A bad day for Kit Bond

[babylonsister]

http://voices.kansascity.com/node/2216

A bad day for Kit Bond

By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist


This week got off to a very bad start for U.S. Sen. Kit Bond and his staff.

The U.S. Justice Department's inspector general concluded in a report that interference from Bond's office got Todd Graves removed as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri.

Though circumstances remain a bit muddled, the inspector concludes that Bond's legal counsel called a White House lawyer several times in 2005 seeking to have Graves removed as this area's top federal prosecutor.

In the fall of 2004, a Bond staffer had called Todd Graves and asked him to persuade his brother, U.S. Congressman Sam Graves, to get rid of his chief of staff. That would be Jeff Roe, now a political consultant in Kansas City.

Todd Graves declined to get involved in his brother's office affairs. The inspector links that refusal to pressure from Bond's office for a change in the U.S. attorney's office.

The money quote from the inspector general's report:

We find it extremely troubling that the impetus for Graves's removal as U.S. Attorney appears to have stemmed from U.S. Attorney Graves's decision not ot respond to a Bond staff member's demand to get involved in personnel decisions in Representative Sam Graves's congressional office.

And another: To allow members of Congress or their staff to obtain the removal of U.S. Attorneys for political reasons, as apparently occurred here, severely undermines the independence and non-partisan tradition of the Department of Justice.

The situation is complicated because the period in which Bond's staffers were calling the White House overlaps a time when questions were being raised about a no-bid contract given to Todd Graves's wife to run a motor vehicle fee office.

The inspector concludes that the feud between the Bond and Sam Graves offices, not the fee office contract, was the fuse that resulted in Todd Graves's removal.
Submitted by barbshelly on September 29, 2008 - 12:53pm.

[Lerkfish]

1. Bond deserves many many more bad days, IMHO

worthless pile of crap that he is.

[Sherman A1]

2. Agreed

Unfortunately he is one of my Senators.

[Lerkfish]

4. used to be my governor when I lived in MO

was always a worthless piece of crap.

[bobthedrummer]

3. BREAKING: CREW files ethics complaint against Senator Kit Bond for his role in the removal of U.S.

Attorney Todd Graves
http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/34421

Then again, Senator Kit Bond is alive-there have been many mysterious deaths of DoJ investigators looking into politicized crimes of the criminal Bush/Cheney administration, which was discussed here by many members-here's an archived omnibus thread about those still unresolved deaths.

"A DU collaborative investigation: Thelma Colbert, Shannon Ross and other deaths at DoJ"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2842772


K&R

[Orsino]

5. Bond didn't fire Graves.

Are we going to learn who actually did the deed?