Rove's fingers in Voter Fraud DOJ Dismissals

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Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein have a must-read WaPo piece today: Voter-fraud Complaints by GOP drove Dismissals. Eggen and Goldstein highlight how the White House urged the Department of Justice to focus on "voter-fraud" concerns in key political states; this pressure, Eggen and Goldstein report, is tied to the US Attorney firings. What's significant here is that we are now seeing the emergence of the real scandal that lies at the bottom of the US Attorney firings: GOP efforts to use the Department of Justice to influence elections.

For readers following Karl Rove's role here, this passage from later in the piece stands out:

New information also emerged showing the extent to which the White House encouraged investigations of election fraud within weeks of November balloting.

Rove, in particular, was preoccupied with pressing Gonzales and his aides about alleged voting problems in a handful of battleground states, according to testimony and documents. Last October, just weeks before the midterm elections, Rove's office sent a 26-page packet to Gonzales's office containing precinct-level voting data about Milwaukee. A Justice aide told congressional investigators that he quickly put the package aside, concerned that taking action would violate strict rules against investigations shortly before elections, according to statements disclosed this week.

What's remarkable here is that the DOJ firings and "voter-fraud" allegations seem to be focused on politically crucial swing states: Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, Wisconsin.

What a coincidence.

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