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HavenWorks.com/people/a-z/m/mcnulty-paul-j Paul J McNulty News |
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 Paul
J McNulty
PAUL MCNULTY News:
 Michael
J Elston
-  Alberto
R Gonzales -  Paul
J McNulty
-  Government
-  US
Attorneys - OxyContin
-  Drug
- Manufacturer
-  Money
-  Politics
-  Virginia
"U.S. Attorney Became Target After Rebuffing Justice Dept.." ... "The night before the government secured a guilty plea from the manufacturer of the addictive painkiller OxyContin, a senior Justice Department official called the U.S. attorney handling the case and, at the behest of an executive for the drugmaker, urged him to slow down, the prosecutor told the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday." ... "John L. Brownlee, the U.S. attorney in Roanoke [Virginia], testified that he was at home the evening of Oct. 24 when he received the call on his cellphone from Michael J. Elston, then chief of staff to the deputy attorney general and one of the Justice aides involved in the removal of nine U.S. attorneys last year." ... "Brownlee settled the case anyway. Eight days later, his name appeared on a list compiled by Elston of prosecutors that officials had suggested be fired." ... "Brownlee ultimately kept his job. But as Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales confronts withering criticism over the dismissals, the episode in the OxyContin case provides fresh evidence of efforts by senior officials in the department's headquarters to sway the work of U.S. attorneys' offices." ... " ... Elston's attorney, Robert N. Driscoll, said his client had telephoned Brownlee at the direction of [Deputy Attorney General Paul J.] McNulty, who that evening had received an appeal for more time by Mary Jo White, a defense lawyer representing an executive for OxyContin's manufacturer, Purdue Pharma." -By Amy Goldstein and Carrie Johnson -WashingtonPost
Mike
Elston - Paul
McNulty
- Alberto
Gonzales -  Monica
M Goodling -  Kyle
Sampson
-  Mike
Battle - US
Attorneys -  Law
"Official close to attorney firings quits." ... "A senior Justice Department official who helped carry out the dismissals of federal prosecutors said Friday he is resigning. Mike Elston, chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, is the fifth Justice official to leave after being linked to the dismissals of the prosecutors." ... "Elston was accused of threatening at least four of the eight fired U.S. attorneys to keep quiet about their ousters. In a statement Friday, the Justice Department said Elston was leaving voluntarily to take a job with an unnamed Washington[DC]-area law firm." ... "The firings have led to congressional investigations, an internal Justice Department inquiry and calls on Capitol Hill for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales." ... "Other aides who have resigned in the wake of the firings include former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson and White House liaison Monica M. Goodling. A fifth official, Mike Battle, who ran the Justice office that oversees the U.S. attorneys, left in March." -By Lara Jakes Jordan -AP via -ADN.com
Michael
Elston - Paul
McNulty
- US
Attorneys - Law
-  Enforcement
"Another official quits in controversy over ousted U.S. attorneys." ... "Michael Elston, chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, became the fifth [Justice] department official to leave his post since the controversy over the firings rocked the nation's top law enforcement agency." ... "Elston's name first surfaced when one of the fired U.S. attorneys, Bud Cummins of Arkansas, disclosed in March that Elston had phoned him to suggest that senior department officials would retaliate against the prosecutors if they discussed their firings publicly." ... "In an e-mail written to five of the ousted U.S. attorneys minutes after the Elston call, Cummins said of the conversation: "I was tempted to challenge him and say something movie-like such as `are you threatening ME???'"" -By Greg Gordon -McClatchy via -RealCities
 Karl
Rove -  Sara
Taylor - Kyle
Sampson
- Alberto
Gonzales - Paul
McNulty
-  Tim
Griffin -  Ark
- US
Attorneys - Law
- E-Mail
"Officials rebuked for disclosing Rove's connection to firing of U.S. attorney." ... "The White House's former political director was furious at Justice Department officials for disclosing to Congress that the administration had forced out the U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Ark., to make way for a protege of Karl Rove, [Republican] President Bush's political adviser, according to documents released late Tuesday." ... "Then-White House political affairs director Sara Taylor spelled out her frustrations in a Feb. 16 e-mail to Kyle Sampson, then the chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales." ... "She sent the message after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told the Senate that unlike other federal prosecutors, U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins wasn't fired for performance reasons, but to make way for former Republican political operative Tim Griffin. Griffin, serving as the interim U.S. attorney, then announced that he wouldn't seek confirmation to the Arkansas post, but would remain until the Senate confirmed someone else. Griffin has since resigned." ... ""Tim was put in a horrible position; hung out to dry w/ no heads up," Taylor lashed out in the e-mail, which was sent from a Republican Party account rather than from her White House e-mail address. "This is not good for his long-term career."" -By Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor -McClatchy via -RealCities 
Monica
Goodling - Tim
Griffin - Alberto
Gonzales - Paul
McNulty
- Karl
Rove -  Harriet
Miers -  Noteworthy
- US
Attorneys -  Military
-  Students
- Race
- Politics
- Law
- 2004
Election - Arkansas
-  Florida
"Raging Caging: What the heck is vote caging, and why should we care?" ... "Last week, in her testimony before the House judiciary committee, [Republican] Monica Goodling referred several times to "vote caging" possibly done by Arkansas' soon to be ex-interim, never-confirmed [Republican] U.S. Attorney Tim Griffin. Yet Goodling was questioned about this almost not at all, nor did the media do much more than report the words of the former liaison between the [Republican President Bush's] White House and [Republican] Alberto Gonzales (why a "liaison" is required between two institutions with no boundaries between them is incomprehensible, but perhaps another story). Meanwhile, liberal talk radio, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the blogosphere went nuts. So, which is it: Is vote caging the most underreported part of this U.S. attorneys scandal or the most over-hyped?" ... "One of the reasons the mainstream news reports (including mine [Dahlia Lithwick]) barely touched the vote-caging story was that nobody had any idea what Goodling was talking about. "Vote caging, what's that?" we e-mailed each other at Slate. The confusion seemed to extend to Goodling herself. The subject came up in her testimony about former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty. In saying he had not been forthright with the House judiciary committee in his testimony on the firing of the U.S. attorneys, she cited three areas, one of which was McNulty's failure "to disclose that he had some knowledge of allegations that Tim Griffin had been involved in 'vote caging' in the president's 2004 [election] campaign," when he spoke to Congress." ... "Vote caging is an illegal trick to suppress minority voters (who tend to vote Democrat) by getting them knocked off the voter rolls if they fail to answer registered mail sent to homes they aren't living at (because they are, say, at college or at war). The Republican National Committee reportedly stopped the practice following a consent decree in a 1986 case. Google the term and you'll quickly arrive at the Wizard of Oz of caging, Greg Palast, investigative reporter and author of the wickedly funny Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans—Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Palast started reporting allegations of Republican vote caging for the BBC's Newsnight in 2004. He's been almost alone on the story since then. Palast contends, both in Armed Madhouse and widely through the liberal blogosphere, that vote caging, an illegal voter-suppression scheme, happened in Florida in 2004 this way:"
Monica
M Goodling - Alberto
R Gonzales - Kyle
Sampson
- Paul
J McNulty
- Political
- US
Attorneys -  Jobs
- Civil
Rights -  Environment
"Officials Describe Interference by Former Gonzales Aide." ... "When Jeffrey A. Taylor, interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wanted to hire a new career prosecutor last fall, he had to run the idea past Monica M. Goodling, then a 33-year-old aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales." ... "The candidate was Seth Adam Meinero, a Howard University law school graduate who had worked on civil rights cases at the Environmental Protection Agency and had served as a special assistant prosecutor in Taylor's office." ... "Goodling stalled the hiring, saying that Meinero was too "liberal" for the nonpolitical position, said according to two sources familiar with the dispute." ... "The tussle over Meinero, who was eventually hired at Taylor's insistence, led to a Justice Department investigation of whether Goodling improperly weighed political affiliation when reviewing applicants for rank-and-file prosecutor jobs, the sources said." ... "Goodling's public troubles began in mid-March, when [Kyle] Sampson disclosed to Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and others that the plan to fire the U.S. attorneys had begun more than two years earlier in the White House, contrary to what McNulty and another official had testified to Congress." (1, 2) -By Dan Eggen and Carol D. Leonnig with contributions by Amy Goldstein and Jerry Markon -WashingtonPost
Paul
J McNulty
- Alberto
R Gonzales - US
Attorneys - Law
-  History
"No. 2 at Justice Department resigns: Paul McNulty is the highest ranking person to quit in the scandal over the firing of U.S. attorneys. Democrats renew calls for Gonzales to leave." ... "Paul J. McNulty, a career Republican operative who rose to the No. 2 spot at the Department of Justice, announced his resignation Monday in the midst of the widening scandal over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys." ... "His exit marks the fourth resignation since the matter became public this year. It is all the more dramatic because of his high rank — deputy attorney general — in the [Republican] Bush administration." ... "McNulty has admitted misleading Congress about the reasons for the dismissals. Though he maintained he was out of the loop about the terminations, documents showed he attended a crucial meeting with Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales and others to review a final list of prosecutors to be fired." ... "A Washington fixture who was a legal advisor during the Republican-led impeachment drive against President Clinton a decade ago, McNulty went on to work for President Bush's transition team after the 2000 election, directing the team's efforts in building a new Justice Department." (1, 2) -By Richard A. Serrano with contributions by Richard B. Schmitt -LAtimes 
Secret
- Paul
McNulty
- Michael
Elston
- US
Attorneys - Law
- Politics
-  Arizona
- Arkansas
- Seattle
-  Washington
- San
Francisco -  California
"Justice Official Says He Was Directed To Call Fired Prosecutors." ... "The chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty has told congressional investigators that phone calls he placed to four fired U.S. attorneys -- calls that three of the prosecutors say involved threats about testifying before Congress -- were made at McNulty's direction." ... "Michael Elston, the chief of staff, told congressional investigators in a closed-door session on March 30 that McNulty specifically instructed him to make the phone calls after the Justice Department's No. 2 official learned that the fired prosecutors might testify before Congress about their dismissals." ... "At least one member of Congress has questioned whether the phone calls might constitute obstruction of justice." ... "Elston said that McNulty directed him to place calls to fired U.S. attorneys Paul Charlton of Arizona, Bud Cummins of Arkansas, and John McKay of Seattle [Washington], all of whom said they felt pressured to keep quiet. Elston also placed a call to federal prosecutor Kevin Ryan of San Francisco [California], as directed, but did not speak to him. The calls were placed between January and March of this year -- before details about the political motivations for the firings became public." ... "On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee made public formal correspondence from three fired prosecutors who said they thought that Elston was trying to intimidate them into keeping quiet." -By Murray Waas -NationalJournal
Gonzales
- Monica
Goodling - Paul
McNulty
-  Domenici
- US
Attorneys
- Politics
-  NY
-  NM
- 2006
Election
"Gonzales Aide to Invoke Fifth Amendment." ... "Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' liaison [Monica Goodling] with the White House will refuse to answer questions at upcoming Senate hearings about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, citing her Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, her lawyer said Monday." ... "Goodling's statement contradicted her boss' promise to allow his top aides to testify before Congress, voluntarily and under oath." ... "[New York Democratic Senator] Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is leading the Senate's investigation into the firings, said Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told him he was misled by other Justice Department aides before he testified to Schumer's panel on Feb. 6." ... "A day earlier, Goodling was among those who helped McNulty prepare his testimony. Schumer has said McNulty may have given Congress incomplete or otherwise misleading information about the circumstances of the firings." ... "Additionally, Goodling was involved in an April 6, 2006, phone call between the Justice Department and [New Mexico Republican Senator] Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who had complained to the Bush administration and the president about David Iglesias, then the U.S. attorney in Albuquerque [New Mexico]. Domenici had wanted Iglesias to push more aggressively on a corruption probe against Democrats before the 2006 elections." ... "Iglesias told Congress earlier this month that he rejected what he believed to be pressure from Domenici to rush indictments that would have hurt Democrats in the November elections." ... "At a March 13 news conference, Gonzales denied that he participated in discussions or saw any documents about the firings, despite documents that show he attended a Nov. 27 meeting with senior aides on the topic, where he approved a detailed plan to carry out the dismissals." -By Laurie Kellman with contributions by Lara Jakes Jordan -APvia -SFGate.com
Rove
- Gonzales
- Miers
- US
Attorneys
- Law
- Enforcement
- Politics
- Arkansas
- E-Mails
"E-Mails Show Machinations to Replace Prosecutor: Administration Worked for Months to Make Rove Aide U.S. Attorney in Arkansas." ... "Two months before Bud Cummins was fired as U.S. attorney in Little Rock [Arkansas], a protege of presidential adviser Karl Rove was maneuvering with the Justice Department to take his place." ... "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." ... "By June 13, about a week before Cummins would be told he was losing his job, Sampson wrote to Monica Goodling, senior counsel to Gonzales, to tell her that a colleague had the necessary pre-nomination paperwork for Griffin. He said that he would speak the following morning with Michael A. Battle, chief of the office that oversees U.S. attorneys, and make sure that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty's office "knows that we are now executing this plan."" ... "Sampson's note suggests the plan was not new: "I did tell them this was likely coming several months ago."" (1, 2, 3) -By Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein with contributions by Michael Abramowitz -WashingtonPost
Gonzales
- Rove
- Law
- Politics
- E-Mail
- Arkansas
"Statements On Firings of Prosecutors Are Key Issue." ... "In testimony on Jan. 18, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Justice Department had no intention of avoiding Senate input on the hiring of U.S. attorneys." ... "Just a month earlier, D. Kyle Sampson, who was then Gonzales's chief of staff, laid out a plan to do just that. In an e-mail, he detailed a strategy for evading Arkansas Democrats in installing Tim Griffin, a former GOP [Republican] operative and protege of presidential adviser Karl Rove, as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock [Arkansas]." ... ""We should gum this to death," Sampson wrote to a White House aide on Dec. 19. "[A]sk the senators to give Tim a chance . . . then we can tell them we'll look for other candidates, ask them for recommendations, evaluate the recommendations, interview their candidates, and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in 'good faith,' of course."" ... "Democrats and Republicans are demanding to know whether Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and other Justice officials misled them in sworn testimony over the past two months." ... "The inconsistencies between Justice's positions and the documents are numerous. On Feb. 23, for example, a Justice legislative affairs aide wrote to [New York Democratic Senator] Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) that the department "was not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin." But internal Justice e-mails show that "getting him appointed is important" to Rove and was closely monitored by political aides in the White House." ... "Last week, senior Justice official William E. Moschella told a House Judiciary subcommittee that the White House was not consulted on the firings until the end of the process." ... "But the documents released this week show that the plan began more than two years ago at the White House counsel's office [Harriet Miers], which initially suggested firing all 93 U.S. attorneys. Gonzales rejected that idea, and Sampson wrote back in January 2006 that Justice and the White House should "work together to seek the replacement of a limited number of U.S. Attorneys."" ... "McNulty told the committee that there was no plan to use Gonzales's appointment powers to evade Senate oversight, that accusations of "politicizing" the hiring and firing process were "completely contrary to my daily experience," and that the dismissals of everyone but the Arkansas prosecutor were purely "performance-related."" ... "Each of those contentions is called into question by the 143 pages of internal e-mails and other documents turned over to the House and the Senate on Tuesday. Most had been sent or received by Sampson." ... "Political considerations, for example, figured prominently in who was chosen to be fired. Sampson ranked all 93 U.S. attorneys in part on whether they "exhibited loyalty" to Bush and Gonzales or "chafed against Administration initiatives etc."" (1, 2) -By Dan Eggen with contributions by Julie Tate -WashingtonPost |
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