Prosecutor post is filled in recess
Posted on Saturday, December 16, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/news/175895/
A surprise late-afternoon announcement Friday that J. Timothy Griffin will become the new U. S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas drew the ire of U. S. Sen. Mark Pryor, whose spokesman said the maneuver amounts to “basically circumventing the normal process.”
“We think the people of the Eastern District of Arkansas deserve to know who their U. S. attorney is,” Michael Teague, Pryor’s spokesman, said shortly after learning that U. S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made the appointment, which takes effect Wednesday.
“The proper way to do this is in the Senate Judiciary Committee, [where ] several things are done to make sure that whoever fills this post is qualified.”
The announcement caught even the current U. S. attorney, Bud Cummins, off guard as he hiked through deer woods with his son.
Shortly after being notified that the announcement was being moved up, Cummins said over a cell phone in the woods that he had been planning to announce next week that his resignation — in the works for several months — would be effective Wednesday.
As he has in the past few months, the 2001 Bush nominee declined to reveal any specific plans for his future except to say, “I’m going to pursue opportunities in the private sector.”
Cummins also said, “It’s been a great honor to serve.... I appreciate President Bush giving me this opportunity to serve in this exciting time.”
Griffin, 34, once an aide to former presidential adviser Karl Rove, has been working as a “special assistant” under Cummins for several months. He said that because he won’t officially take over until Wednesday, he didn’t want to comment on the announcement.
Teague said he believes the timing of the announcement might have had something to do with Pryor’s telephone calls this week with various officials, including conversations earlier Friday with Gonzales himself. Pryor made the calls in response to reporters’ queries about Cummins’ departure and rumors that Griffin was either going to be nominated soon or moved into office through a congressional recess appointment.
“No one would be straight with us and let us get to the bottom of this,” Teague said.
He said Griffin called Pryor “a couple of months ago,” apparently to get a feel for whether the Democratic senator would support his nomination, but Pryor wouldn’t commit to anything.
Normally, the White House requests names of potential replacements for U. S. attorneys and other positions from the state’s senators or congressmen, and then chooses a nominee from among those names. The nominee then must undergo a background check and Senate confirmation — which could be tough for Griffin in the new Democrat-controlled body. Griffin, a longtime behind-thescenes Republican operative and political strategist, has worked for the Republican National Committee.
“If he was the nominee, potentially the senator would support him, but the way they’re doing it, it is basically circumventing the process,” Teague complained. “There are 100 U. S. attorneys around the country. The question is, what makes this one different ? The U. S. marshal [candidate, J. R. Howard, also for the Eastern District of Arkansas ] is going through the process. Why isn’t the U. S. attorney ?”
Teague noted that an interim appointment could keep Griffin at the helm of the top prosecutor’s post in the state’s Eastern District for the two years remaining in Bush’s term.
“This process circumvents a way to find out about his legal background,” Teague said. “We know about his political background, which is unbalanced. If he’s just interim for the next two years, every decision he makes during that time is going to be somewhat suspect.”
The state’s only Republican congressman, John Boozman, said last month that he hadn’t been asked to submit names to replace Cummins.
By the time the announcement was released late Friday afternoon, the attorney general’s office was closed. Efforts to reach the office of the state’s other senator, Democrat Blanche Lincoln, for comment were unsuccessful.
Teague noted that while Cummins has said for several months that he is leaving to pursue other job opportunities before his presidential appointment expires in two years, Cummins, 47, has also said publicly that he loves the job and would stay forever if he could.
“Within legal circles and in the community, it’s been viewed as him being forced out to open this position for Tim,” Teague said.
Cummins said only that he is ready to move on, has always known his position was temporary and had told the White House a year ago that he planned to leave to give them time to find a replacement.
Teague noted that Griffin’s previous experience appears to be “primarily research and campaigns. The citizens of eastern Arkansas deserve a U. S. attorney who has spent more time in the courtroom, not the campaign war-room.”
Cummins had previously clerked for a federal judge.
The announcement of Griffin’s appointment — sent by the U. S. Department of Justice through Cummins’ office — notes that the Magnolia native “recently completed a year of active duty in the U. S. Army, and is in his tenth year as an officer in the U. S. Army Reserve, Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG ), holding the rank of Major.
“ In September 2005, Mr. Griffin was mobilized to active duty to serve as an Army prosecutor at Fort Campbell, Ky. At Fort Campbell, he prosecuted 40 criminal cases.”
The announcement notes that Griffin served in Iraq.
“The one thing that stands out,” Teague said, “is that he worked for Karl Rove in the West Wing of the White House. Is he getting special treatment ?”
Teague said that from Pryor’s standpoint, “Bud Cummins has been a fantastic U. S. attorney. He’s kept them on the legal road and is respected on both sides of the aisle. He is textbook. Now we get basically a campaign worker replacing him. Is he going to make good legal decisions, or he is going to make political decisions ?”