Yesterday, the report issued by DOJ's Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility has also implicated U.S. Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) in the firing of U.S. Attorney Todd Graves.

Today, CREW filed an ethics complaint against Senator Bond for his role in removing Todd Graves, the former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, from his position.

CREW filed its complaint following the September 29th release by the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General (“OIG”) and Office of Professional Responsibility (“OPR”) of their report, An Investigation into the Removal of Nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006. The report concludes that Sen. Bond’s office inappropriately sought Mr. Graves’s removal.

Former legal counsel for Sen. Bond, Jack Bartling, admitted to asking the White House Counsel’s office to seek Mr. Graves’s removal. Mr. Bartling also talked to Justice official Michael Elston about keeping Sen. Bond’s role a secret. Sen. Bond’s office became dissatisfied with Mr. Graves after he refused to intervene in a dispute between Sen. Bond’s office and that of Mr. Graves’s brother, Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO). Mr. Graves told investigators that a member of Sen. Bond’s staff had called him to insist that he use his influence to force Rep. Graves to fire his chief of staff. When Mr. Graves refused, the Bond staffer told him “they could no longer protect his job.”

The OIG and OPR found it “extremely troubling that the impetus for Graves’s removal as U.S. Attorney appears to have stemmed from U.S. Attorney Graves’s decision not to respond to a Bond staff member’s demand to get involved in personnel decisions in Representative Sam Graves’s congressional office.”

In its complaint, CREW alleges that by seeking Graves’s removal to punish him for refusing to intervene in a dispute between two congressional offices, Sen. Bond and his staff violated Senate rules prohibiting “improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate.”

CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said:

When Mr. Graves appropriately refused to tell his brother the congressman to fire one of his staff members, Sen. Bond petulantly demanded Mr. Graves be fired.  What adult acts like this? Senators are not spoiled children who can lash out on the playground – in this case the Department of Justice – when they don’t get their way. U.S. Attorneys are not toadies for their Senate sponsors, they are federal law enforcement officials. The Senate Ethics Committee should immediately investigate this matter and sanction Sen. Bond and his staff.

Yesterday,  Attorney General Michael Mukasey named Nora Dannehy as the special prosecutor, in the investigation of the firings of the U.S. Attorneys.  Ms. Dannehy is well-known in Connecticut.  She help convict the Governor.  The Hartford Courant provided some background:

Dannehy, a career prosecutor known for winning convictions against Gov. John G. Rowland and state Treasurer Paul Silvester, was named by Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey to investigate "unanswered" questions about the Bush administration's dismissal of the U.S. attorneys, which was widely assailed as being politically motivated.

Dannehy's appointment followed the release Monday of a report on an 18-month-long, internal Justice Department investigation that concluded top department officials "abdicated their responsibility" by failing to supervise subordinates who carried out the nine dismissals. What's more, the inquiry found "significant evidence" that partisan political factors played a role in some of the dismissals.

The report, by the Justice Department offices of Inspector General and Professional Responsibility, said that former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "bears primary responsibility" for what amounted to a series of botched removals. But it said that gaps remain in the investigation because of the refusal by key witnesses — among them former White House officials Karl Rove and Harriet Miers and U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. — to submit to interviews.

The authors of the report recommended that Mukasey name a special counsel to "ultimately determine whether the evidence demonstrates that any criminal offense was committed with regard to the removal of any U.S. Attorney, or with regard to the testimony of any witness related to the U.S. Attorney removals."

"Alberto Gonzalez is in trouble," said Connecticut defense attorney Hugh Keefe, who traded blows with Dannehy while representing Rowland co-chief of staff Peter N. Ellef Sr. in the corruption prosecution that led to the imprisonment of both Ellef and Rowland.

"She is analytical and she is thorough, and if she suspects wrongdoing she will not let it go."

Too little, too late sums up CREW's reaction to the appointment of a special prosecutor to finally investigate the firings of U.S. Attorneys.  We first made that call on March 13, 2007. It took a new Attorney General and a long overdue report, compiled without subpoena authority, to get there. 

Here's our statement from Melanie Sloan:

Six more months have been wasted in getting to the truth behind the firings of the U.S. Attorneys. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility were not able to come to any firm conclusions given their lack of subpoena authority. After the top law enforcement officials in the nation lied with apparent impunity during congressional hearings, how could anyone reasonably expect that these officials would see the light, speak freely, and tell the truth now? CREW first called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the firings back in March of 2007; it is gratifying to see that 18 months later, the Justice Department finally has recognized the matter merits criminal investigation. Why the delay? The only feasible explanation: to ensure the Bush administration is long over before anyone could ever be held responsible for one of the most shameful episodes in the administration’s history.

As noted below, today, Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the firings of nine U.S. Attorneys.  The report issued by DOJ's Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility has also implicated another member of Congress -- Senator Kit Bond (R-MO):

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsiblity and its Inspector General have released their long-awaited report on the firings of nine U.S. Attorneys -- including Todd Graves of the western district of Missouri.

The nearly 400-page report concludes Graves was one of the attorneys forced out -- and it blames Kit Bond's staff for the ouster.  

"Graves faced opposition from the staff of his home-state senator, Kit Bond, which we concluded likely led to his removal."

Major development in the on-going scandal surrounding the firings of the U.S. Attorneys:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey has appointed a special prosecutor to pursue possible criminal charges against Republicans involved in the controversial firings of U.S. attorneys.

The move is the top recommendation of a Justice Department investigation that harshly criticizes Bush administration officials, members of Congress and their aides.

Results of the investigation were made public Monday. The report singled out the removal of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias (ih-GLAY'-see-us) of New Mexico as the most troubling.

From investigative reporter Murray Waas:

The Justice Department investigation into the firings of nine U.S. attorneys has been extended to encompass allegations that senior White House officials played a role in providing false and misleading information to Congress, according to numerous sources involved in the inquiry.

The widened scope raises the possibility that investigators will pursue criminal charges against some administration officials, and recommend appointment of a special prosecutor if there is evidence of criminal misconduct.

The investigators have been specifically probing the role of White House officials in the drafting and approval of a Feb. 23, 2007 letter sent to Congress by the Justice Department denying that Karl Rove (President Bush's chief political adviser at the time) had anything to do with the firing of Bud Cummins, a U.S. Attorney from Arkansas. Cummins was fired in Dec. 2006 to make room for Tim Griffin, a protégé and former top aide of Rove's.

The February 23 letter stated, "The department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin," and that the Justice Department was "not aware of anyone lobbying, either inside or outside of the administration, for Mr. Griffin's appointment."

Federal investigators have obtained documents showing that Kyle Sampson, then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and Chris Oprison, then an associate White House counsel, drafted and approved the letter even though they had first-hand knowledge that the assertions were not true. The Justice Department later had to repudiate the Sampson-Oprison letter and sent a new one informing Congress that it could no longer stand by the earlier assertions.

Murray Waas broke this story today over at Huffington Post:

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed several former senior Justice Department attorneys for an investigation into the politicization of the Department's own Civil Rights Division, according to sources close to the investigation.

The extraordinary step by the Justice Department of subpoenaing attorneys once from within its own ranks was taken because several of them refused to voluntarily give interviews to the Department Inspector General, which has been conducting its own probe of the politicization of the Civil Rights Division, the same sources said.

The grand jury has been investigating allegations that a former senior Bush administration appointee in the Civil Rights Division, Bradley Schlozman, gave false or misleading testimony on a variety of topics to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sources close to the investigation say that the grand jury is also more broadly examining whether Schlozman and other Department officials violated civil service laws by screening Civil Rights attorneys for political affiliation while hiring them.

Investigators for the Inspector General have also asked whether Schlozman, while an interim U.S. attorney in Missouri, brought certain actions and even a voting fraud indictment for political ends, according to witnesses questioned by the investigators. But it is unclear whether the grand jury is going to hear testimony on that issue as well.

One person who has been subpoenaed before the grand jury, sources said, was Hans von Spakovsky, who as a former counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights was a top aide to Schlozman. An attempt to reach Spakovsky for comment for this story was unsuccessful.

Earlier this year, Spakovsky withdrew his name from nomination by President Bush to serve on the Federal Election Commission after repeatedly claiming a faulty memory or citing the attorney-client privilege to fend off questions from senators about allegedly using his position to restrict voting rights for minorities -- and that he hindered an investigation of Republican officeholders in Minnesota accused of discriminating against Native American voters.

The criminal investigation is apparently moving forward in the scandal surrounding the firings of the U.S. Attorneys.  The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) reports on a possible grand jury referral: 

Justice Department lawyers have filed a grand-jury referral stemming from the 2006 U.S. attorneys scandal, according to people familiar with the probe, a move indicating that the yearlong investigation may be entering a new phase. 

The grand-jury referral, the first time the probe has moved beyond the investigative phase, relates to allegations of political meddling in the Justice Department's civil-rights division, these people say. Specifically, it focuses on possible perjury by Bradley Schlozman, who served a year as interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo.

As reported last night, yesterday CREW, along with three other groups (Rutherford Institute, Judicial Watch and the Brennan Center) filed a friend of the court brief supporting the House Judiciary Committee’s efforts to compel former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and former White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten to comply with congressional subpoenas. Our amicus brief can be found here. Also, the Associated Press reported that a bi-partisan group of 20 former U.S. Attorneys also filed an amicus brief in this case.

The Judiciary Committee is investigating whether the White House and top Justice Department officials fired U.S. Attorneys because of their refusal to give in to partisan political considerations in their decisions on who to prosecute. The White House has taken the extreme and unprecedented position that Miers and Bolten are absolutely immune from congressional subpoenas, meaning that according to the White House they are free to ignore the subpoenas at the unilateral and unreviewable decision of the president. In the lawsuit, the White House has argued that the Court cannot and should not even hear the matter.

CREW joined with the other groups, who represent a broad spectrum of interests, in arguing that the checks and balances that are so fundamental to our democracy require that the court hear and resolve the case. The President’s actions have prevented Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibility to investigate very serious allegations of executive wrong-doing and to consider a possible legislative fix. Dismissing the case will only reward the White House for its intransigence and create a perverse incentive to never comply with a congressional request for information, secure in the knowledge that the courts will not intervene to protect Congress’ legitimate constitutional interests.

As a watchdog group that frequently relies on the courts to act as a check on unlawful executive branch conduct, CREW is especially interested in ensuring that courts remain available to resolve these kinds of disputes. As CREW explained in the brief, it has experienced a disturbing trend away from government openness that includes an effort by the White House to thwart groups like CREW from using the courts to resolve claims of executive misconduct.

CNN just reported that the House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed former White House aide Karl Rove in the ongoing investigation of the firing of U.S. Attorneys and the case of Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

More details as they unfold....