Another wrinkle in the U.S. attorney scandal

Like most scandals, "Attorneygate" -- in addition to the main story of political firings of eight U.S. attorneys -- is unearthing countless smaller misdeeds. Case in point: President Bush's bizarre appointment of J. Timothy Griffin in the Eastern District of Arkansas last December.

Arkansas officials were furious when Bush bended the rules to install Griffin as the new U.S. attorney, and the Arkansas Times explains why: The outrage stems from the way Griffin was appointed. Instead of following the normal process, which would involve a presidential nomination and confirmation by the U.S. Senate, the Bush administration utilized a provision in the 2005 reauthorization of the Patriot Act that allows the attorney general to appoint an “interim U.S. attorney” without Senate confirmation. [...]

Interim appointments are usually made to fill vacancies, but Griffin was named to the U.S. attorney post on Dec. 15, while it was still occupied by Bud Cummins.

Cummins resigned on Dec. 20. [...] U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln said, “Clearly, the president and his administration are aware of the difficulty it would take to get Tim Griffin confirmed through the normal process, and therefore chose to circumvent it in order to name him as interim U.S. attorney.

Why did Bush go out of his way to give Griffin the job? Critics speculate it was a reward for years of loyal service to the Republican Party. Here's his resume, as reported by the Arkansas Times:

That political work includes serving from 1995-96 as an associate independent counsel investigating Henry Cisneros, who was President Bill Clinton's secretary of housing and urban development; senior investigative counsel to the Republican-controlled House Government Reform Committee's 1997-99 inquiry into foreign contributions to the Democratic National Committee; deputy research director for the Republican National Committee from 1999-2000; legal adviser to the Bush/Cheney recount team in Florida following the 2000 election; special assistant to Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff from 2001-02; and research director and deputy communications director for the Republican National Committee from 2002-05, after which he joined the White House political affairs office.

Reporter Greg Palast today recalls a BBC story he did in 2004 which revealed an unsavory aspect of Griffin's political history:

Griffin, according to BBC Television, was the hidden hand behind a scheme to wipe out the voting rights of 70,000 citizens prior to the 2004 election.

Key voters on Griffin's hit list: Black soldiers and homeless men and women. [...]

In October 2004, our investigations team at BBC Newsnight received a series of astonishing emails from Mr. Griffin, then Research Director for the Republican National Committee. ... We dug in, decoding, and mapping the voters on what Griffin called, “Caging” lists, spreadsheets with 70,000 names of voters marked for challenge. Overwhelmingly, these were Black and Hispanic voters from Democratic precincts. [...]

[T]he RNC sent first-class letters to new voters in minority precincts marked, “Do not forward.” Several sheets contained nothing but soldiers, other sheets, homeless shelters. Targets included the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida and that city's State Street Rescue Mission. Another target, Edward Waters College, a school for African-Americans.

If these voters were not currently at their home voting address, they were tagged as “suspect” and their registration wiped out or their ballot challenged and not counted. Of course, these ‘cages' captured thousands of students, the homeless and those in the military though they are legitimate voters.

We telephoned those on the hit list, including one Randall Prausa. His wife admitted he wasn't living at his voting address: Randall was a soldier shipped overseas.

Randall and other soldiers like him who sent in absentee ballots, when challenged, would lose their vote. And they wouldn't even know it.

No one has followed up legally on the case. But if they did, Palast notes that the installed U.S. attorney could be found of violations of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits targeting voters where race is a factor.

UPDATE: It's important to note that Democrats' hands aren't clean when it comes to this issue. As John Kass observes in today's Chicago Tribune:

And Democrats, who defended perjury when their boss was caught, now thump their chests, complaining, rightfully so, that a few federal prosecutors have been fired for political reasons. Yet Democrats ostentatiously kept their mouths shut in 1993, when President Bill Clinton's Justice Department dumped every U.S. attorney in the country, except one, in a single day, including the fed from Arkansas who was going after Web Hubbell, the No. 3 man at Justice.

As usual, much of the scandal now appears to be how the administration is covering/spinning the episode.