Thinking about Gonzalez

[nancylebov]

Ok, he fired attorneys who didn't do partisan prosecutions. This suggests that many, perhaps all, of the attorneys he didn't fire were doing partison prosecutions, and not prosecuting Republicans they should have been going after.

Comments

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

That's not quite my point--I think investigating the charges which the attorneys that weren't fired brought and didn't bring might turn up a few interesting things. madfilkentist is right that there's no reason to think that all the attorneys were abusing their office, but there's very good reason to think that some were.

[stevemb.livejournal.com]

There's the question of what constitutes "abusing their office". Choosing to focus resources on certain crimes rather than others is generally within the scope of a US Attorney's discretion, and choosing to have executive branch officials who make such choices in a way that suits the President's agenda is within his prerogatives (subject to the need for Senate confirmation for some positions and intangible considerations of "political capital" if the public disagrees with the decisions).

As osewalrus noted, the administration would have been better off to simply assert presidential prerogative and take whatever (probably small and temporary) "political capital" hit might result. Throwing up the smoke screen claim that the firings were performance-related terminations for cause is why they got into, and deserved to get into, trouble.