Uh oh

Drip, drip, drip.

So it turns out that I Don't Recall Gonzalez secretly delegated authority to his liason to the White House to "take final action" regarding all of the Justice Department's political appointees. What is more, he neglected to inform Congress of this secret order during its investigation:

"It was an attempt to make the department more responsive to the political side of the White House and to do it in such a way that people would not know it was going on."

. . .

Referring to the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the broader plan targeting other Justice employees, the senior official said, "You cannot separate one from the other. They were one and part of the same plan by the White House."

The official added, "The president of the United States has said it was imperative for the attorney general, and the attorney general alone, to re-establish trust with the Congress to keep his job … and you have, even after the president has said that, the attorney general and his men stiffing Congress."

As Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) puts it: "If the top folks at DOJ weren't the key decision-makers, it's less likely that lower-down people at DOJ were, and much more likely that people in the White House were making the major decisions."

Why again should we believe that these firings were not designed to stifle corruption investigations involving GOP politicians, or to punish prosecutors who did not initiate enough frivolous investigations into Democrats?

Surely there is a paper trail of emails documenting that everything was on the up-and-up, right? Oh wait.