I didn’t think I’d be writing two blogs in a day, but this is just unbelievable. Per the Washington Post: Firings Had Genesis in White House.
No, that’s not the unbelievable part. A more appropriate descriptor would be “expected.” Here’s what’s unbelievable:
Rove and other White House officials also forwarded complaints that U.S. attorneys were not doing enough to prosecute voter fraud.
Since the 2000 presidential election ended in dispute in Florida, Republicans have repeatedly raised concerns about possible voter fraud, alleging that convicted felons and other ineligible voters have been permitted to cast ballots to the benefit of Democrats.
Let’s ignore the fact that most complaints of fraud have been on the Democratic side and have involved election fraud rather than voter fraud, wherein the fraud takes place on the official side rather than the voter’s side. These election fraud complaints have alleged that (mostly) Republican officials have prevented low-income, minority, student, and other primarily Democratic voting groups from casting their votes. Another school of complaints alleges a conspiracy of deliberate incompetence on the part of election equipment companies; i.e., the companies peddle insecure equipment with no accountability, computers that would allow unscrupulous officials to meddle with the recorded results. There is documented and circumstantial evidence to support both claims on a wide scale.
However, there you have it on record: Karl Rove has been using federal prosecutors to cherry-pick specific complaints of election-related fraud that would benefit his party.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that he’s been using the prosecutors to prevent legitimate voters from casting their ballots. As prosecutors it was their job to investigate crime, but a good prosecutor does not harass those who are innocent and does not conduct witch hunts based on information that he or she deems to be erroneous. These attorneys seem to be honorable people who took their jobs seriously. Karl Rove, who is anything but honorable, was asking them to abuse their power to investigate people who their own expertise and investigative work gave them reason to believe were innocent of this crime. And if they didn’t want to cooperate with his agenda, then, well, they got blacklisted. And eventually fired.
One firing definitely was related to these issues:
Iglesias, the New Mexico prosecutor, was not on that list. Justice officials said Sampson added him in October, based in part on complaints from Sen. Pete V. Domenici and other New Mexico Republicans that he was not prosecuting enough voter-fraud cases.
Would that be the same New Mexico with massive complaints of electronic voting machine shenanigans in 2004? Oh, and by the way, Iglesias is a Republican. He just wasn’t interested in abusing his position as a prosecutor to harass legitimate voters.
It’s now on record that Karl Rove has abused resources of the federal government, resources being paid for by taxpayers, to try to tamper with the electoral process. This is huge.
I cannot wait to see what else is brought out in these hearings.
