Rove In The Crosshairs, Again

Prosecutors to Question Rove on US Attorney Firings

Thursday 14 May 2009

by: Carrie Johnson  |  Visit article original @ The Washington Post

 

Karl Rove will be questioned by a US attorney as part of an investigation into the firing of several US attorneys. (Photo: AP)

   
Former top White House official Karl Rove will be interviewed tomorrow as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the firing of U.S. attorneys during the Bush administration, according to two sources familiar with the appointment.
   
Rove has remained in the news as a commentator and political analyst since departing the White House. In an essay in today's Wall Street Journal, he criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), arguing that she may have misled the public about her knowledge of detainee interrogation tactics that critics assert are torture.
   
As a senior adviser to President George W. Bush, Rove emerged at the center of numerous policy and political debates. He will be questioned tomorrow by Connecticut prosecutor Nora R. Dannehy, who was named last year to examine whether any former senior Justice Department and White House officials lied or obstructed justice in connection with the dismissal of federal prosecutors in 2006.
  
 Robert D. Luskin, a lawyer for Rove, declined comment this afternoon on the imminent interview. So did Tom Carson, a spokesman for Dannehy.
   
Dannehy mostly has operated in the shadows, quietly issuing subpoenas for documents through a federal grand jury in the District. But in recent weeks she has interviewed other former government aides, including White House political deputies Scott Jennings and Sarah Taylor. She also has reached out to representatives for former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and his chief of staff, Steve Bell, in an effort to determine whether New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias was removed for improper political reasons.

The firings were the subject of a lengthy report released last fall by the Justice Department's inspector general and the department's Office of Professional Responsibility. Investigators there uncovered improper political motivations in the firings of several of the nine dismissed federal prosecutors.

But the department's own probe was thwarted in part because the inspector general's agents did not have the authority to compel testimony from Bush White House advisers and lawmakers.

In response, then-Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey handpicked Dannehy, a career prosecutor who made her reputation trying public corruption cases, in September 2008.

The prosecutor firings also are the subject of intense interest from the House Judiciary Committee, which had sued former Bush aides Harriet E. Miers and Joshua B. Bolten for access to testimony and documents. Both sides reached a settlement earlier this year after high-level involvement by lawyers for Bush, new White House counsel Gregory Craigand U.S. House general counsel Irvin B. Nathan.Rove and Miers are tentatively scheduled to provide closed-door testimony to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and other members of the panel sometime next month.

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