Barry, meet Scooter

. . . and I don’t mean Rizzuto.

Ex-San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds, Major League Baseball’s record-holder for career and single-season homeruns, was indicted Thursday on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to federal prosecutors investigating steroid use by professional athletes linked to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO).

Within hours of the indictment’s unsealing, President George W. Bush—who had earlier this summer congratulated Bonds on surpassing Hank Aaron as baseball’s all-time homerun king—rushed to jump on the Barry-be-bad bandwagon.

In Washington, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: "The president is very disappointed to hear this. As this case is now in the criminal justice system, we will refrain from any further specific comments about it. But clearly this is a sad day for baseball."

Bush, who often likes to brag about having run the Texas Rangers (even though he was only a 5% owner), neglected to mention that during the time of his involvement with the Rangers, steroid use was understood to be rampant in baseball—a dirty little secret kept on the down-low by owners and players, alike, because all concerned liked what the juiced numbers were doing for the game’s bottom line.

But that’s not the height of the hypocrisy in the Bonds case—not anymore.

The President rushed to condemn Bonds for allegations that bare a remarkable resemblance to the charges on which Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff Scooter Libby was convicted earlier this year (for the record, that would be four counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice). Libby’s conviction carried mandatory jail time—as would the charges against Bonds, should they be proven at trial. But Lewis I. Libby never went to prison—George Bush pardoned Scooter soon after his conviction. Can Barry Lamar Bonds expect equal leniency from the man who was in this case, as he was in Libby’s, at least peripherally involved?


A sidebar, Your Honor

Bush’s involvement with Major League Baseball isn’t the only thread that ties the President to the BALCO investigation and the Bonds indictment. On the same day that the charges were revealed, Bush named the man who will prosecute Barry Bonds should the case go to trial.

A bit of background: The BALCO investigation was begun back in 2003 by then US Attorney Kevin Ryan—a George W. Bush appointee. But Ryan stepped down early this year, forced out, as were several other US attorneys, by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales because of a perceived lack of loyalty to the Bush Administration.

The turnover at the Northern California prosecutor’s office disrupted the ongoing BALCO investigation, likely causing a delay in the handing up of indictments. For the last eight months, the Bonds case was handled by interim US Attorney Scott Schools, a veteran DoJ lawyer.

With the confirmation and swearing in of new Attorney General Michael Mukasey, President Bush set about filling the vacancies created by the previous AG’s White House-directed purge. Joseph Russoniello, who served as US Attorney for ten years in the same district under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, has been nominated by his former boss’s son to take over the office now tasked with prosecuting Bonds.

And, one more thing, if this case doesn’t seem muddied enough by the behavior of the President and his appointees, defense attorney Mike Rains, representing Bonds in this matter, is accusing the feds of “unethical misconduct,” stating:

Every American should worry about a Justice Department that doesn't know if waterboarding is torture and can't tell the difference between prosecution on the one hand and persecution on the other.

I’m not ready to grant him that Bonds is simply being persecuted here, but as for his other observation, yeah, it—like this entire tangled web—has to get you thinking. . . .


UPDATE:

Questions about the timing of the Bonds indictment and its relationship to recent DoJ turmoil are asked in Saturday’s New York Times:

Why now? A defense lawyer for Barry Bonds and two outside legal experts raised questions yesterday about the timing of the perjury indictment against Bonds, saying they did not understand why it came this week and not months or even years ago.

But the United States attorney’s office in San Francisco declined to answer questions about the case against Bonds. . . .

The 10-page indictment issued by a grand jury Thursday consisted mostly of quotations from Bonds’s 2003 grand jury testimony, in which he repeatedly denied taking steroids or human growth hormone.

A government official involved with the case said the Department of Justice in Washington did not sign off on the decision to indict Bonds, which is not unusual. The official, who talked on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, who was officially sworn in Nov. 9, only learned of the indictment after Scott Schools, the acting United States attorney in the Northern District of California, called the office an hour before the indictment was announced.

The lead defense lawyer for Bonds, Michael L. Rains, said the indictment did not appear to contain much new information. “Nothing has changed in four years,” Rains said. . . .

Two former federal prosecutors, Tony West and Walt Brown, speculated that Schools might have wanted to issue the indictment before he was replaced by someone unfamiliar with the case.

Less than four hours after the indictment was announced Thursday, the White House nominated Joseph Russoniello to replace Schools, a career prosecutor who has served as interim head of the office since Kevin Ryan was fired in January.

The White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said the timing of the announcement was “completely coincidental.” . . .

West, a defense attorney in San Francisco and a former federal prosecutor there, said, “It’s a logical way to think about it, that you don’t have to get another U.S. attorney up to speed on it.” West said he was otherwise perplexed why Bonds would have been indicted Thursday on evidence the government seemed to have collected months ago.

Assistant United States attorneys in the office pushed to indict Bonds in the summer of 2006, but Ryan wanted to get testimony from Greg Anderson, Bonds’s trainer.

Anderson was jailed for contempt for refusing to testify for the last year, and he has been steadfast in his refusal to appear before the grand jury — another reason the government may have decided not to wait any longer, West said.

Anderson was released from jail shortly after the indictment against Bonds was announced. . . .

Brown, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and now a defense lawyer in San Francisco, also said the coming change in United States attorneys might have been a factor. “You can’t help but notice the timing,” he said.

But Brown said the prosecutors might have also waited to charge Bonds until after the baseball season to avoid complaints that they had interfered with Bonds’s pursuit of Hank Aaron’s home run record.

So, either the indictment was rushed because the White House was about to replace the lead attorney (who was himself a replacement after the USA-gate purge), or the indictment was delayed so as not to interfere with the baseball season and Bonds’s pursuit of Aaron’s record—is that what counts as jurisprudence and due process these days?


(cross-posted to The Seminal and Daily Kos)

what she said. . . Moore or less

I suspect that Kelly Anne Moore and I wouldn’t see exactly eye-to-eye on every issue. . . I mean, I don’t really know, I don’t know her, but. . . Ms. Moore served as chief of the Violent Crimes and Terrorism Section in the Brooklyn US attorney’s office from 2002 to 2006, and that term of service has me wondering if she came in with Bush appointee Roslyn Mauskopf, the USA for that Brooklyn office. Mauskopf was a protégé of former New York Governor George Pataki and a favorite of former New York Senator Al D’Amato who was viewed as unqualified for her post when her nomination was put forward back in 2002. Her current case against the “JFK bomb plot” “suspects” does nothing to convince me otherwise. Mauskopf is one of those US attorneys that Paul Krugman warned us about a while back—you know, one of the ones that weren’t fired by AG AG and his band of partisan White House brothers.

But I digress. . . .

does he serve those five-year sentences consecutively or concurrently?

As I previously observed, when President Bush forbade Harriett Miers from testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he likely committed a felony. Don’t remember? Well, here’s a refresher:

18 U.S.C. Sec. 1505 : ... Whoever corruptly ... influences, obstructs, or impedes ... the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress ... [s]hall be fined under this title, [or] imprisoned not more than 5 years ... or both.

18 U.S.C. Sec. 1515(b): As used in section 1505, the term "corruptly" means acting with an improper purpose, personally or by influencing another, including ... withholding, [or] concealing ... information.

OK, with that in mind, read this:

US President George W Bush has ordered close adviser Karl Rove not to testify before a Senate hearing on the sacking of eight federal prosecutors.

Or, if you prefer, this:

Citing executive privilege, President George W. Bush on Wednesday rejected a subpoena for his close adviser Karl Rove to appear before to the Senate Judiciary Committee in a probe over fired federal prosecutors.

Gosh, that sure sounds like the Prez has again violated 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1505. That would be twice, now. So, you tell me, who should be held in contempt? Tell me whom a federal prosecutor should really investigate.

OK, you can tell me, but I’ll admit I want to hear it from a Senator or a major establishment media outlet.

you don’t take the punching bag out of the gym

Mike Lukovich
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Many analysts and bloggers are all hopped up this week about the parade of rats leaving the perceived-as-sinking ship, SS Alberto Gonzales. Representative Adam Putnam, Chair of the House Republican Caucus, said the attorney general’s loss of credibility “diminishes the justice department.” Fox “News” anchor Chris Wallace announced on Sunday that no one would come on his show to defend AG AG. Senator Arlen “Mumbles” Specter has apparently given the White House a deadline of high noon today to clean up the barf that the attorney general left all over a Senate hearing room last week. (If they refuse? Senator Mumbles will no doubt threaten to be very displeased at some point in the future, after additional deliberation, but let’s not be too hasty.) Even a sanctimonious shill like Senator Orrin Hatch slipped up on Sunday and admitted that Fredo has a credibility problem.

But if we have learned nothing this year, we have learned that reports of Fat Albert’s imminent demise are about as valuable as Dick “Death Throes” Cheney’s assessments of the Iraqi insurgency.

Yes, in an average time, with an average presidency, dealing with an average number of failures, scandals, and misdeeds, a high-ranking figurehead as fucked up as Fredo would be considered a drag on the administration. But these are not average times, and for a well below average president with a well above average number of failures and scandals, his lil’ friend, Alberto Gonzales, is the best thing that could happen.

Instead of focusing on a president’s blatant violations of the Constitution, instead of discussing the administration’s massive domestic spying program—warrantless eavesdropping, wholesale data mining, unsupervised surveillance of US citizens—we are debating whether the country’s chief law enforcement officer perjured himself, or just almost perjured himself.

Instead of screaming from the highest hills that the purge of US attorneys was, at its roots, part of a grand plan by the White House to corrupt the democratic process and steal elections, we instead wonder about how much various Gonzales underlings knew, and who they talked to, and whether the attorney general was directly involved, and who serves at the pleasure of the president, and whether we should hold various officials in contempt of Congress or just threaten to do so.

While Bush and Cheney continue to fail the American people, line the pockets of their friends, and systematically dismantle the Constitution, various members of Congress are threatening to call for a special prosecutor—to investigate Gonzales!

How about, instead of us all doing the Gonzo shuffle, we get a special prosecutor to look into some of the corrupt actions of the Attorney General’s bosses? From sleazy energy deals, to lying us into the Iraq war, to the money gone missing during the reconstruction of Iraq, to the no-bid contracts for cronies, to the failures before and after hurricane Katrina, to the domestic spying, to the politicization of public agencies, to the CIA leak case, to the secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, and torture, to the US attorneys scandal, and so many more, the number of dodgy, disingenuous, dishonest, and downright dastardly dealings that merit an investigation could keep attorneys and prosecutors busy for the next six or seven of the vice president’s defibrillator batteries.

While there is no doubt in my mind that Abu Gonzales deserves to be, no, needs to be impeached, I am no longer content to fiddle with Fredo while the Constitution burns. If our Representatives and Senators can walk and chew gum at the same time, if they can investigate and impeach Gonzales while going full bore after the real kingpins of the crime syndicate known as the Bush/Cheney Administration, then I wish them Godspeed. But, if we continue as we have this last week, and so many weeks this year, then my considered opinion at this point is: skip it.

Of course, if there suddenly were no Alberto Gonzales to kick around anymore, then Congress, the establishment and non-establishment media, and, indeed, the rest of America, would have to turn their attentions elsewhere. . . perhaps somewhere just up the org chart.

As Orrin Hatch repeated many times this weekend, “Gonzales is being used a punching bag by Democrats and, frankly, some Republicans.” Which is why you won’t be seeing anyone in White House accepting the Alberto Gonzales’ “resignation” anytime soon.

(cross-posted to capitoilette and Daily Kos)

I see a conundrum. . .

And I think Bush’s (or is it Cheney’s?) lawyers see it too. . . .

failing the smell test

Late on Thursday, the White House released this terse statement:

On June 14, 2007, the President signed into law:

S. 214, the “Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act of 2007.”

Sounds good, right? Bush actually signed a bill passed by the Democratic Congress written to undue the provision at the heart of the US attorney scandal—what could be wrong with that?

Well, actually, plenty. In fact, it stinks. . . .

as suspected. . .

The case against the suspects is suspect:

[T]he criminal complaint that details the plot describes an effort that was alternately ambitious and clumsy, with the men at turns declaring themselves eager to sacrifice their lives in the name of Allah and worrying about getting arrested or deported for buying weapons or possessing a map of a military base.

And lookie here: The US Attorney that is bringing this case against the Fort Dix Six (it does have such a nice ring) is none other than Chris Christie, the former Bush “pioneer” who issued a string of squirrelly subpoenas last year against Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ). In what is now an all too familiar story, Christie used his position to attempt to exert influence on an election. Christie’s investigation seemed at the time to dovetail very conveniently with the themes raised by the campaign of Republican challenger Tom Kean, Jr. With Kean’s loss last November, the always-silly investigation of Menendez seems to have taken a backseat to the GWOT ™.

I would also like to point out something else: Assuming there is something to this “terror plot” (a big assumption, I know), let us all take note of how this “plot” was uncovered.

The authorities first caught up with the men in January 2006, when personnel at a video store alerted the authorities after the suspects requested that he transfer onto a DVD a videotape of the group shouting about jihad as they fired assault weapons at a range in the Pocono Mountains.

Got that? A video store employee dropped a dime on these guys. That was followed up with good, old-fashioned human surveillance and the recruiting of an informant. There were no high-tech, extralegal, NSA electronic intercepts, no FISA warrants, no National Security Letters—there were absolutely none of the newfangled constitution trampling tools or Patriot Act hooey that the Bush Administration claims it absolutely must have to win this new “war.” None of that was needed here. . . it has yet to be shown how any of it is needed anywhere.

Of course, all of that secret surveillance could come in handy when doing opposition research for the next election cycle. . . and we’ve got about seven-dozen United States Attorneys in position to run with the “evidence.”

going, going. . . Gonzo!

Dahlia Lithwick of Slate thinks that AG Alberto Gonzales actually, sorta, kinda, did a bang-up job, from the administration’s point of view, when he stammered and fumphered through a day’s worth of evasion testimony on Thursday. Her rationale is that by refusing to answer practically anything asked of him, by behaving with a sort of churlish arrogance, he was confirming the over-arching view of the Bush White House, often given the overly legitimating name of “the theory of the unitary executive,” but more appropriately summed up by the quote, "l’état, c’est moi."

I, of course, think Abu-G looked like an idiot—which is why I both agree and disagree with Lithwick. Yes, from the standpoint of the loyal Bushies—as we now know they are called (believe it or not, to them, that’s a compliment)—Gonzo did sort of, kind of hit a home run. . . but he hit it by taking one for the team.

By appearing on Capitol Hill to be every inch the un-prepared, in-over-his-head hack that he might in “real life” actually be, the Attorney General has allowed everyone—leading Republicans included—to chalk up the whole US attorney purge scandal as a story about incompetence. . . shall we say, unitary incompetence.

Now, at least as far as this story gets told at this time, Gonzales must resign because he is a bad manager or an ineffective bureaucrat—or maybe even because he is a bit of a jerk—but few of his newest detractors are even intimating that maybe, just maybe, Gonzales was doing his job (politicize the US attorneys to stop corruption probes and manipulate elections) as instructed by his bosses in the executive branch.

That would be Rove. That would be Cheney. And yes, that would be the singular, solitary, unitary President George W. Bush.

we cut out the middleman

From TPM:

Out of all the issues raised in today's Albuquerque Journal story on the Iglesias firing and any potential sourcing questions, the central fact asserted is that after Sen. Domenici's pressure call to Iglesias and before Iglesias's name appeared on the firing list, Sen. Domenici had a conversation about firing Iglesias with President Bush himself.

The ABQ Journal article has it all (minus a named source on the point and a WH denial of the charge), but the gist is so:

Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) pressured US attorney David Iglesias to bring a politically charged and baseless voter “fraud” prosecution in an attempt to influence close November 2006 congressional elections. Iglesias refused.

Sometime just after the November elections, Domenici calls Gonzales, Rove, and, most importantly, President George Bush to complain about Iglesias’s recalcitrance.

David Iglesias does not show up on the (now public) list of US attorneys to be fired that was drawn up by Justice in October of 2006. Iglesias is one of the eight attorneys fired on December 7, 2006.

By law, only the President of the United States has the authority to fire a US attorney.

Is everybody with me here? President Bush made sure that Iglesias was dismissed because Sen. Domenici complained that Iglesias didn’t do enough to tamper with an election.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will be on the hot seat tomorrow when he goes to Capitol Hill to testify—and he should be properly filleted (and, soon after, removed)—but AG AG is just the middleman. In the end, it is the White House, President Bush and Karl Rove, that made these bold moves in attempt to politicize the attorneys and corrupt the electoral process.

As they say, developing. . . .