-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: March 8, 2007 12:20:22 PM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: If the Mafia Ran the Department of Justice ... (No "IF"
Anymore, Just WHY?)
DoJ Official: "I Am Shocked and Baffled"
By Paul Kiel - March 7, 2007, 12:47 PM
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002698.php
One of the more damning pieces of testimony yesterday came from Bud
Cummins, who received a call from a Justice Department official on
February 20th wtih a clear message: if the fired proscutors
continued speaking out, then the department would be forced to hit
back and dish dirt on them.
Now that official, Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy
Attorney General Paul McNulty, has sent a letter to Sen. Chuck
Schumer (D-NY) to give his side of the story (you can read his
letter here). In it, Elston claims that he's "shocked and baffled"
at Cummins' interpretation of the call: "I do not understand how
anything that I said to him in our last conversation in mid-
February could be construed as a threat of any kind."
Let's review what happened. In a February 19th article in The
Washington Post, Cummins was quoted on the firings:
"They're [the Justice Department] entitled to make these changes
for any reason or no reason or even for an idiotic reason,... But
if they are trying to suggest that people have inferior performance
to hide whatever their true agenda is, that is wrong. They should
retract those statements."
The next day, Cummins got a call from Elston. And very
unfortunately for the Justice Department, Cummins sent out an email
no more than an hour after the call to the other fired prosecutors
(you can see it here):
The essence of his message was that they feel like they are taking
unnecessary flak to avoid trashing each of us specificially or
further, but if they feel like any of us intend to continue to
offer quotes to the press, or organize behind the scenes
congressional pressure, then they would feel forced to somehow pull
their gloves off and offer public criticisms to defend their
actions more fully.... I was tempted to challenge him and say
something movie-like such as "are you threatening ME???", but
instead I kind of shrugged it off...
Cummins, a lifelong Republican, continues in the email to refer to
Elston's "threat of retaliation" and the "threatening undercurrent
in the call." So it was abundantly clear to him that he was being
threatened.
The most inflammatory part of the email is Cummins' description of
Elston's reaction to the idea of the fired prosecutors testifying
before Congress:
"He reacted quite a bit to the idea of anyone voluntarily
testifying and it seemed clear that they would see that as a major
escalation of the conflict meriting some kind of unspecified form
of retaliation."
It was based on this that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in his
questioning yesterday, drew an analogy between Elston's call and
obstruction of justice in a criminal investigation -- an analogy
which all four prosecutors agreed to.
But Elston, in his letter, denies that he's ever discouraged anyone
from testifying before Congress:
I respect the role of Congress in our constitutional system, and I
have never suggested to anyone that it would be appropriate to
withhold information or testimony from Congress.
He says he'd told Cumins that "the Department had no position on
whether he should testify, and that he should testify if he wanted
to testify or decline to testify if he did not want to testify."
That's a helluva misunderstanding.
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