From the Forum “Undoing Bush”
In January of 2005, top Justice Department officials began making plans to remove up to 20 percent of the nation’s U.S. attorneys—those deemed not to be “loyal Bushies,” in an apt phrase from a recently disclosed email by Kyle Sampson, then counselor to Attorney General John Ashcroft and subsequently chief of staff to his successor, Alberto Gonzales. Sampson himself was a loyal Bushie of the highest order (at least until he resigned in March, after a scandal erupted over the administration’s firing of eight federal prosecutors). Sampson had come to Washington to work…