The Washington Post offers this must-read report, which begins: “Nearly half the U.S. attorneys slated for removal by the administration last year were targets of Republican complaints that they were lax on voter fraud, including efforts by presidential adviser Karl Rove to encourage more prosecutions of election- law violations, according to new documents and interviews. Of the 12 U.S. attorneys known to have been dismissed or considered for removal last year, five were identified by Rove or other administration officials as working in districts that were trouble spots for voter fraud — Kansas City, Mo.; Milwaukee; New Mexico; Nevada; and Washington state. Four of the five prosecutors in those districts were dismissed. It has been clear for months that the administration’s eagerness to launch voter-fraud prosecutions played a role in some of the firings, but recent testimony, documents and interviews show the issue was more central than previously known. The new details include the names of additional prosecutors who were targeted and other districts that were of concern, as well as previously unknown information about the White House’s role.
The article includes the following quote from me: “Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School who runs an election law blog, said that ‘there’s no question that Karl Rove and other political operatives’ urged Justice officials to apply pressure on U.S. attorneys to pursue voter-fraud allegations in parts of the country that were critical to the GOP. Hasen said it remains unclear, however, ‘whether they believed there was a lot of fraud and U.S. attorneys would ferret it out, or whether they believed there wasn’t a lot of fraud but the allegations would serve political purposes.'”
Marty Lederman comments.