I will allow that it is difficult to know the exact meaning of a specific short e-mail. However, this looks suspiciously like justification ex post, rather than a reason that lead to an action:
And, of course, the immigration issue only would hit on 3 of the 6.
Now, I will state that in skimming the 11 PDFs (link below) that there was discussion of immigration prosecutions between members of Congress (including Rep. Issa and Senator Feinstein) and the DoJ, with specific reference to numbers out of Carol Lam’s office. However, it is unclear to me how much of that was routine and how much of it could have played into Lam’s case specifically.
The e-mail is in this PDF released last night. All the PDFs of the recent document dump are here: Documents highlight Gonzales’ role in the firings.
Technorati Tags: DoJ, USAs, USA firings, Alberto Gonzales
Update: Kevin Drum has more on this e-mail and the immigration rationale.
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March 24th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Definitely sounds like rationalization to me.
March 24th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Quite frankly I’ve found this Dept. of Justice firings business very complicated, and a bit boring. Thankfully, Jon Stewart keeps us up to date in this video:
http://minor-ripper.blogspot.com/2007/03/jon-stewart-keeps-us-up-to-speed-on.html