U.S. Attorneys Scandal—Seattle

By Scott Horton

Former Deputy Attorney General Comey’s testimony yesterday about cashiered Seattle U.S. Attorney John McKay brought out a number of very interesting details, particularly about how McKay sought funding for an investigation into the murder of an assistant U.S. attorney named Tom Wales. Josh Marshall has a fascinating note from another AUSA in the Seattle office who provides some vital detail:

Tom Wales was shot and killed in 2001. What nobody has talked about, and what you may not be aware of, is the fact that Tom Wales was extremely active in attempting to get tighter gun control laws passed here in Washington.

Think about that for a second. A pro-gun control federal prosecutor was shot and killed. John McKay was agitating for more resources to bring his killer to justice. That pissed off DOJ, who apparently thought that McKay should spend his time going after bogus voter fraud prosecutions rather than solve the murder of a guy who was in favor of gun control. If you don't think the fact that Tom Wales' political views weren't taken into consideration by the higher ups at DOJ when they decided to punish McKay for fighting to find his killer, you haven't been paying attention to the way these guys have operated for the last 6 years. Every single thing they do is about politics, and the political views of those they help or hurt.

The bottom line of this whole McKay firing could be summed up in this way: try to catch killers, you get fired. File BS charges of voter fraud, you keep your job.

It's a slap in the face to every prosecutor in the country. It's our job to seek justice for those that aren't able to seek it for themselves. None of us should give a damn what the political views are of the victims we try to protect. It's beyond reprehensible for them to punish McKay for doing this. But for this administration, it's par for the course.

It’s easy to understand why so many young prosecutors have been demoralized by the regime that Alberto Gonzales and Paul J. McNulty brought to Justice. And the most outrageous moment (of many) in Gonzales’s testimony was his invocation of the integrity of the prosecutors who work for him as a shield. This note sums up an attitude which is, I suspect, very common out in the field right now.

Let me pay tribute once more to the team at Talking Points Memo, whose tenacious attention to this affair pushed it into the open. They reveal, I think, the very best that opinion journalism on the web has to offer, and their fame is really sinking in. In a discussion I had with a network news executive a short while ago Josh Marshall’s name came up. “What a phenomenal investigator,” the executive said, “I don’t understand how he does it.” Neither do I.