Mukasey Appoints Special Prosecutor to Look into US Attorney Firings
By: looseheadprop Monday September 29, 2008 8:25 amAttorney General Michael Mukasey has appointed acting Conn. US Attorney Nora Dannehy to continue the investigation into the firing of 8 US Attorneys in 2006.
“The Report leaves some important questions unanswered and recommends that I appoint an attorney to assess the facts uncovered, to conduct further investigation as needed, and ultimately to determine whether any prosecutable offense was committed with regard to the removal of a U.S. Attorney or the testimony of any witness related to the U.S. Attorney removals. In the normal course, a report recommending further investigation would not be released until after the investigation and any resulting prosecution had been completed, for fear that disclosing publicly relevant facts and witness statements would hinder the investigation or prosecution. In this instance, the Offices of Inspector General and Professional Responsibility have made the judgment that the circumstances warrant a departure from this usual practice.
“The Justice Department has an obligation to the American people to pursue this case wherever the facts and the law require. This investigation would ordinarily be conducted under the supervision of either the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia or a Department component. However, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has been recused from the matter, and I have determined that, given the nature of the matter, it would be best overseen by an attorney outside Main Justice.
“Therefore, I have asked Nora Dannehy to exercise the authority of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia for purposes of this matter. In that capacity, Ms. Dannehy will report to me through the Deputy Attorney General. Ms. Dannehy is a well-respected and experienced career prosecutor who has conducted or supervised a wide range of investigations and prosecutions during her lengthy career, and I am grateful to her for her willingness to serve in this capacity.
“This Report describes a disappointing episode in the history of the Department. What should not be lost in this are the efforts of the dedicated and hard-working employees of the Justice Department who are focused on what they do best, which is protecting our country and faithfully enforcing our laws."
A biography of Acting U.S. Attorney Nora R. Dannehy may be viewed at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/ct/usattorney.html.
If she's an "acting" US Attorney, that means she has not gone through a Senate Confirmation. As an AUSA, Ms. Dannehy investigated corruption surrounding former Conn. Gov. John Rowland.
Gonzales escapes grand jury in prosecutor firing probe -- for now
Nick Juliano
Published: Monday September 29, 2008
Mukasey appoints special prosecutor to continue investigation
Alberto Gonzales has been spared a trip to the grand jury over his role in the firings of nine US Attorneys, but his successor, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, has appointed a prosecutor to examine the "haphazard, arbitrary and unprofessional" conduct of Gonzales and others involved in the ongoing scandal.The Department of Justice's Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility on Monday released a nearly 400-page report on the US Attorney firings (.pdf), which found the process was "fundamentally flawed" and placed the blame at the top of the department.
We believe the primary responsibility for these serious failures rest with senior Department leaders – Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty – who abdicated their responsibility to adequately oversee the process and to ensure that the reasons for removal of each U.S. Attorney were supportable and not improper. These removals were not a minor personnel matter – they were an unprecedented removal of a group of high-level Department officials that was certain to raise concerns if not handled properly. Yet, neither the Attorney General nor the Deputy Attorney General provided adequate oversight or supervision of this process. We also concluded that Sampson bears significant responsibility for the flawed and arbitrary removal process. Moreover, they and other Department officials are responsible for failing to provide accurate and truthful statements about the removals and their role in the process.The report recommended appointing a special prosecutor to continue its examination, which was hampered by the IG's inability to issue subpoenas to officials who had left the deparment.
Congress has been battling the White House for more than a year as it has tried to investigate the circumstances surrounding the attorney firings. Several current and former Bush administration officials are subject to contempt of Congress proceedings after refusing to comply with subpoenaed testimony before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
“This report verifies what our oversight efforts this Congress showed, that partisan, political interests in the prosecution of voter fraud and public corruption by the White House and some at the Department played a role in many of these firings," Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy said in reaction to the report. "These abuses are corrosive to the very foundations of our system of justice. It is wrong and it is dangerous to undermine the nation’s premier law enforcement agency by injecting political biases to determine which cases should be prosecuted."
House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers said the report confirms the "very worst suspicions" of members who have been investigating the scandal.
“This scheme – which the report makes clear was hatched in the White House -- was a fundamental betrayal of the American people and the men and women of the Department of Justice and it will be a long time before we can fully repair the damage,” he said.
Mukasey, who took over the Justice Department after Gonzales resigned in the midst of the attorney firing scandal, portrayed the report as having "dispelled many of the most disturbing allegations" that followed revelations of the attorney firing scandal, but even he could not ignore its stark condemnation of the Department as it was run under his predecessor.
"However, the Report makes plain that, at a minimum, the process by which nine U.S. Attorneys were removed in 2006 was haphazard, arbitrary and unprofessional, and that the way in which the Justice Department handled those removals and the resulting public controversy was profoundly lacking," he said.
Mukasey has appointed Nora Dannehy, an acting US Attorney from Connecticut, to continue the investigation.
Published on Thursday, April 6, 2006 by the Washington Spectator |
| A Culture of Corruption Let's Save Our Democracy by Getting Money Out of Politics |
| by Bill Moyers |
| Money is choking our democracy to death. Our elections are bought out from under us and our public officials are doing the bidding of mercenaries. So powerful is the hold of wealth on politics that we cannot say America is working for all Americans. The majority may support such broad social goals as affordable medical coverage for all, decent wages for working people, safe working conditions, a secure retirement, and clean air and water, but there is no government "of, by, and for the people" to deliver on those aspirations. Our system of privately financed campaigns has shut regular people out of any meaningful participation in democracy. Less than one-half of one percent of all Americans made a political contribution of $200 or more to a federal candidate in 2004. When the average cost of winning a seat in the House of Representatives has topped $1 million, we can no longer refer to that chamber as "The People's House." Congress belongs to the highest bidder. At the same time that the cost of getting elected is exploding beyond the reach of ordinary people, the business of influencing our elected representatives has become a growth industry. Since President Bush was elected the number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled. That's 16,342 lobbyists in 2000 and 34,785 last year: 65 lobbyists for every member of Congress. The total spent per month by special interests wining, dining, and seducing federal officials is now nearly $200 million. Per month. Numbers don't tell the whole story. With pro-corporate officials running both the executive and legislative branches, lobbying that was once reactive has sallied forth to buy huge chunks of public policy. One example: In 2004 the computer maker Hewlett-Packard sought Republican-backed legislation that would enable it to bring back to the United States, at a dramatically lowered tax rate, as much as $14.5 billion in profits from foreign subsidiaries. The company nearly doubled its budget for contract lobbyists and took on an elite lobbying firm as its Washington arm. Presto! The legislation passed. The company's director of government affairs was quite candid: "We're trying to take advantage of the fact that Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House." GREED WITHOUT APOLOGIES—I am an equal opportunity muckraker. Anyone who saw the documentary my team and I produced on the illegal fund-raising for Bill Clinton's re-election knows I am no fan of the Democratic money-machine that helped tear away the party from whatever roots it had in the struggles of working people. But today the Republicans own the government lock, stock, and barrel. And they have turned their self-proclaimed revolution into a cash cow. Look back at the bulk of legislation passed by Congress in the past decade: an energy bill that gives oil companies huge tax breaks at the same time that ExxonMobil has just posted $36.13 billion in profits and our gasoline and home heating bills are at an all-time high; a bankruptcy "reform" bill written by credit card companies to make it harder for poor debtors to escape the burdens of divorce or medical catastrophe; the deregulation of the banking, securities and insurance sectors, which brought on rampant corporate malfeasance and greed and the destruction of the retirement plans of millions of small investors; the deregulation of the telecommunications sector, which led to cable industry price-gouging and an undermining of news coverage; protection for rampant overpricing of pharmaceutical drugs; and the blocking of even the mildest attempt to prevent American corporations from dodging an estimated $50 billion in annual taxes by opening a P.O. box in an off-shore tax haven like the Cayman Islands. In every case the results were produced by rivers of cash flowing to favored politicians from interests whose return on their investment put Wall Street equities to shame. This happens because our public representatives need huge sums to finance their campaigns, especially to pay for television advertising. The masters of the money game have taken advantage of that weakness in our democracy to turn our elections into auctions. A WALK DOWN K STREET—It's the Wall Street of lobbying, the address of many of Washington's biggest lobbying firms. The "K Street Project"—the most successful shakedown operation since the first Gilded Age—was the brainchild of Representative Tom DeLay and Grover Norquist, the right-wing strategist who famously said that his goal is to shrink government so that it can be "drowned in a bathtub" (when, finally, it will be too impotent to protect democracy from plunder and powerless citizens from the rapacity of corporate power). For his part, Tom DeLay ran a pest exterminating business in Sugar Land, Texas, where he hated government regulators who dared to tell him that some of the pesticides he used were dangerous. He got himself elected to the Texas legislature at a time when the Republicans were becoming the majority in the once-solid Democratic South, and early in his new career "Hot Tub Tom," as he was known in Austin, became a born-again Christian. In addition to finding Jesus, Tom DeLay discovered the power of money to drive his career. By raising more than $2 million from lobbyists and business groups and distributing it to dozens of Republican candidates in 1994, the year of the Republican breakthrough in the House, DeLay bought the loyalty of many freshmen legislators who helped elect him Majority Whip, the House's number three man. He wasted no time in inviting lobbyists to write the Republican agenda. Their first priority was "Project Relief"—"relief" from labor standards that protected workers from the physical injuries of repetitive work, "relief" from tougher rules on meat inspection, "relief" from effective monitoring of hazardous air pollutants. Scores of companies were soon adding one juicy and expensive tidbit after another. On the eve of the debate, according to Michael Weisskopf and David Maraniss of the Washington Post, 20 major corporate groups advised lawmakers that "this was a key vote, one that would be considered in future campaign contributions." The Machine was off and running. As then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich famously told the lobbyists: "If you are going to play in our revolution, you have to live by our rules." The rules were simple enough. Contribute to Republicans only. Hire only Republicans as lobbyists (priority preference: DeLay's own staff). Centralize the power to write legislation in the hands of the party bosses (assisted by hovering lobbyists). Allow no amendments. Produce bills in secret. Permit members no time to read them. Pass important bills late at night. Avoid compromise by banning Democrats from conference committees. Give lobbyists and campaign contributors what they want. While examples abound of how the rules stacked the deck, consider one: the Medicare prescription coverage bill. Enacted after midnight, its hundreds and hundreds of pages unintelligible to anyone but lobbyists, the legislation enriched the pharmaceutical and insurance companies while giving senior citizens and taxpayers the shaft. THE MONEY MAN—DeLay, who had announced that God had chosen him to return American to a "biblical worldview," needed help to sustain the cash flow necessary for spreading the Gospel of Greed. He found it in a fellow right-wing ideologue named Jack Abramoff, who personified the K-Street money-machine of which DeLay, with the blessing of his party's leaders, was the major-domo. It was Abramoff who helped DeLay raise those millions of dollars from campaign donors to create the base for an empire of corruption. Abramoff has now pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy to bribe public officials. It's a spectacular fall for a man whose rise to power began in his school days with his election as chairman of the College Republicans. Despite its innocuous name, the organization became a political attack machine for the far right and a launching pad for younger conservatives on the make. "Our job," Abramoff, then 22 years old, wrote after his first visit to the Reagan White House, "is to remove liberals from power permanently. . . ." (He would later acknowledge that his agenda also included moving K Street closer to the Republican Party.) Karl Rove had once held the same job as chairman. So did Grover Norquist, who ran Abramoff's campaign. A youthful $200-a-month intern named Ralph Reed was at their side. These were the rising young stars of the conservative movement who came to town to lead a revolution and stayed to run a racket. CASINO ROYALE—Abramoff made his name, so to speak, representing Indian tribes and their gambling interests. As his partner he hired a DeLay crony named Michael Scanlon. Together they would bilk half a dozen tribes who hired them to protect their gambling interests from competition. What the two men had to offer, of course, was their connections to the Republican power structure, including members of Congress, friends at the White House (Abramoff's personal assistant became the personal assistant of Karl Rove), Christian Right activists like Reed, and right-wing ideologues like Norquist. The network hummed smoothly for its inside traders—as, for example, when two lobbying clients of Abramoff paid $25,000 to Norquist's organization, Americans for Tax Reform, for lunch at the White House and a meeting with President Bush in May 2001, according to the Texas Observer. In a scheme they called "Gimme Five." Abramoff would refer tribes to Scanlon for grassroots public-relations work, and Scanlon would then kick back about 50 percent to Abramoff, all without the tribes' knowledge. Before it was over, the tribes had paid the two lobbyists $82 million, much of it going directly into Abramoff's and Scanlon's pockets. And that doesn't count the thousands more that Abramoff directed the tribes to pay out in campaign contributions. Some of the money found its way into an outfit called the Council of Republicans for Environment Advocacy, founded by Gale Norton before she was appointed to run the Department of the Interior, which—surprise! surprise!—is the agency most responsible for Indian gaming rights. Some went to so-called charities, set up by Abramoff and DeLay, that filtered money for lavish trips for members of Congress and their staffs, as well as salaries for Congressional family members and DeLay's pet projects. And some of the money found its way to the Holy High Rollers of the Christian Right. Ralph Reed, for one, had his hand out. Reed had become the religious right's poster boy against gambling ("We believe gambling is a cancer on the American body politic," he had said). Now Abramoff and Scanlon would pay Reed some $4 million to help them protect their own gaming interests. His assignment was to whip up Christian opposition to gambling initiatives that could cut into the profits of Abramoff's clients. Reed enlisted some of the brightest stars in the Christian firmament in a ruse conducted on Abramoff's behalf: they would oppose gambling on religious and moral grounds in strategic places at decisive moments when competition threatened Abramoff's clients. Bogus Christian groups were part of the strategy. A gaggle of influential Baptist preachers in Texas danced to Reed's fiddling. Folks in Louisiana heard the voice of God on the radio—performed by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson—thundering against a riverboat gambling scheme that Abramoff feared would jeopardize the profits of a client. Reed even got James Dobson, whose nationwide radio "ministry" reaches millions of people (and whose videos helped Tom DeLay find Jesus) to deluge the Interior Department and White House with telephone calls from indignant Christians. Abramoff arranged for the Mississippi Choctaws, who were trying to stave off competition from other tribes, to contribute over $1 million to Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, which then passed the money along to the Alabama Christian Coalition and to another anti-gambling group Reed had duped into aiding the cause. It is unclear how much these Christian soldiers knew about the true purpose of their crusade, but Reed knew all along that his money was coming from Abramoff. The e-mails between the two men read like a modern version of Elmer Gantry. As reported by the Washington Post and National Journal, some of Abramoff's money from lobbying went to start a non-profit organization called the U.S. Family Network, founded with the help of a top aide to Tom DeLay while he was still in DeLay's employ (his salary at the time paid by—you guessed it—taxpayers). DeLay even wrote a fundraising letter in its behalf. The group announced that its purpose was to promote policies favorable for "families, the economic prosperity, social improvement, moral fitness, and general well being of the United States," and its fund-raising screeds warned that the American family "is being attacked from all sides: crime, drugs, pornography . . . and gambling." But its first donation came from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, followed by other Abramoff clients who couldn't care less about the professed moral agenda. The U.S. Family Network turns out to be another scam in the Abramoff-DeLay money laundering machine. Its money paid for attack ads on Democrats, bought a townhouse three blocks from DeLay's Congressional quarters, providing him with free office space where he could go to raise funds for the Machine, and awarded DeLay's wife a sizable salary. But that's the least of it. Working with Abramoff through a now defunct law firm in London and an obscure offshore company in the Bahamas, oil and gas executives from Russia used the U.S. Family Network to funnel money to influence Tom DeLay, then-majority leader of the House of Representatives. A Christian pastor recruited to serve as the titular president of the organization was told by DeLay's sidekick that $1 million was passed through from sources in Russia who wanted DeLay's support for legislation enabling the International Monetary Fund to bail out the faltering Russian economy without demanding new taxes on the country's energy industry. Lo and behold, there was Tom Delay, appearing on an obliging Fox News television show, arguing the Russian position. The rueful pastor who was the organization's nominal head said he was told, "This is the way things work in Washington." "REFORM" TALK FIZZLES—The Republican leaders would have us believe this is just a "lobbying scandal." They assume that if they pass a few minor reforms to put a little distance between the politician and the lobbyist, we will think everything is okay and they can go back to business as usual. Just look at Congressman John Boehner, elected to replace Tom DeLay as House Majority Leader. He's been a full player in the K Street Project and DeLay's money machine. The top lobbyists in town frequent his office. He thinks nothing of cruising with them in the Caribbean or of hopping on corporate jets arranged by them. This is the man who ten years ago moved around the floor of the House—the "People's House"—handing out checks from tobacco executives. As for Tom Delay? He is under indictment in Texas for money laundering and had to resign as Majority Leader. But just the other day the party bosses gave him a seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, where big contributors get their rewards. And—are you ready for this?—they put him on the subcommittee overseeing the budget of the Justice Department, which is investigating the Abramoff scandal, including Abramoff's connections to DeLay. I'm not making this up. It's business as usual. Rotten business as usual. I have touched on only a few of the astonishing details pouring out about the sacking of Washington. The corrupting power of money in politics is an old story. This time is different, because in a one-party government the opposition is impotent and the corporate media, with a few notable exceptions, have bought into the notion that this is "just the way Washington works." Already the calls for reform are fading away. CLEAN ELECTIONS—You may say, "What can we do about it? These forces are too rich, too powerful, too entrenched to be defeated." Maybe. But if others had given up before us, blacks would still be three-fifths of a person, women wouldn't have the vote, workers couldn't organize, and children would still be working in the mines. It's time to fight again. These people in Washington have no right to be doing what they are doing. It's not their government, it's your government. They work for you, and if they let you down and sell you out, they should be fired. That goes for everyone, from the lowliest bureaucrat in town to the senior leaders of Congress on up to the president of the United States. The stakes are too high for us to give up. Fortunately, there is something we can do. A movement is gathering across the country that could restore democracy to a country run by money. It's the "clean money" campaign for the public funding of our elections. Maine led the way in 2000. Arizona followed suit. So have several municipalities, including Portland, Oregon, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Races are more competitive and attract a more diverse group of candidates. No sooner had Janet Napolitano been elected governor of Arizona under the state's public financing program than she instituted reforms establishing low-cost prescription drug subsidies for seniors. There have also been advances in Maine in providing low-cost prescription drugs for residents. Why? Because the politicians write the legislation, not the lobbyists. Look what happened in Connecticut last year, a state rocked by multiple political scandals. People decided to break the link between big donors and public officials. By December the legislature had passed clean-money reform, banning campaign contributions from lobbyists and state contractors. Connecticut is the first state where the legislature and governor have approved full public funding for their own races. In thirty other states clean-money campaigns are also forming. (You can find out more about the movement at the website of Public Campaign.) While public funding won't solve all the problems—the Abramoffs and DeLays of the world will always find ways to abuse the public trust—it would go a long way toward restoring the hope of government "of, by, and for the people." Even some business lobbyists are having second thoughts. Business Week recently quoted one of them as saying: "As a conservative, I've always opposed government involvement. But it seems to me the real answer is federal financing of Congressional elections." Just think: For about $10 per taxpayer, per year, we, the people, could buy back our politicians in Congress and the White House with full public funding. But time is running out. Unless we offer qualified candidates a different source of campaign funding with clean, disinterested and accountable public money, the selling of America will go on, and we will wake up one day in a country we no longer recognize. Bill Moyers is a broadcast journalist and former host the PBS program NOW With Bill Moyers. Moyers also serves as president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.
Republican IT consultant subpoenaed in case alleging tampering with 2004 election Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane COLUMBUS -- A high-level Republican consultant has been subpoenaed in a case regarding alleged tampering with the 2004 election. King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. BlackwellThe case, known as King Lincoln Bronzeville Neighborhood Association v. Blackwell, was filed against Kenneth J. Blackwell on Aug. 31, 2006 by Columbus attorneys Clifford Arnebeck, Robert Fitrakis and others. It initially charged Blackwell with racially discriminatory practices -- including the selective purging of voters from the election rolls and the unequal allocation of voting machines to various districts -- and asked for measures to be taken to prevent similar problems during the November 2006 election.On Oct. 9, 2006, an amended complaint added charges of various forms of ballot-rigging as also having the effect of "depriving the Plaintiffs of their voting rights, including the right to have their votes successfully cast without intimidation, dilution, cancellation or reversal by voting machine or ballot tampering." A motion to dismiss the case as moot was filed following the November 2006 election, but it was instead stayed to allow for settlement discussions. The case took on fresh momentum earlier this year when Arnebeck announced in July that he was filing to "lift the stay in the case [and] proceed with targeted discovery in order to help protect the integrity of the 2008 election." The new filing was inspired in part by the coming forward as a whistleblower of GOP IT security expert Stephen Spoonamore, who said he was prepared to testify to the plausibility of electronic vote-rigging having been carried out in 2004. Arnebeck’s hope was that in the course of the discovery procedure it would be possible to subpoena Michael Connell, former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and others to obtain additional information and improve the focus of the case. The stay was lifted Sept. 19, 2008 by an order from Magistrate Judge Terrence P. Kemp of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, and a subpoena was served to Connell on the following Monday, Sept. 22. Allegations against ConnellThe interest in Mike Connell stems from his association with a firm called GovTech, which he had spun off from his own New Media Communications under his wife Heather Connell’s name. GovTech was hired by Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to set up an official election website at election.sos.state.oh.us to presented the 2004 presidential returns as they came in.Connell is a long-time GOP operative, whose New Media Communications provided web services for the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Republican National Committee and many Republican candidates. This in itself might have raised questions about his involvement in creating Ohio’s official state election website.  The New Media building. However, the alternative media group ePlubibus Media further discovered in November 2006 that election.sos.state.oh.us was hosted on the servers of a company in Chattanooga, TN called SmarTech, which also provided hosting for a long list of Republican Internet domains. “Since early this decade, top Internet ‘gurus’ in Ohio have been coordinating web services with their GOP counterparts in Chattanooga, wiring up a major hub that in 2004, first served as a conduit for Ohio's live election night results,” researchers at ePluribus Media wrote. A few months after this revelation, when a scandal erupted surrounding the firing of US Attorneys for reasons of White House policy, other researchers found that the gwb43 domain used by members of the White House staff to evade freedom of information laws by sending emails outside of official White House channels was hosted on those same SmarTech servers. Given that the Bush White House used SmarTech servers to send and receive email, the use of one of those servers in tabulating Ohio’s election returns has raised eyebrows. Ohio gave Bush the decisive margin in the Electoral College to secure his reelection in 2004. IT expert Stephen Spoonamore says the SmartTech server could have functioned as a routing point for malicious activity and remains a weakness in electronic voting tabulation. According to Spoonamore’s Sept. 17 affidavit, the “computer placement, in the middle of the network, is a defined type of attack.” Spoonamore describes this as a “Man in the Middle Attack” or MIM. “It is a common problem in the banking settlement space,” he writes. “A criminal gang will introduce a computer into the outgoing electronic systems of a major retail mall, or smaller branch office of a bank. They will capture the legitimate transactions and then add fraudulent charges to the system for their benefit.” “Any time all information is directed to a single computer for consolidation, it is possible, and in fact likely, that single computer will exploit the information for some purpose,” he adds. “In the case of Ohio 2004, the only purpose I can conceive for sending all county vote tabulations to a GOP managed Man-in-the-Middle site in Chattanooga before sending the results onward to the Sec. of State, would be to hack the vote at the MIM.” Hold letters were sent out in July to parties in the case, informing them of their obligation not to destroy relevant documentation. One such letter went to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, asking him to advise the federal government of its responsibility to preserve emails from Rove. Arnebeck explained, "We expressed concern about the reports that Mr. Rove destroyed his emails and suggested that we want the duplicates that should exist [be put] under the control of the Secret Service and be sure that those are retained, as well as those on the receiving end in the Justice Department and elsewhere, that those documents are retained for purposes of this litigation, in which we anticipate Mr. Rove will be identified as having engaged in a corrupt, ongoing pattern of corrupt activities specifically affecting the situation here in Ohio." More recently, Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff has revealed that John McCain’s presidential campaign paid nearly a million dollars for web services to a firm called 3eDC, created and partly owned by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis. According to an archived version of a 3eDC webpage from 2007, that firm’s five “strategic partners” included not only Connell’s New Media Communications but also Campaign Solutions – a firm run by Connell’s sometimes-partner, Rebecca Donatelli – and a component of SmarTech called AirNet. The Origin of the CaseThe roots of the King Lincoln Bronzeville case go back to the case of Moss v. Bush, which Arnebeck, Fitrakis and other attorneys filed immediately after the 2004 presidential election. In that filing, they challenged the results of the Ohio voting on the basis of numerous irregularities and allegations of fraud and sought to depose President George W. Bush, Vice President, Dick Cheney, and then-White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, as well as Secretary Blackwell.That case was dropped by the plaintiffs in January 2005, after the US Senate accepted the casting of Ohio's electoral votes for George W. Bush. Two weeks later, Ohio's Republican Attorney General James Petro attempted to sanction and fine the attorneys for what he described as a "frivolous filing," but they were supported by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) – then the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee - who had already held a hearing at which Arnebeck and Jesse Jackson testified concerning the suppression of minority votes. Those same concerns are now at the heart of King Lincoln Bronzeville. #### Larisa Alexandrovna is managing editor of investigative news for Raw Story and regularly reports on intelligence and national security stories. Contact: larisa@rawstory.com. Muriel Kane is director of research for Raw Story. Related Stories- GOP security expert suggests Diebold tampered with Georgia election- Documents show Georgia Secretary of State knew about Diebold patch before election - Break-ins plague targets of US Attorneys Update: The conference between the counsel for those suing and Judge Kemp scheduled Monday was canceled and will be rescheduled. Elections & Voting
In 2001, Michael L. Connell of GovTech Solutions, L.L.C., a notoriously partisan GOP operative and Bush family confidant, was selected to reorganize the Capitol Hill IT network. Under the guise of selecting a female-owned IT company (Connell’s wife Heather is listed as the owner), former Congressman and convicted felon Bob Ney reportedly arranged for Connell to be the man behind the firewall for the U.S. House of Representatives. Connell’s role and activities need to be investigated by putting Connell under oath and examining how arguably one of the country’s most zealously partisan IT specialists managed to land the contract and be allowed access to this electronic communication system. Initially, Connell’s forays into partisan politics had very public ups and downs. Connell got his big break in 1987 as a staff member for former CIA Director and Vice President George H.W. Bush’s successful campaign for president. He programmed and developed an advanced delegate tracking system for the Republican National Convention in 1988. With no presidential campaign in 1990, Connell emerged in partisan politics, this time in a well-publicized scandal. On November 11, 1990, Senator Dan Coats (R-IN) fired Connell for his role in a “push polling” scheme that Coats denounced as “clearly unethical.” Next, Connell resurfaced as a congressional staffer and mouthpiece as U.S. Rep. Martin R. Hoke’s (R-OH) communication director in 1993-4. In 1996, Connell’s back at partisan campaign IT activity. His newly formed New Media Communications began providing design makeovers and software for Republican candidates and organizations in Ohio and Illinois. Public records reflect that he specifically worked on implementing databases and web services for John Bohner’s (R-OH) Freedom Project PAC, John Kasich’s (R-OH) Pioneer PAC, and Dick Armey’s (R-TX) Majority Leaders Fund. Also during this period, he did computer work for right-wing ideologue David Horowitz’s Center for the Study of Popular Culture and the website, FrontPageMag.com. Tom Brazatis of the Cleveland Plain Dealer described Connell as “an Internet consultant in 1998 for the winning campaigns of governors Bob Taft in Ohio and Jeb Bush in Florida.” The article stated that Connell told the Plain Dealer that he had been hired to do “special Internet projects” for George W. Bush. “Connell declined to be more specific,” noted the Plain Dealer’s 2000 article. After Jeb Bush won the governor’s office, Connell received various Florida IT contracts from the governor’s office, Florida Department of Education and Community Affairs, and did computer work for the Florida Republican Party. A few months after Bush’s 1998 Florida victory, New Media Communications merged with GOP lobbyist and operative Thomas J. Synhorst and formed DCI/New Media L.L.C. in Richfield, Ohio. Synhorst is listed as a co-founder of GovTech. Connell designed Jeb.org, JebWear.com, and GOPWear.com during that election cycle. “I’m loyal to my friends and I’m loyal to the Bush family . . .” read a Connell quote in Inside Business magazine, November 2, 1999. Crain’s Cleveland Business reported when Connell created GovTech Solutions in 2001 he told them he had “ . . . decided to roll out a separate company for its political work because government and corporations are ‘two animals different enough to have it make sense.’” Connell told Crain’s that his “GovTech Solutions is the only private-sector company to gain permission from HIR [House Information Resources] to place its servers behind the firewall” One has to wonder about the implications of the premier partisan campaign IT man, steadfastly loyal to the country’s most well known security-industrial complex and CIA family, serving as the man behind the U.S. Congress’ firewall. According to the Federal Election Commission, Connell’s company, New Media Communications, received more than $800,000 from the Bush-Cheney Re-Election Campaign between January 2003 and October 2004. During the same period, New Media Communications brought in $1.2 million in contracts from Republican congressional candidates, political parties, and the National Rifle Association, according to the Akron Beacon Journal on November 24, 2004. SourceWatch notes that Connell developed the websites for the House Intelligence, Judiciary, Financial Services, Ways and Means, and Administration Committees. According to SourceWatch, Connell teamed up with R. Rebecca Donatelli, chair of the D.C.-based Campaign Solutions, to form Connell Donatelli, Inc. (CD, Inc.) as a specialized online advertising agency in July 2004. One of CD, Inc.’s first activities was to become the registrant, administrator and tech organizer for the anti-Kerry group Swiftboat Veterans for Truth’s website swiftboatvetsfortruth.org. Connell also handled the IT system work for the Bush-Cheney Re-election Campaign and worked for Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell in designing the system that allowed the real time outsourcing of Ohio’s presidential vote count to a Chattanooga, Tennessee, server site. The blog ePluribus Media deserves great credit for breaking this key story. The Tennessee servers at the old Pioneer Bank building were a massive repository of Republican and conservative websites. An article about Connell’s partisan IT activities in George W. Bush’s hometown newspaper, the Crawford, Texas, Lone Star Iconoclast, invokes the specter of the Watergate scandal. It notes, “There’s Ohio in 2004 when his [Connell’s] company (SmartTech) ran election results through his computers before releasing them to Ken Blackwell’s Secretary of State office.” The Iconoclast pointed out in that December 18, 2007, article, entitled “Plumbers 2.0,” that top Bush operatives, including Karl Rove, emailed plans for dismissing eight U.S. attorneys using the accounts set up by Connell gwb43.com and georgebush.com. As ePluribus Media put it, “In the virtual worlds of computer security, networking and email, the lines separating the inner workings of the current government in Washington, D.C., and the outer world of partisan politics exist only in theory.” The IT cyberstructures created by Connell remain in place for the 2008 election. On February 22, 2008, the Akron Beacon Journal reported Connell’s team helped develop the John McCain for President website, just as it helped create the website for the last two Bush presidential campaigns. While the Republicans tell us to pay no attention to the man behind the congressional firewall, that he’s just another government contractor, Connell is thinking long-term. When asked by Campaign and Elections magazine in June 2004 what he wished to be doing in 10 years, he replied that his goal was to be in a “senior position” in the campaign to elect Rick Santorum president of the United States. He also cited among his political heroes, Saint Paul because he “ . . . leveraged Roman citizenship to fuel the expansion of the early church” and he cited George W. Bush because he had “the courage to publicly share his faith.” Bob Fitrakis has a Ph.D. in political science and was an election observer in the Ohio 2004 general election and Ohio’s 2008 primary. Originally published by The Free Press. Blogged by Brad Friedman on 9/28/2008 1:46PM AP Article Detailing a Number of Criticisms of the Republican Veep Nominee Was 'Top Story' at FNC Website, Only to be Suddenly Disappeared Copy of the Story, as Killed by the 'Fair and Balanced' Propagandists, Reposted as BRAD BLOG Courtesy, in Full, Below... We were surprised as anyone to see this listed today at Google News...  We were somewhat less surprised when we clicked on it to find the page it linked to was now an error page at the Fox "News" website, reading... You've requested an America's Election HQ page that cannot be found. The page you are looking for may have moved or it may no longer be available. We apologize for the inconvenience. To confirm the page actually existed at one time, we also searched over at Yahoo News and found the similar...  That link also led to an error page at Fox "News", even though, according to the URL (http://elections.foxnews.com/category/top-story/), the article, for a moment at least, had been one of their top stories. As it was an AP story, perhaps it was part of an automatic feed that made it's way onto FNC's site, until the "fair and balanced" network website editors noted it, and decided it needed to be scrubbed immediately. After searching and searching at their website for the original article, perhaps under a changed headline, we came up with little, other than a story headlined: "Analysis: Pressure Builds on Palin Ahead of VP Debate" found not in a search, but in a sidebar list of "Most Read" articles over there. While that article had a reference to the crushing call for Palin to drop out of the race, as seen in a National Review column by conservaitve Kathleen Parker, which The BRAD BLOG noted on Friday, it began with a few shots at Democratic Veep nominee Joe Biden who, Fox says, "spent the past week tripping up his own campaign --- bungling facts on the Great Depression and even criticizing a Barack Obama ad" before going on to detail "Biden's gaffe-prone ways." It was only, in the comments section for that "Analysis" piece, that we were able to find references to the spiked article, and finally, a commenter who posted a link to a copy of the original article --- which featured a number of devasting criticisms of Palin, from a number of conservatives --- as reposted elsewhere...  The same commenter, "ntak6090", then posted yet another link to the article as re-posted elswhere, at a site which re-posts a feed of all FNC articles. The comment included the chiding "Too late FOX... once you put something on the Internet, it stays on the Internet"...  In addition to the comments from Parker, calling on Palin to leave the ticket, The BRAD BLOG also recently noted comments about Palin from Laura Bush, who, in a rather stunning, yet under-reported admission, agreed that she lacks foreign policy experience. We also ran clips from Palin's disastrous CBS interviews, which were somewhat lost in the flurry of news concerning the Wall Steet bailout, but which seem to have been a tipping point for a number of previously-supportiver conservatives. As a courtesy to Fox "News" --- who must have removed the article sharing some of those concerns because they are running short on Internet ink today --- and for their faithful readers and viewers, we'll go ahead and run their original complete story, as spiked from their website, in full below... Conservatives Begin Questioning Palin’s Heft by Associated Press Sunday, September 28, 2008 http://elections.foxnews...questioning-palins-heft/ A growing number of Republicans are expressing concern about Sarah Palin’s uneven - and sometimes downright awkward - performances in her limited media appearances. Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, a former Palin supporter, says the vice presidential nominee should step aside. Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing for the conservative National Review, says “that’s not a crazy suggestion” and that “something’s gotta change.” Tony Fabrizio, a GOP strategist, says Palin’s recent CBS appearance isn’t disqualifying but is certainly alarming. “You can’t continue to have interviews like that and not take on water.” “I have not been blown away by the interviews from her, but at the same time, I haven’t come away from them thinking she doesn’t know s-t,” said Chris Lacivita, a GOP strategist. “But she ain’t *** Cheney, nor Joe Biden and definitely not Hillary Clinton.” There is no doubt that Palin retains a tremendous amount of support among rank-and-file Republicans. She draws huge crowds, continues to raise a lot of money for the McCain campaign, and state parties report she has sparked an uptick in the number of volunteers. Asked about Palin’s performance in the CBS interview, a McCain official briefing reporters on condition of anonymity said: “She did fine. She’s a tremendous asset and a fantastic candidate.” But there is also no doubt many Republican insiders are worried she could blow next week’s debate, based on her unexpectedly weak and unsteady media appearances, and hurt the Republican ticket if she does. What follows is a viewer’s guide to some of Palin’s toughest moments on camera so far. Speaking this week with CBS’s Katie Couric, Palin seemed caught off-guard by a very predictable question about the status of McCain adviser Rick Davis’ relationship with mortgage lender Freddie Mac. Davis was accused by several news outlets of retaining ties - and profiting from - the companies despite his denials. Where a more experienced politician might have been able to brush off Couric’s follow-up question, Palin seemed genuinely stumped, repeating the same answer twice and resorting to boilerplate language about the “undue influence of lobbyists.” These missteps could be attributed to inadequate preparation and don’t necessarily reflect more deeply on Palin’s ability to perform as vice president. But when reporters have tried to probe Palin’s thinking on subjects such as foreign policy, she’s been similarly opaque. In an interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson, Palin gave a muddled answer to a question about her opinion of the Bush Doctrine. And given the chance to describe her foreign policy credentials more fully, Palin recited familiar talking points, telling Gibson that her experience with energy policy was sufficient preparation for dealing with national security issues. In the same interview, Palin let Gibson lead her into saying it might be necessary to wage war on Russia - a suggestion that most candidates would have avoided making explicitly and that signaled her discomfort in discussing global affairs. Then, asked this week by Couric to discuss her knowledge of foreign relations - in particular, her assertion that Alaska’s proximity to Russia gave her international experience - Palin tripped herself up explaining her interactions with Alaska’s neighbor to the west. Watch CBS Videos Online On the economy, too, Palin has avoided taking clear stances. In a largely friendly interview with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, Palin spoke in tangled generalities in response to a question about a possible Wall Street bailout - and even preempted her campaign by coming out against it. On Thursday, Palin finally took questions from her traveling press - but shut things down quickly after Politico’s Kenneth P. Vogel asked her whether she would support Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, who has been indicted for corruption, and Rep. Don Young, who is under federal investigation, for reelection. Unlike her other interviews, at least this time Palin had the option to walk away. |
Connell is refusing to testify or to produce documents relating to the system used in the 2004 and 2006 elections, lawyers say. His 
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