can't do a thing about Florida, but I can do something about Washington State.
The money is there to have a zero defect process; what is lacking is the will. The cliche of "necessary tax increase" is always tossed in to deflect any argument that some government function is a failure. I've got a better idea: instead of wasting money on some of the junk in the King County budget - and you'd better believe there's junk! - prioritize. Public safety and security and and an absolute public confidence in the tools of government should be the first and most absolute priorities of the public budgetary process, but they're not.
Initiative 25 is a great start. Establishing a non-partisan elected county director of elections will go a long way toward restoring public trust and accountability in an office and process that's considered today to be an absolute joke. No wonder County Executive Sims and much of downtown establishment opposes it.
My son's absentee ballot didn't reach him until AFTER the deadline for mailing. The indifference displayed by county election officials to not bend over backwards to understand the logistical need to get ballots in the mail in a timely fashion to reach those who are, because of the nature of their service to their country, hard to reach. News reports at the time were chock full of stories like this.
And I don't give a hoot about any other county's failure to get it right; this is the one in which I live and pay my taxes, and I have an absolute, unconditional, and total right to demand of public officials that they serve the people, not themselves and do it to perfection! I refuse to subscribe to a "defining deviancy down" theory of moral equivalency. Like your acceptable level of error, it's an example of situational truth that's frightening.
Think on it, Sean...The logical extension of your definition of what's acceptable or not is determined by the lousiest life has to offer. How pathetic is that? Rather than strive to do the best, as long as the worst exists, go in that direction. Thank you, no, that's one journey I'd rather not take.
As for you chiding me on my lack of the humor I so frequently urge upon others? The joke, my dear Sean, is in what you yourself write.
Franz Kafka, where are you now that we need you?
The Piper
Posted Wed, May 16, 11:42 a.m. Inappropriate
That is unfortunate and no doubt frustrating, but why are you scapegoating King County for the military's slow and inefficient postal system? The military screwed your son over, not King County. If you demand perfection from King County, then you should demand it from the military as well. There is no good reason why they can't get your son his mail in a timely fashion.
And while you are making your demands for perfection, don't forget the Supreme Court and national election process. And FEMA. And the Justice Department's hiring and firing practices.
Posted Wed, May 16, 1:43 p.m. Inappropriate
KC Records and Elections didn't mail the damn thing in time for it to get to him! Read http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/205686_robert29.html and http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110006543
Here's a huge difference between me and you: I want KC Records and Elections fixed because I don't want a repeat of the Rossi - Gregoire fiasco, while you are content with that scenario being replayed over and over because it validates real or imagined grievances you have over some past episode. It's not fair to either side to have to live with that degree of uncertainty and doubt.
You're still whining about 2000 and can't seem to move past that. Republicans in this state, on the other hand, while dissatisfied with Judge Bridges' decision choose to accept it, live with the results, and get on with their lives. Part of that getting on is working to ensure that all future votes are counted accurately and all the votes that are counted are cast by only legally qualified voters. You object to this because??????
And your red herrings are sophistry of the worst kind with absolutely zero relevance to both Chuck Taylor's original question ("John McKay, where's the beef?") and the rabbit hole of Washington State electoral processes down which we've travelled.
Your bobbing and weaving is neither clever nor persuasive. But it does give us all something hilarious to laugh at thus validating my thesis that humor in public discourse should be encouraged and cultivated. The problem, dear Sean, is that the joke seems to be perpetually on you!
Cheers!
The Piper
Posted Tue, May 22, 3:34 p.m. Inappropriate
So you cite an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal and a column that has three examples, only one of which has anything to do with King County? You appear as willing to grind away on imagined grievances as anyone you have accused.
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