Tim "Interim Appointment" Griffin says chau for now

his 120 day "interim appointment" was up on april 20...

The U.S. Justice Department has notified Arkansas’s congressional delegation that Interim Eastern District U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin is resigning effective Friday, June 1.

according to raw story, griffin is going to work for the fred thompson campaign... good riddance...

"His departure from the US Attorney Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas is a positive development and the Senator is looking forward to having credible leadership restored there," said Michael Teague, spokesman for Senator Mark Pryor (D-AR), of reports that interim US Attorney Tim Griffin had been approached to join Thompson's campaign.

let's see how fred uses him to jimmy the election in his favor...

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'S funny,wherever I look, there's a Rove

you keep it comin', murray... i'm counting on you to finally blow this thing wide open...

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

and, if you happen to stumble across a pistol that's still warm...

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Tim Griffin ain't what he's cracked up to be

nobody in the bush administration needs a single goddam qualification other than fanatical loyalty to bush and his compadres and an unswerving commitment to an authoritarian and criminal ideology...

Little Rock’s interim U.S. Attorney J. Timothy Griffin – already at the center of a firestorm over whether the White House has put politics ahead of prosecutorial integrity – made claims about his experience as an Army lawyer that have been put in doubt by military records.

The 38-year-old Griffin claims on his official Web site that he prosecuted 40 criminal cases while at Ft. Campbell, where he was stationed from September 2005 to May 2006. But Army authorities say Ft. Campbell’s records show Griffin only serving as assistant trial counsel on three cases, none of which went to trial.

and i bet griffin's is far from the only inflated resume floating around out there...

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More of the "it's not the 'what', it's the 'how'" argument

i'm much more interested in the "why..."

Last April, Tim Griffin, a Rove aide and longtime GOP operative, sent the attorney general's chief of staff a flattering letter about himself written by Cummins, the prosecutor he was trying to replace, internal e-mails released this week show. Rove and Harriet Miers, then the White House counsel, were keenly interested in putting him in the position, e-mails reveal.

New documents also show that Justice and White House officials were preparing for President Bush's approval of the appointment as early as last summer, five months before Griffin took the job.

[...]

The e-mails show how D. Kyle Sampson, then the attorney general's chief of staff, and other Justice officials prepared to use a change in federal law to bypass input from Arkansas' two Democratic senators, who had expressed doubts about placing a former Republican National Committee operative in charge of a U.S. attorney's office. The evidence runs contrary to assurances from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that no such move had been planned.

"This was a very loyal soldier to the Republicans and the Bush administration, and they wanted to reward him," said Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.). "They had every right to do this, but it's the way they handled it, and the way they tried to cover their tracks and mislead Congress, that has turned this into a fiasco for them."

it turns out that the "why" is very likely what we've thought all along...

Justice Department officials also have not publicly said Cummins's departure was related to his performance in office, as they have with the others. They acknowledged last month that he was fired simply to make room for Griffin.

But documents show that Cummins was clearly a target of Sampson's two-year effort to fire a group of U.S. attorneys who did not qualify as what he called "loyal Bushies." He was recommended for removal as early as March 2005.

< sigh > the united states department of justice, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the republican party...

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Let the constitutional crisis begin!

the sooner, the better...

During a press briefing yesterday, presidential counselor Dan Bartlett signaled that the White House will fight congressional efforts to have Karl Rove testify about his role in the U.S. Attorney purge.

I find it highly unlikely that a member of the White House staff would testify publicly to these matters, but that doesn’t mean we won’t find other ways to try to share that information.

Press Secretary Tony Snow was also resistant:

Well, as you know, Ed, it has been traditional in all White Houses not to have staffers testify on Capitol Hill. So I think what we have been trying to do is to work in a way to be as forthcoming with members of Congress — you saw all the emails coming out today — give them all the information so that they can make a fair judgment about it.

fortunately, we have leahy...

Thankfully, Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VA) isn’t backing down. Last night on PBS, Leahy referred to Tim Griffen as Rove’s “acolyte,” and said he will “insist” that senior White House officials testify “in public, in sworn testimony, under oath“:

I intend to bring the attorney general up here. I am requesting several other people to come up here, certainly Mr. Sampson, Ms. Miers, I assume eventually Karl Rove. If they don’t come, then I’ll seek to subpoena them up here, because the story changes almost every time we pick up the newspaper. […]

What I want to find out is what happened, why we’ve been given different stories. And I want those answers, not in an informal briefing; I want those answers in public, in sworn testimony, under oath before my committee. As chairman, that’s what I insist.

< rubs hands together in fevered anticipation > can't wait...

(thanks to think progress...)

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