OPA

by emptywheel

Now it's time to point out an important point in John McKay's answers to HJC's questions. In response to a question about a Mike Elston call, McKay offered this description:

On January 17, 2007 at 2:30pm while still serving as U.S. Attorney, I received a
telephone call from Michael Elston, the Chief of Staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul
McNulty. Mr. Elston proceeded to make a number of statements using a familiar tone
which I did not appreciate in light of the circumstances, and related that “no one could
believe that they had not seen any incendiary comments from John McKay”. I did not
respond. He then indicated that the Attorney General would be holding to general
statements about U.S. Attorney resignations in his upcoming testimony before the Senate
Judiciary Committee, and that they had been advised by “OPA” that they could say no
more than this about the circumstances of our removals, including our forced
resignations.

McKay doesn't say if he asked Elston for a clarification on the acronym OPA or not. It carries a great deal of ambiguity. It could refer to DOJ's Office of Public Affairs, which would have some input into the best PR strategy to use when you've fired 7 USAs for no cause.

But it probably doesn't refer to that OPA.

Instead, it almost certainly refers to the White House Office of Political Affairs, AKA Karl's shop. Tasia Scolinos would not have the authority to tell Alberto Gonzales what he could and could not say to Congress--she could only advise him what he should and should not say (and, as a lawyer, he would presumably ignore this particular bit of advice). Karl, on the other hand, would have the authority to tell Gonzales what he could and couldn't say. And it's much more likely that Gonzales would heed Karl's instructions to mislead Congress than that he would heed Scolinos' advice to do so.

And if I'm right, doesn't that already suggest that McKay and the others were fired for political reasons? Doesn't the fact that Gonzales apparently heeded Karl's legally questionable instructions suggest the reasons were not only political, but legally suspect?

Comments

[njr]

who/when
ask Michael Elston to define OPA

an appearance again, or would a letter do?

[Mimikatz]

And doesn't this suggest someone suborned false testimony to Congress?

[emptywheel]

Precisely my point, Mimikatz. I think Rove has the pull to do that. I doubt Scolinos does.

[mk]

new McClatchy story out -- Leahy has issued a subpoena for Rove's emails.

Money quote from the story:

"Lawmakers believe the Justice Department has custody of many Rove e-mails through an unrelated investigation into whether anyone in the Bush administration leaked a CIA agent’s identity after her husband disputed pre-war intelligence claims.

"Rove was never charged in that case, but came under scrutiny by the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, who is the U.S. Attorney in Chicago. Fitzgerald subpoenaed Rove’s e-mail records."

Is Pat, or someone on the committee staff, a lurker here? Or does karma just make everything converge all by itself?

[Mimikatz]

I understood you meant Rove. My point is that it is a criminal offense to have done so.

[viget]

Now I understand why this all heated up right after the Libby verdict. Of course Pat Fitz and Comey must have known about the USA firings all along (as per EW's helpful time line), and when Fitz got his hands on the emails, they knew they had the goods on Rove. The question was just how that info could be revealed without violating GJ secrecy.

Enter Congress and the USA scandal. I wouldn't be surprised if some of Fitz's investigators have been working hand and glove with investigators from both Judiciary committees and Waxman's oversight committee in order that these emails see the light of day.

Heh, Fitz was going to nail Rove one way or the other. I think this time, the charges might even be more serious. How delicious would it be if this was Fitz's intention all along. Or, it could just be karma.

[enough]

I found the file that should be associated with the broken link in the 4/27 dump. The link on the House Judiciary list file DOJ Document Set 9 Released 4/27/07 does not link properly. The link seeks OAG1558-1626. This file does not exist. OLA1588-1626.pdf may be found at this address.

http://judiciary.house.gov/media/pdfs/ola1588-1626.pdf

[hauksdottir]

I would rather have Mr Fitzgerald working within the guidelines and limits of the law, even if it doesn't yield instant gratification. He did say that he'd share what he'd learned with Congress, or continue the investigation if new information was uncovered.

He must have known that with this much wrong-doing and these many incompetant hacks, that it wouldn't be all that long before another bone to investigate rose to the surface of the swamp. Rove and Cheney might know where the bodies are buried, but they didn't hire competant grave-diggers to bury them.

If Fitzgerald's team had even some of the emails from the RNC servers, they had enough to indicate wide-spread malfeasance... the sort that falls under Congressional purview. Was that belated batch of 250 pages from the RNC server accounts?

If Waxman took him to lunch, I bet his coffee got cold during the discussion. ;^)