March 16-18, 2007 -- WMR has learned that plans by the White House to fire U.S. Attorneys was hatched in 2005 with a view to ensure the 2006 re-election of GOP Senate and House members through massive voter fraud, a repetition of that which occurred in Ohio and other states in 2004. Of particular interest was an assurance that newly-appointed GOP U.S. Attorneys, unconfirmed by the Senate, would aggressively pursue Democratic registration drives in certain states in order to drive down voter turnout, especially among minorities.. Rove's plan, with the support of a new cadre of politically-driven U.S. Attorneys, would be to scare new voters away from registering and voting with threats of arresting those who could not prove they were U.S. citizens and other forms of intimidation. On August 1, 2005, Democratic Representatives John Conyers and Marcy Kaptur sent the following letter to Alberto Gonzales, which suggested malfeasance and a conflict of interest in convicted GOP fundraiser Tommy Noe in the selection of Gregory White, the US Attorney for Northern Ohio:
"We write to request that the U.S. Department of Justice immediately appoint an outside special counsel to assume the Department's investigation into alleged illegal contributions by Mr. Thomas Noe to federal and state political campaigns. In light of recent disclosures that Governor Taft's office, which is a subject of the investigation, made a direct political appeal to Karl Rove for Gregory White, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio to receive his job, there is little doubt that this is a textbook case for the appointment of a special counsel.
" . . . there are myriad conflicts of interest for Department prosecutors to continue the investigation on their own. To begin with, the United States Attorneys investigating the case, those for the Northern and Southern Districts for Ohio, both of whom were appointed by President Bush, would be in the untenable position of investigating a leading official of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. We now know that Mr. White has very close connections with the Governor's office and the White House. In fact, recently released records show that Mr. White sought Governor Taft's help in obtaining the U.S. Attorney position. The Governor's Chief of Staff, Brian Hicks, apparently communicated with Karl Rove, then a counselor to the President, about Mr. White's interest in the post. In an e-mail to Mr. Hicks, Mr. White wrote, 'I believe that my record speaks for itself, and I doubt there are too many county chairs for the Bush campaign that worked harder.' This is the same Brian Hicks who was convicted along with his executive assistant, Cherie Carroll for accepting gifts from Mr. Noe in violation of state law (both are now lobbyists). In assessing this prong of the regulations, the test for appointment of a special counsel does not rest on the prosecutor in question's perceived reputation or the characterization of his reputation by others, regardless of their political stripe; it is based on whether the conflict of interest exists at all, which is clearly the case in the present instance."
Gonzales took no action in appointing a special counsel in the Gregory White case.
The word also from informed sources in Washington is that much of the details about the U.S. Attorney firings and Rove's and Gonzales' roles in the scandal are emanating from a "highly placed and stable" source in the Bush White House.