Tony Soprano = AG Gonzales? Crooks in DC told prosecutor to keep quiet or else...

[originalpckelly]

I'm gonna give you a deal you can't refuse, you know what I mean?

"Purged Prosecutor: DoJ Offered Me 'A Deal'

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.'"

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

Will Cummins' reputation be sleeping with the fishes?

I could call him Fat Tony, but I'll just stick with Fat Albert. :P

[originalpckelly]

1. What are we up to here? Let's see:

Witness intimidation.
Obstruction of justice.
Perjury under oath (Gonzales said to the Judiciary Committee in the Senate only last month that "he'd never make a change in the US Attorney position for politics". That's a lie, and the Deputy AG Paul McNulty confirmed it under oath, as did Gonzales.)
There's probably some crime about pressuring a US Attorney to prosecute more Dems.
Conspiracy to commit the aforementioned crimes, and this is a biggie because the placement of Section 502: INTERIM APPOINTMENT OF UNITED STATES ATTORNEYS in the Patriot Act secretly proves the intent.
Abuse of power in general related to this matter, including the aforementioned crimes.
Anyone else?

[Erika]

2. Gonzales should be history and impeached

He and Rove clearly tried to cleanse the judges who weren't "right" enough for their likes.