Deputy Attorney General

Following last Tuesday's election, RWW will bring you our list of the "The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress." Our fifth candidate profile is on Tim Griffin of Arkansas:

Running in an open Democratic district, Tim Griffin defeated progressive champion Joyce Elliott to win the election to represent Arkansas’s 2nd Congressional District.

Tim Griffin worked in the two Bush presidential campaigns and McCain’s 2008 campaign as the Republicans’ chief opposition researcher. In 2000, he said with regards to his opposition research department: “We think of ourselves as the creators of the ammunition in a war…. We make the bullets.” Conservative columnist Robert Novak called Griffin “a protégé of Karl Rove, who is a leading practitioner of opposition research — the digging up of derogatory information about political opponents.”

He received notoriety in 2004 for his work to advance the false smears propagated by the discredited group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Griffin next came to light when President Bush appointed him U.S. Attorney as part of his ongoing efforts to politicize the Department of Justice. “In December 2006, US Attorney Bud Cummings was fired from his district in Northeast Arkansas and replaced with Tim Griffin,” writes investigative journalist Shannyn Moore, as the Bush Administration used a little known provision of the USA Patriot Act to avoid confirmation hearings and votes by the US Senate. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNaulty later testified that “Cummings was fired to make a place for Griffin at the urging of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers,” the former White House Counsel. Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s Chief of Staff, wrote in an email that “getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc.”

Paul Charlton, who was also ousted in the Bush Administration’s Purge of US Attorneys, said that Griffin “spread the rumors around the White House that Bud Cummins was not a good U.S. attorney” in order to get him fired. Another U.S. Attorney who was pushed out during the purge, David Iglesias, maintains that Tim Griffin “never should have been U.S. Attorney, he was fundamentally unqualified.”

When defending Griffin’s nomination, the Bush Administration used “misleading talking points” which significantly exaggerated his experience as a prosecutor.

Griffin continued his deeply political work while serving as a U.S. Attorney, but was forced to resign in 2007 when he was caught in a “vote caging” operation to prevent minorities from voting. The BBC uncovered emails sent by Griffin during the 2004 campaign which included ‘caging lists’ to bar typically marginalized groups voting, and Griffin’s “caging lists were heavily weighted with minority voters including homeless individuals, students and soldiers sent overseas.”

According to Iglesias, his management of the vote caging maneuvers represents “reprehensible conduct and it may be illegal.” As a result of his disreputable background, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) rated him one of the “most corrupt” candidates for Congress.

When he was not working in the Bush Administration or for GOP campaigns, Griffin was a high-paid consultant and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars while working for “lobbying and consulting firms on shadowy causes,” including the corporate astro-turf campaign that was fighting Alaska’s Clean Water Initiative.

Throughout his congressional campaign, Griffin has closely followed the Karl Rove-playbook of appealing to both corporate interests and the Religious Right. Griffin wants to repeal health care reform and once supported the elimination of corporate taxes in favor of a national sales tax. At a candidate forum, he even went out of his way to laud the state’s relatively low wages for workers and anti-union laws.

An opponent of equal rights and a woman’s right to choose, Griffin supports a Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage, believes that employers should be allowed to fire their employees due to their sexual orientation, and has pledged to protect the discriminatory Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA). The fervently anti-choice group Americans United for Life Action ran ads boosting Griffin and criticizing his opponent, saying that she does not care about “the life of an innocent child.”

After a long career of dirty tricks, corporate astro-turfing, and Rovian politics, Griffin is a darling of the Republican leadership and set to become a star member of the GOP’s freshman class.

Watch this segment from the Bill Moyers Journal on Tim Griffin:

Earlier today I wrote a post about how the Family Research Council was shifting its focus away from trying to influence public policy toward trying to get more right-wing politicians elected because, frankly, they can't do the former if they don't have the latter.

As an example of that, just take a look at today's confirmation vote for David Ogden.  As Josh noted, Ogden's nomination to be Deputy Attorney General unleashed a massive right-wing smear campaign to portray him as a tool of the pornography industry and with groups claiming that he'd be little more than an "ally for advocates for death and homosexuality."

FRC made Odgen a test for Republican senators, announcing that, for the first time ever, they were going to be counting the vote on his nomination on their annual scorecard for members of Congress and, as Greg Sargent reported, even sent a letter [PDF] to all GOP senators warning them that they would be watching how they voted.

Well, the vote was held earlier today and Ogden was confirmed by a vote of 65-28, with 10 Republicans voting for his confirmation. FRC also wanted the senators to vote against Thomas Perrelli's nomination to be Associate Attorney General and lost that one as well, by an even wider 70-20 vote.

Considering that the FRC could only muster 28 votes on Odgen and 20 votes on Perrelli after explicitly declaring that these nominations were a top-line priority and warning Republican senators that their votes would be noted on their permanent records, it's pretty good evidence that FRC's influence is on the wane at the moment and that their best hope for recapturing their former significance lies in working to ensure that candidates who share their right-wing views and will push their right-wing agenda get elected to Congress.

Yesterday Greg Sargent reported that the Family Research Council had sent a letter to Republican Senators warning that it would be watching their votes on several of Barack Obama’s Justice Department nominees, especially that of David Ogden to be Deputy Attorney General, and using the vote in their annual “scorecard.”

Today, just to make sure that everyone got the message, FRC issued a press release containing the same warning:

"Clearly, David Ogden represents a profound threat to American families. So, for the first time ever, FRC Action will score a vote against a nomination. We will include the vote on David Ogden's nomination in our annual Vote Scorecard which tracks votes in Congress critical to the family. We will make every effort to inform the American people how each of their two Senators voted on this far left nomination.

"The American people deserve a Justice Department that will aggressively prosecute those who violate our laws, not someone who has sought to defend and justify some of the most despicable people in our country. I urge all senators to vote no on David Ogden as Deputy Attorney General of the United States."

As FRC says, it has never used a nomination vote on its scorecard before, but apparently Ogden is just so far beyond the pale that they simply must make opposing him a test of the GOP’s fealty to their right-wing agenda.

Just who were those “despicable people” that Odgen represented?  As we noted in a recent RWW In Focus:

To summarize, the Right says David Ogden is a hard-left pro-gay, pro-choice extremist bent on promoting pornography, enabling the exploitation of women and children, and subverting the Constitution to judges’ personal whims and to international law.

Many of those attacks are based on his record as a private attorney, where he represented such “extremist” organizations as the American Library Association, the American Booksellers Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and, yes, Playboy, which is what led a hyperventilating pundit to cry, “Has the Playboy flag really displaced the Stars and Stripes over Washington?”  As Ogden has explained, in those cases he was a lawyer representing his clients and their interests in preserving the First Amendment. He never, in spite of the Right’s claims, argued that obscene materials or child pornography should go unregulated or unpunished. In fact, Ogden served in the Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division and Associate Deputy Attorney General and Chief of Staff and Counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno. While at Justice he led the government’s defense of anti-pornography laws whose constitutionality was being challenged in the courts. 

Among the hard-left radicals who have endorsed Ogden’s nomination:

    * National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
    * National District Attorneys Association
    * Fraternal Order of Police
    * National Association of Police Officers
    * National Sherriff’s Association
    * Federal Law Enforcement Officers’ Association
    * and at least 15 Justice Department and other legal officials from the Reagan, Bush, and Bush administration

I can see why he is such a danger.  Of course, as we pointed out, the Right’s threats and outrage over these DOJ nominees is less about actually stopping any of these nominees and more about getting right-wing activists, pundits, and lawmakers warmed up for similar attacks on eventual Obama nominees to the federal judiciary, and in particular to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Last week I wrote a post about the Right’s opposition to a handful of President Obama nominees to serve in the Justice Department and speculated that this was partially an effort to test their strength under the new administration, but also an effort to start laying the groundwork for their full-blown opposition to his judicial nominees.

The more I see them write about this issue, the more convinced I become that this is actually the case ... and that what they are really preparing for is a Supreme Court battle.  For instance, here is Ken Blackwell writing today about these nominees and why they must be stopped:

Three people in particular are getting close scrutiny this week because their names are before the U.S. Senate. Mr. Obama has nominated David Ogden, Elena Kagan and Dawn Johnsen to be deputy attorney general, solicitor general, and the assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), respectively. These positions, in addition to being three of the highest-ranking posts at the Justice Department, are also common stepping stones to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The deputy attorney general is the number two at Justice. The solicitor general is the lawyer who argues for the government in the Supreme Court when the United States is a party to a suit. And OLC issues official legal positions for the federal government.

Each of them - Mr. Ogden, Ms. Kagan and Ms. Johnsen - are committed liberals whose views on a whole range of issues are on the far left. Each of them could argue anti-gun views in our federal courts, and if any of them end up on the bench, could enshrine those views in the law books.

Right-wing pundits and activists are piling on in their opposition to these nominees, primarily David Ogden, and frequently tying the issue to the future of the judiciary and the Supreme Court.

And now the Judicial Confirmation Network has taken out an ad in Roll Call, blasting Sen. Patrick Leahy for moving too quickly and demanding that he slow the confirmation process down. While the JCN's ad doesn't mention the judiciary specifically, considering that the organization's central focus in on the issue of judicial confirmations, it is not too difficult to piece together the obvious connection:

Senator Leahy is trying to ram through the Senate confirmation process the nominations of David Ogden for Deputy Attorney General, Elena Kagan for Solicitor General, and Thomas Perelli for Associate Attorney General. Leahy's abuse of the process makes a mockery of the Senate as the "world's greatest deliberative body." The American people have a right to know about the nominees who have been chosen for the most important legal positions in the executive branch. The Senate has been entrusted with this constitutional responsibility. So why is Senator Leahy forcing a rush to judgment on Department of Justice nominees especially when the vetting process for top jobs in the Obama administration has been so lacking? What is it the Senate needs to know about these nominees that Senator Leahy prefers to brush past? What do you have to say, Senator Leahy?

Below is a copy of a full page ad that we ran in today's copy of Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper. We hope you will join us in asking Senator Leahy . . . why the rush to judgment on these crucial nominations?

What will you have to say, Senator Leahy?

Senator Leahy is trying to ram through the Senate con­firmation process the nominations of David Ogden for Deputy Attorney General, Elena Kagan for Solicitor General, and Thomas Perelli for Associate Attorney General. Leahy's abuse of the process makes a mockery of the Senate as the "world's greatest deliberative body." The American people have a right to know about the nominees who have been chosen for the most important legal positions in the executive branch. The Senate has been entrusted with this constitutional responsibility. So why is Senator Leahy forcing a rush to judgment on Department of Justice nominees – especially when the vetting process for top jobs in the Obama administration has been so lacking? What is it the Senate needs to know about these nominees that Senator Leahy prefers to brush past?

What do you have to say, Senator Leahy?

Until recently, the JCN’s mission was limited to supporting “the confirmation of highly qualified individuals to the Supreme Court of the United States [and working] to ensure that the confirmation process for all judicial nominees is fair and that every nominee sent to the full Senate receives an up or down vote.” 

But now that President Bush is no longer in office, that mission has apparently broadened and now includes weighing in on Executive Branch nominees as it seeks to position itself to lead the opposition once President Obama starts putting forth judicial nominees.

As we’ve noted before, perhaps the Judicial Confirmation Network should just go ahead and change its name, as the “confirmation” part no longer seems to apply.