Out of the Cage

Rove protege Tim Griffin is the latest casualty of Attorneygate. According to news reports, Griffin to resign Friday, Ark. congressional staffers say:

Spokesmen for Arkansas congressional members say Tim Griffin, the federal prosecutor in Arkansas whose appointment was among those that led to calls for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, is resigning Friday.

Griffin, a former assistant to White House political adviser Karl Rove, stepped in as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas in December, replacing U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins.

Griffin was one of the appointments made under the exception which was slipped into the renewal of the USA Patriot Act in March 2006 that allowed the Attorney General to name interim replacements without Senate confirmation. See Terminator In Chief. That change was eliminated once Attorneygate was exposed. It is clear that Griffin doesn't want to go through the Senate confirmation process which would be necessary to keep his job. Answering questions about his prior job duties might prove a wee bit difficult.

Voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for prison time for the new US Attorney for Arkansas, Timothy Griffin and investigation of Griffin’s former boss, Karl Rove, chief political advisor to President Bush.

“Timothy Griffin,” said Kennedy,”who is the new US attorney in Arkansas, was actually the mastermind behind the voter fraud efforts by the Bush Administration to disenfranchise over a million voters through ‘caging’ techniques - which are illegal.”

This is from an article by Greg Palast that my husband Dave sent me, detailing Griffin's involvement in "caging" of minority voters in Florida during the last election, RFK: Rove And Rove’s Brain, ‘Should Be In Jail,’ Not In Office, which explains:

‘Caging’ lists are “absolutely illegal” under the Voting Rights Act, noted Kennedy on his Air America program, Ring of Fire. The 1965 law makes it a felony crime to challenge voters when race is a factor in the targeting. African-American voters comprised the bulk of the 70,000 voters ‘caged’ in a single state, Florida.

Palast wrote in his book, “Here’s how the scheme worked. The Bush campaign mailed out letters,” particularly targeting African-American soldiers sent overseas. When the letters sent to the home addresses of the soldiers came back “undeliverable” because the servicemen were in Baghdad or elsewhere, the Republican Party would, “challenge the voter’s registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted.”

The Republicans successfully challenged “at least one million” votes of minority voters in the 2004 election.

Kennedy, a voting rights attorney, fumed, “What he [Griffin] did was absolutely illegal and he should be in jail. Instead [Griffin] was rewarded with the US Attorney’s office.”

“They [Griffin, Rove and their confederates at the RNC] knew it was illegal.”

Despite various denials by Gonzales during his Judiciary Committee testimony, it was always planned that Griffin's appointment would come under the Patriot Act exception. See Murray Wass' National Journal piece, Administration Withheld E-Mails About Rove. Waas likewise noted Griffin's confirmation problems:

Griffin faced an uphill battle to win Senate confirmation because, in addition to having served as an aide to Rove, he had served as the research director of the Republican National Committee in 2004, when he had been in charge of opposition research efforts against Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. He had been involved in similar efforts against Al Gore four years earlier as the RNC's deputy research director.

Monica Goodling's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee also referenced Griffin's election activities. Goodling testified that Gonzales' Deputy AG, Paul McNulty, perjured himself, lying to the committee in earlier testimony. Palast describes the lie: McNulty denied Monica had told him about Tim Griffin's "involvement in 'caging' voters" in 2004. See The Goods on Goodling and the Keys to the Kingdom.

With all of the controversy now focused on him, I guess he does want to exit, stage right.

He may be headed back to his old stomping grounds -- working "opposition research" for Fred Thompson's presidential campaign, Former Rove Aide in Talks with Thompson Campaign.

Tags: Attorneygate, Politics, Law, Tim Griffin