So far I've seen nothing that I wouldn't expect in the new DOJ e-mails...

[originalpckelly]

most of the ones I've seen, both through skimming and reading, are not anything else to be expected if they really did fire these folks for performance reasons.

However, I am as always suspicious, and it the House Judiciary Committee just put the second batch up and I'm reviewing those right now.

Here is their website, you will find the e-mails in pdfs on the right hand column.

http://judiciary.house.gov/

[originalpckelly]

1. .

delete

[fooj]

2. Take a look...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=452203&mesg_id=452902

[originalpckelly]

5. I'm not sure at this point. I'm still reading the e-mails in batch 2...

the first PDF.

Iglesias is talking about the holidays and he seems very nice. I don't what's up here.

[napi21]

3. What about this?

Source: WP

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald was ranked among prosecutors who had "not distinguished themselves" on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading a CIA leak investigation that resulted in the perjury conviction of a vice presidential aide, administration officials said yesterday.

The ranking placed Fitzgerald below "strong U.S. Attorneys . . . who exhibited loyalty" to the administration but above "weak U.S. Attorneys who . . . chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.," according to Justice documents.

The chart was the first step in an effort to identify U.S. attorneys who should be removed. Two prosecutors who received the same ranking as Fitzgerald were later fired, documents show.

The chart was drawn up by D. Kyle Sampson, then an aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, and was sent to then-White House counsel Harriet Miers. The reference to Fitzgerald is in a portion of the memo that Justice has refused to turn over to Congress, officials told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the Fitzgerald ranking has not been made public.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2773126

You don't think there's MORE like THAT?

[BlooInBloo]

4. I got $10 that says they (TPM, et al) find inculpatory material in the dump within 24 hours.

[originalpckelly]

6. I wouldn't put it past them to have tried to gray mail us, but...

some of these e-mails are very friendly coming from the US Attorney's themselves. It would seem they would be able to confirm or deny these.

[originalpckelly]

7. It looks like Paul McNulty was friends with Iglesias.

In one of the e-mails, Iglesias even asks if he McNulty as a reference for a job.

[BlooInBloo]

20. That's old news. Iggy was on tv being interviewed about exactly that a few days ago...

... and said he asked for a reference to determine whether or not he was TRULY being fired for performance reasons. (Yes to reference = No to performance reasons.)

[Blackhatjack]

8. I have seen no smoking gun memo yet, but did not expect to ....

The White House thinks it is creating the appearance of being 'forthcoming' by releasing such a large number of docs, but as you have already discovered there is nothing in there responsive to what the committee wants and needs to see.

Only if a 'turncoat insider' slips a document into the bunch will we see anything significant, and I doubt they would risk that.

A good rule of thumb when it comes to discovery responses is 90% of the responses you receive are virtually useless, and it is usually the remaining 10% 'that leads to the real evidence.'

It is going to take an insider to feed the committee the suppressed docs they are looking for, to show that the White House is still covering up its role. Once you have a 'guide' to where the real evidence is hidden, then the subpoena is a very sharp and useful tool for dislodging it.

[originalpckelly]

11. The second batch has more interesting stuff.

Specifically PDF 2 of Batch 2, page 13:

"McNulty, Paul
_________________________________________________________________________________

From: Michael Elston
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007
To: Hertling, Richard
Cc: Sampson, Kyle; Goodling, Monica; Moschella, William; McNulty, Paul J.; Rebecca, Seidel
Subject: Bud Cummins

just called to let you know that Pryor's and Schumer's staff have called and asked him to testify on Tuesday. He declined, but wanted to know if we wanted him to testify -- would tell the truth about his circumstances and would also strongly support our view of S. 214.

Thoughts?"

S. 214 is the bill reverting the interim US Attorney statute back.

What does the bold text mean? :shrug:

[SlowDownFast]

9. TPM has set up a Sorting HQ Thread

for folks to report and/or discuss any key information found:

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002809.php

Perhaps DU'rs can cross-check and/or compare notes with TPM...

[robinlynne]

10. go to the link where everyone is discussing the emails. LOTS of interesting stuff.

[grasswire]

12. here's an example from TPM site

On Page 18, Michael Elston writes to Kyle Sampson (and others, including Paul McNulty) ----


Kyle:

Kevin Ryan's FAUSA, Emui Choi, just called to let us know that Kevin is not returning calls from Sen. Feinstein or Carol Lam and doing his best to stay out of this. He wanted us to know that he's still a "company man." I gave her my talkers for McKay and Charlton and asked her to convey them to Kevin.

Mike

[originalpckelly]

13. That and the one I posted are about the only ones I found that...

raised my eyebrows and made me think.

On the other hand, I think we need to reserve judgment, one way or the other at this time. While this may look underwhelming as I said in the op, I don't think it is logical to expect a group of people who might be trying to hide something a little more sinister, to give us those documents. This is not James Bond, and the villains do not tell us their secret plans.

I though I saw Duke Cunningham's signature on one of those e-mails, I wonder if this immigration bitching was used as a strategy to get at Lam by him and his corrupt friends. It's a fairly good cover. They manipulate the anti-immigrant folks to start bitching about Lam, political pressure to oust her mounts, then she's gone. Plus, the paper trail in the Admin. would be legit.


I also noticed in one of the e-mails, though I read so many I cannot say precisely which one, that they bitch about Lam spending too much time prosecuting cases herself, I wonder if that might be an oblique reference to her prosecution of Cunningham.

I'm also reminded that in Duke's sentencing memorandum (second hand) it talked about Cheney contracting one of the corrupt contractors with no prior government experience to provide IT help to the Office of the VP for $140,000. Then the contractor turned around and bought Duke a boat for $140,000, a price that had been previously negotiated.

That's like all the other "coincidences" in this matter.

[originalpckelly]

14. It seems from the e-mails that they have contradicted themselves...

at one point they were defending both Iglesias' and Lam's prosecution rates for immigration cases, now they've turned around and used their numbers for a justification to fire them.

I think immigration is being used as a shield to hide the real goings on, though that's a suspicion not a conclusion at this point. I'm trying to do my best at being a fair analyst, so I'm not going to jump to any conclusions. I think we all need to digest this a little.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. Ok here is what I have found so far

they started buinding their case using immigration... adn Darryl Issa used a document that was highly modified

They also used the AP to get the roll balling, and they used this for both Yglesias and Lam

[rumpel]

16. Here is another interesting one

2-8

On the recess appointment of the South Dakota US Attorney

from an article: "However, Tapken's son, Chris, was a partner with Rapid City native Dan Nelson, a long time Thune friend, in the Dan Nelson Automotive Group. The business faltered and went bankrupt last year and was the subject of a consumer-fraud lawsuit by the state of Iowa.

The US attoreny's office in South Dakota last year issued a news release clarifying that if there was any federal investigation into the Dan Neslon business, it would be handled by Department of Justice officials outside of the US attorney's office in South Dakota to assure there was no appearance of impropriety."

[rumpel]

17. NC you've got a new US attorney

former legislative counsel to Helms

previously NC First Assistant US attorney

Document: Vacancies filled

[rumpel]

18. It seems they replaced 15 US attorneys in temp positions before the

current 12

even though one letter to Leahy says 11 vacancies filled

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. Ok I have noted this in other threads about this

these PDFs have zero security, so you could potentially extract them into your word processor of choice...