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Washington resignations serve justice
BY: Jack Miles, Editor
Todd Graves built a solid reputation as a career prosecutor and conservative Republican loyalist, but appears to have gotten “whacked” politically by his own party for having the audacity to place principle before politics.
Graves in 1994 and 1998 won election as the Platte County, Mo., prosecutor on Kansas City's northwest side. He cleaned up the pigsty of an office he inherited – files everywhere, including in halls – and turned the office into a place where people could work with pride. On substantive issues, he emphasized prosecutions over plea bargains, employing the kind of zeal for justice that the public expected from the youngest prosecutor working in Missouri at that time.
Graves did not stand alone on the family farm as a loyal Republican. He helped brother Sam Graves rise to state senator. From there Sam ascended further to become Missouri's 6th Congressional District representative.
Again earning their Republican stripes, both Graves brothers won their elected posts by defeating high-profile Democrats. Todd whipped an incumbent prosecutor and Sam slammed U.S. Rep. Patsy Ann Danner's son, Steve, who ran with the expectation of replacing his four-term mother. The Graves brothers' loyalty to the party is indisputable.
When George Bush eked out the controversial presidential victory of 2000, no one seemed surprised that Todd got the nod from Bush. On July 30, 2001, Todd replaced Clinton appointee Stephen Hill as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri. As an experienced prosecutor and rising GOP star, Todd made an excellent choice. Having brother Sam in agreement with Bush about all things political did not hurt, either.
The shocker regarding Todd's tenure as U.S. attorney came when he left March 24, 2006. The resignation raised eyebrows.
After taking the appointment, Todd had turned the office into a well-oiled, crime-fighting machine. Criminal prosecutions jumped 43 percent, including eight capital murder cases; child exploitation cases received aggressive prosecution; and putting gun-toting felons behind bars became a priority. To have Todd resign abruptly to enter private practice in the midst of such success left people scratching their heads.
People first wondered whether Todd had become ensnared by the state's drivers license bureau scandal. The scandal involved Gov. Matt Blunt's dumb decision to dole out lucrative license fee offices to political pals. Blunt could have set a tone for integrity during his first months in office by ending the practice, but instead he continued a tradition of sleaze. Even so, a federal investigation revealed nothing illegal involving the offices or Todd, so people stopped speculating about that and began wondering whether Todd might have been forced out of his job due to the rift between brother Sam and a fellow Missourian, U.S. Sen. Christopher Bond. But no credible cause-effect relationship emerged and that idea also faded away.
Why Todd left his job remained a mystery until Senate and House Judiciary Committee hearings began offering insight into the Justice Department's firings of U.S. attorneys. The hearings suggested Todd lost his job just for being a good guy – one of those rare, unsung heroes more interested in what people in his community think of him than what Washington's power-hungry egomaniacs think of him.
Public comments coming out of the hearings suggest that when told by Justice Department leaders to use his job to advance a partisan political agenda involving questionable election fraud charges, Todd refused.
Again, that is just what is suggested. Todd did not say that the Justice Department wanted him to pin Missouri's scandalous voting rolls on a top Democrat. Todd also did not say that anyone wanted him to indict job slackers – defined as losers who lied about recruiting voters just to get a paycheck.
Todd, 41, instead gave testimony that he got a phone call asking him to quit.
After being forced out of a job he had done so well, Todd could have been like most people. He could have said, “To hell with a party that could treat me like that.” He could have speculated, with juicy bits of innuendo, about why he got the call.
Todd, ever the party loyalist, did not speculate. He did not vent. To this day he thanks Bush for having provided the opportunity to serve.
The Justice Department replaced Todd, the experienced prosecutor, with Bradley Schloz-man, Overland Park, a man with Washington connections, but no criminal prosecution experience.
After Schlozman took charge, his office began investigating former employees at ACORN, a liberal political group that registers people to vote. As occurs in other types of offices, some ACORN employees play on the Internet, talk on the phone, take long lunch breaks and then try to cheat employers by offering last-minute, sub-standard work. ACORN's quality controllers catch slackers who submit fake voter registrations. ACORN management always fires those slackers and turns over their names to prosecutors. They did so last year, too, but at that time Schlozman's office chose to turn slacking into a federal case.
Such actions might be shrugged off as the work of an eager new prosector, but this prosecution has a “backstory.” Schlozman admitted before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had read the Justice Department's manual. The manual states prosecutions should not be filed just before an election in cases where the department might appear to take a side in that election. As a way to maintain the integrity of the Justice Department, the policy makes perfect sense. But Schlozman's office filed the voter fraud case Nov. 1, less than a week before the hotly contested race between Sen. Jim Talent and Claire McCaskill.
The timing favored Talent, a Republican. Thanks to Schlozman's office, the Missouri Republican Party used the indictments to accuse Democrats of vote theft. The party blasted McCaskill for being connected to ACORN and blasted ACORN, too, without ever mentioning that ACORN caught and turned in the slackers.
Justice Department leaders had reasons to believe they had a “party animal” on their hands when they named Schlozman to replace Todd. Prior to coming to Missouri, Schlozman had worked for the Justice Department. While there, he backed a lawsuit that continues to this day. The suit targets Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's office. Carnahan is the daughter of former U.S. Sen. Jean Carnahan and Gov. Mel Carnahan. The Carnahans are Missouri's No. 1 family of Democrats.
The suit tries to make Robin's office responsible for updating election records in Missouri's 114 counties and the city of St. Louis. The suit failed when U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey ruled April 13 that local jurisdictions, not the state, must police voting rolls. The department has appealed the ruling.
Graves is one of nine U.S. district attorneys forced out of office on U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' watch. After the firings and circumstances came to light, people across the nation began calling upon Gonzales to resign. Just before doing so this week, several other Justice Department members resigned under fire. Schlozman's resignation became public last week.
So long as Gonzales remained attorney general, the Justice Department looked like little more than a Republican Party tool.
Now that Gonzales, Schlozman and others who caused so much controversy can no longer affect the work of good prosecutors, including Todd, perhaps the Justice Department will return to delivering what Americans expect ...
Justice.
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Graves in 1994 and 1998 won election as the Platte County, Mo., prosecutor on Kansas City's northwest side. He cleaned up the pigsty of an office he inherited – files everywhere, including in halls – and turned the office into a place where people could work with pride. On substantive issues, he emphasized prosecutions over plea bargains, employing the kind of zeal for justice that the public expected from the youngest prosecutor working in Missouri at that time.
Graves did not stand alone on the family farm as a loyal Republican. He helped brother Sam Graves rise to state senator. From there Sam ascended further to become Missouri's 6th Congressional District representative.
Again earning their Republican stripes, both Graves brothers won their elected posts by defeating high-profile Democrats. Todd whipped an incumbent prosecutor and Sam slammed U.S. Rep. Patsy Ann Danner's son, Steve, who ran with the expectation of replacing his four-term mother. The Graves brothers' loyalty to the party is indisputable.
When George Bush eked out the controversial presidential victory of 2000, no one seemed surprised that Todd got the nod from Bush. On July 30, 2001, Todd replaced Clinton appointee Stephen Hill as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri. As an experienced prosecutor and rising GOP star, Todd made an excellent choice. Having brother Sam in agreement with Bush about all things political did not hurt, either.
The shocker regarding Todd's tenure as U.S. attorney came when he left March 24, 2006. The resignation raised eyebrows.
After taking the appointment, Todd had turned the office into a well-oiled, crime-fighting machine. Criminal prosecutions jumped 43 percent, including eight capital murder cases; child exploitation cases received aggressive prosecution; and putting gun-toting felons behind bars became a priority. To have Todd resign abruptly to enter private practice in the midst of such success left people scratching their heads.
People first wondered whether Todd had become ensnared by the state's drivers license bureau scandal. The scandal involved Gov. Matt Blunt's dumb decision to dole out lucrative license fee offices to political pals. Blunt could have set a tone for integrity during his first months in office by ending the practice, but instead he continued a tradition of sleaze. Even so, a federal investigation revealed nothing illegal involving the offices or Todd, so people stopped speculating about that and began wondering whether Todd might have been forced out of his job due to the rift between brother Sam and a fellow Missourian, U.S. Sen. Christopher Bond. But no credible cause-effect relationship emerged and that idea also faded away.
Why Todd left his job remained a mystery until Senate and House Judiciary Committee hearings began offering insight into the Justice Department's firings of U.S. attorneys. The hearings suggested Todd lost his job just for being a good guy – one of those rare, unsung heroes more interested in what people in his community think of him than what Washington's power-hungry egomaniacs think of him.
Public comments coming out of the hearings suggest that when told by Justice Department leaders to use his job to advance a partisan political agenda involving questionable election fraud charges, Todd refused.
Again, that is just what is suggested. Todd did not say that the Justice Department wanted him to pin Missouri's scandalous voting rolls on a top Democrat. Todd also did not say that anyone wanted him to indict job slackers – defined as losers who lied about recruiting voters just to get a paycheck.
Todd, 41, instead gave testimony that he got a phone call asking him to quit.
After being forced out of a job he had done so well, Todd could have been like most people. He could have said, “To hell with a party that could treat me like that.” He could have speculated, with juicy bits of innuendo, about why he got the call.
Todd, ever the party loyalist, did not speculate. He did not vent. To this day he thanks Bush for having provided the opportunity to serve.
The Justice Department replaced Todd, the experienced prosecutor, with Bradley Schloz-man, Overland Park, a man with Washington connections, but no criminal prosecution experience.
After Schlozman took charge, his office began investigating former employees at ACORN, a liberal political group that registers people to vote. As occurs in other types of offices, some ACORN employees play on the Internet, talk on the phone, take long lunch breaks and then try to cheat employers by offering last-minute, sub-standard work. ACORN's quality controllers catch slackers who submit fake voter registrations. ACORN management always fires those slackers and turns over their names to prosecutors. They did so last year, too, but at that time Schlozman's office chose to turn slacking into a federal case.
Such actions might be shrugged off as the work of an eager new prosector, but this prosecution has a “backstory.” Schlozman admitted before the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had read the Justice Department's manual. The manual states prosecutions should not be filed just before an election in cases where the department might appear to take a side in that election. As a way to maintain the integrity of the Justice Department, the policy makes perfect sense. But Schlozman's office filed the voter fraud case Nov. 1, less than a week before the hotly contested race between Sen. Jim Talent and Claire McCaskill.
The timing favored Talent, a Republican. Thanks to Schlozman's office, the Missouri Republican Party used the indictments to accuse Democrats of vote theft. The party blasted McCaskill for being connected to ACORN and blasted ACORN, too, without ever mentioning that ACORN caught and turned in the slackers.
Justice Department leaders had reasons to believe they had a “party animal” on their hands when they named Schlozman to replace Todd. Prior to coming to Missouri, Schlozman had worked for the Justice Department. While there, he backed a lawsuit that continues to this day. The suit targets Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's office. Carnahan is the daughter of former U.S. Sen. Jean Carnahan and Gov. Mel Carnahan. The Carnahans are Missouri's No. 1 family of Democrats.
The suit tries to make Robin's office responsible for updating election records in Missouri's 114 counties and the city of St. Louis. The suit failed when U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey ruled April 13 that local jurisdictions, not the state, must police voting rolls. The department has appealed the ruling.
Graves is one of nine U.S. district attorneys forced out of office on U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' watch. After the firings and circumstances came to light, people across the nation began calling upon Gonzales to resign. Just before doing so this week, several other Justice Department members resigned under fire. Schlozman's resignation became public last week.
So long as Gonzales remained attorney general, the Justice Department looked like little more than a Republican Party tool.
Now that Gonzales, Schlozman and others who caused so much controversy can no longer affect the work of good prosecutors, including Todd, perhaps the Justice Department will return to delivering what Americans expect ...
Justice.