1115.org

The Washington Post generously gave Alberto Buttercheeks space on their op-ed page today, to allow him to continue to cheerfully distort the public record concerning the prosecutor firings.

This is, apparently, a preview of the testimony he proposes to serve up to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

He’s apparently hoping that a judicious mixture of distortions, selective amnesia and brazen lies will carry the day and help save his job.

I’m hoping no one disabuses him of this notion between now and Tuesday.

Unfortunately for Buttercheeks, the reams of documents the Bush administration has been forced to disgorge already to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the marvels of the internets, are enough to produce what may charitably be described as some extremely embarrassing juxtapositions.

Now:

What began as a well-intentioned management effort to identify where, among the 93 U.S. attorneys, changes in leadership might benefit the department, and therefore the American people, has become an unintended public controversy.

Then:

According to someone who’s had conversations with White House officials, the plan to fire all 93 U.S. attorneys originated with political adviser Karl Rove. It was seen as a way to get political cover for firing the small number of U.S. attorneys the White House actually wanted to get rid of. Documents show the plan was eventually dismissed as impractical.

A well-intentioned effort to benefit the American people was deemed at the very outset – even before those noble intentions presumably got derailed — to require such drastic political cover?

What kind of people go: let’s unnecessarily fire 85 other U.S. Attorneys in order to cover up why we’re getting rid of these 8? And then try to pretend later they can’t think why the firings are creating a public controversy.

Now:

Furthermore, I have no basis to believe that anyone involved in this process sought the removal of a U.S. attorney for an improper reason.

Then:
On March 26, Monica Goodling announces she will take the fifth.

Not a basis for believing that someone intimately involved in the process thought they had been engaged in anything improper, huh?

Fiction (or evidence of selective amnesia):

Additionally, I have instructed all Justice Department officials to make themselves available for on-the-record interviews with lawmakers and hearings before Congress, and I have ordered the release of thousands of pages of internal documents.

Facts:
a) Monica Goodling, who remained a Justice Department official in good standing for weeks after she announced she would take the fifth.
b) We are fighting tooth and nail to keep thousands of other internal documents and millions of emails from ever seeing the light of day. Because we have nothing to hide.

MSNBC, March 21:

The panel also voted to compel the production of documents related to the firings from those officials and Gonzales, Fielding and White House chief of staff Joshua Bolton. Fielding a day earlier refused to provide Congress internal White House communications on the subject.

Salon’s War Room, April 13:

Before we get too much further on the question of those missing White House e-mails, let’s stop for a moment to remember this: As things currently stand, the White House wouldn’t turn them over to Congress even if it could find them.

White House counsel Fred Fielding made that point in no uncertain terms Thursday in a letter to House Oversight Committee chairman Henry Waxman.

Now:

I have nevertheless asked the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility to further investigate this matter. Working with the department’s Office of Inspector General, these nonpartisan professionals will complete their own independent investigation so that Congress and the American people can be 100 percent assured of what I believe and what the investigation thus far has shown: that nothing improper occurred.

Translation:
We have been accused of gross misconduct, illegal acts even. These are serious accusations. We are taking them seriously. We are investigating them ourselves; if you want it done right, you just have to do it yourself. Our ORP and our OIG will reach a finding that nothing improper occurred. You can trust me on that, 100%.

Now:

During those conversations, to my knowledge, I did not make decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign.

As far as I know, I did not make decisions…? And this is after days and days of intensive coaching? If I were Buttercheeks’s mom, I would tell him to resign immediately. Just to spare himself the mortification that will surely result from Tuesday’s committee appearance.

Alberto’s op-ed piece carries this helpful little identifier at the end: “The writer is the U.S. attorney general.”

Some things, of course, are not written in stone.