Former Bush White House adviser Karl Rove says House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers’ two-and-a-half year investigation of the Bush administration’s firing of several U.S. attorneys has “failed to produce a shred of evidence” to support Conyers’ accusation that Rove was behind the purge.
“There is absolutely no evidence of that whatsoever,” Rove told me Tuesday. “They failed to produce a shred of evidence for their arguments.”
In a press release accompanying the release of 5,400 pages of White House emails, documents, and transcripts of interviews with Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, Conyers wrote that, “After all the delay and despite all the obfuscation, lies, and spin, this basic truth can no longer be denied: Karl Rove and his cohorts at the Bush White House were the driving force behind several of these firings, which were done for improper reasons.”
Most of Conyers’ case concerns the firing of David Iglesias, the U.S. attorney in New Mexico. And much of the case concerning Iglesias concerns a 2006 conversation in which Rove, after visiting New Mexico, called Miers to tell her about complaints Rove had heard that Iglesias had failed to pursue charges of political corruption against Democrats in the state.
“He was very agitated about the U.S. attorney in New Mexico,” Miers told Conyers’ staff.
“And what did he tell you about the U.S. attorney in New Mexico?” investigators asked.
“That he was getting barraged by a lot of complaints about the U.S. attorney and his not doing his job.”
“And who were the complaints coming from?”
“People that [Rove] was in contact with, which I assumed, of course, and he may have said, were political people that were active in New Mexico…”
“Did Mr. Rove tell you that he wanted the U.S. attorney gone?”
“I don’t have the specific recollection,” Miers answered. “And I’m under oath and I’m not going to swear to something coming out of his mouth that I just can’t remember. The clear import was that he was upset with how this individual was performing….It was clear to me that he felt like he had a serious problem and that he wanted something done about it.”
Investigators later asked Rove about Miers’ account, beginning with his state of mind. “In your conversation with Harriet Miers,” Rove was asked, “were you agitated about what you were hearing regarding voter fraud, public corruption, case prosecutions by Mr. Iglesias?”
“I am not certain the appropriate and direct and precise meaning of the word ‘agitated,'” Rove answered. “Most people claim I am agitated about a lot of things. But did I share with her the concerns that I had heard out there? Yes.”
“Did you tell her that you wanted Mr. Iglesias removed or use words to that effect?”
“I don’t recall, but by this point I probably have developed the opinion that he ought to go if these things are accurate. If they are accurate.”
There’s no doubt Rove called Miers to express unhappiness with Iglesias. The question is whether that is a smoking gun of corrupt intent, as Conyers concludes, or an unremarkable part of life in any administration. In my conversation with Rove, his answer was the latter. I asked him to go through Miers’ account point-by-point, beginning with his supposed agitation and going on through his allegedly wanting “something done” about Iglesias.
“Agitated?” Rove said. “I don’t want to use her word. But I called her from New Mexico after I had just gotten hammered out there about how [Iglesias] had mishandled a high-profile public corruption case.”
“I don’t know if I’d say I was agitated, but I certainly called her and said, ‘Look, there are some very serious complaints about this guy,'” Rove continued. “They seemed to be coming from credible people who had knowledge about the situation.”
Rove contends that it was appropriate for him to pass on the concerns he had heard in New Mexico. But he adds that whatever was to be done about the Iglesias case, if anything, was entirely up to the Justice Department to decide. “It was not for me to decide whether or not he should go,” Rove told me. “That was Justice’s job. My view was that Justice could figure that out.”
If Conyers had found any evidence that Rove pushed the Justice Department to fire Iglesias, he no doubt would have showcased it. But it appears the Judiciary Committee chairman did not find that evidence, and thus was left to contend that Rove was the “driving force” behind the firings without actually proving that Rove directed the firings.
In a statement issued after Conyers released the documents, Rove stressed that “I never sought to influence the conduct of any prosecution, and that I played no role in deciding which U.S. attorneys were retained and which replaced.”
And then he made an appeal to the public: If you’re interested in this case, don’t read the newspapers. Go directly to the documents. “Rather than relying on partisans selectively quoting testimony or excerpting email messages,” Rove wrote, “I urge anyone interested to review the documents in their entirety. They speak for themselves.”
