Purged Prosecutor: DoJ Offered Me "A Deal"

[babylonsister]

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002720.php

Purged Prosecutor: DoJ Offered Me "A Deal"
By Paul Kiel - March 11, 2007, 1:37 PM

It's easy to get lost among the scandals and subscandals that make up the administration's firing of eight U.S. attorneys, but one chief allegation is that the Justice Department did its best to discourage the prosecutors from talking to the media and Congress about the firings.

Bud Cummins, the former U.S.A. for Little Rock, Arkansas, testified before Congress about a call he received from Justice Department official Michael Elston in late February with the following message: if the prosecutors didn't stop talking, the Justice Department would hit back.

Now another prosecutor, Seattle's John McKay, says he got a similar call much earlier, before the firings had even been reported. From Newsweek:

After McKay was fired in December, he says he also got a phone call from a "clearly nervous" Elston asking if he intended to go public: "He was offering me a deal: you stay silent and the attorney general won't say anything bad about you."

As with his chat with Cummins, Elston doesn't deny that he made the call. But he tells Newsweek, that he "can't imagine" how McKay interpreted the call that way.

Similarly, Elston wrote in a letter earlier this week that he was "shocked and baffled" by Cummins' interpretation of that call. And he tells Newsweek that all he said to Cummins was that "it's really a shame that all this has to come out in the newspaper." Somehow, Cummins interpreted that as a threat.

[robinlynne]

1. well, let's see, according to gonzalez nothing out of the ordinary happened.

so why on earth would Elston call the prosecutors and say "IT's really a shame this has to come out in the newspapers.' These people went to college? They think someone will believe this?

[DKRC]

2. Everyone associated with this criminal administration

is a thug and operates on the basis of terrorizing any opposition into compliance and silence. Their backup plan to disclosure of their actions is always blame the victim.

[mopinko]

3. why would they take it as a threat?- all he said was

nice place ya got here. 'd be a shame if anything happened to it.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Why would an unfriendly call one of the fired prosecutors for any reason?

This reminds me of advice I heard on the t.v. I think it was on Sci Fi. If you're going to use a Ouija board to summon the dead, pick someone who liked you.