Truthout: DOJ Threatened Retaliation Against Fired Attorneys

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032107A.shtml

DOJ Threatened Retaliation Against Fired Attorneys
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Wednesday 21 March 2007

A Justice Department official threatened to take the "gloves off" and "retaliate" against the eight United States attorneys who were abruptly removed from their posts if they continued to speak publicly about the circumstances behind their dismissals, according to an email released late Monday sent to the fired prosecutors by one of their colleagues.

The email, a portion of which had been discussed during a Senate judiciary hearing two weeks ago, was written by H.E. "Bud" Cummins on February 20 and sent to US Attorneys Dan Bogden, John McKay, Carol Lam, David Iglesias and Paul Charlton immediately after Cummins had a somewhat heated exchange with Mike Elston, a top aide to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, about comments Cummins had made that were published in the Washington Post on February 18.

According to the Post story, Cummins had taken issue with statements made by Justice Department officials that the reasons behind his termination, and those of his colleagues, was the result of poor job performance. Cummins, the former US attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, was replaced by an aide to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.

"They're entitled to make these changes for any reason or no reason or even for an idiotic reason," Cummins told the Post. "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."

Two days later in an email to other fired prosecutors, Cummins wrote that he had spoken with Elston, and Elston told him that if Justice Department officials "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," Cummins wrote in the email. "And say something movie-like such as 'Are you threatening ME??? .'"


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