The Talented Mr. Griffin

By Scott Horton

Right at the heart of the U.S. attorneys scandal lies the story of Tim Griffin, a trusted lieutenant of Karl Rove who specialized in voter suppression projects. In order to clear out a slot for Griffin, Bud Cummins, a highly respected career prosecutor in Little Rock, was sacked. The push to make room for Griffin also appears to stand behind the legislative change introduced by stealth, bypassing the old process for interim appointments so that the Attorney General could make interim appointments not subject to Congressional oversight. Tim Griffin is likely to emerge as a major subject of questioning tomorrow when Gonzales is sworn in before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

BBC correspondent Greg Palast takes a look at Griffin’s career in separating minority citizens from their right to vote – the work that no doubt made him the apple in the eye of Karl Rove. Expect two senators to leap to the defense of Gonzales in this process:  Utah’s Orrin Hatch, known to be coveting the post of Attorney General himself, and Alabama’s Jeff Sessions. Both have been using White House talking points with regularity and both have already been embarrassed by some serious errors. Hatch made a series of misstatements about San Diego prosector Carol Lam, later acknowledging that he had confused her with someone else. He also mischaracterized the background and experience of Tim Griffin, inflating his prior work as a prosecutor. He was joined in that mistake by Senator Sessions, who was a prosecutor (a well-regarded one, in fact). (Richard Fricker has a recap of those errors and the Birmingham News looks at Sessions’ habit of taking and regurgitating White House talking points undigested.)