Thanks to its senior U.S. senator, Republican Christopher S. “Kit” Bond, Missouri earned last-minute inclusion in the national scandal over the Bush administration’s politically motivated firings of U.S. attorneys.
“The Purge,” as it was known when the story broke in 2006, was thought to have involved eight of the 93 chief federal prosecutors nationwide. But on Monday, when the Justice Department’s Inspector General and the department’s ethics office released their joint report, the name of former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves of Kansas City had been added to the list.
The report says that Mr. Bond’s staff made repeated calls to the White House in early 2005 seeking to have Mr. Graves ousted. It seems Mr. Bond was feuding with Mr. Graves’ brother, U.S. Rep. Sam Graves, R-Tarkio, MO.
In a statement to the Associated Press on Monday, Mr. Bond said he hadn’t known what his staff was up to and offered an apology “to the people of Missouri.”
Todd Graves was replaced in 2006 on an interim basis by Bradley Schlozman, a Justice Department lawyer who had played a key role in filling the department with what he described as “good Americans,” or, as another Justice aide put it, “loyal Bushies.” Mr. Schlozman was replaced by John Wood, Mr. Bond’s cousin.
The Justice Department report is a sorry story of partisan hacks at the White House and at the Justice Department during Alberto Gonzales’ tenure as attorney general. It describes their clumsy efforts to push out federal prosecutors to promote the political interests of prominent GOP operatives.
It also details widespread efforts to deflect and obstruct the investigation. Those findings led Mr. Gonzales’ successor, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, to appoint Nora Dannehy, a career federal prosecutor, to conduct a criminal investigation.
Perhaps the most egregious of the firings was that of former U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias of New Mexico, who was dumped in response to complaints by the state’s top GOP officials that he refused to pursue bogus political corruption charges against Democrats.
Todd Graves’ forced resignation didn’t garner the headlines that the Iglesias situation did. But the abuse of power by Mr. Bond’s staff described in the report made a mockery of the principle of federal prosecutorial independence.
The report reveals that in 2005, Mr. Bond’s legal counsel called the White House on several occasions seeking Todd Graves’ removal. The calls had nothing to do with Todd Graves’ performance as a prosecutor. They had everything to do with intramural political squabbling in the Missouri Republican Party.
There was, according to the report, some kind of “discord between the in-state staffs” of Mr. Bond and Sam Graves. “Bond’s staff . . . wanted Todd Graves to try to rein in his brother, but Todd Graves did not do so. . . . To allow members of Congress or their staff to obtain the removal of U.S. attorneys for political reasons,” the report concludes, “severely undermines the independence and non-partisan tradition of the Department of Justice.”
Mr. Bond declined to be interviewed by the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office in the course of its investigation. He told the office that he didn’t recall having any contact with the Bush administration about Todd Graves and knew nothing of value to the investigation.
Mr. Bond’s statement to the Associated Press on Monday said, “I had no knowledge of my staff’s action, did not approve it and would not have approved it. Missouri deserves better, and I expect better of my staff.”
Mr. Bond is right about this: Missouri deserves better, such as a thorough explanation of why his staffers felt it was appropriate to ask the White House to intervene in a home-state political dispute. Perhaps Ms. Dannehy’s criminal investigation will shed some light on that.