Author’s Note: Now that President Bush is no longer in office, I have compiled an updated and complete list of what grew to be 42 Bush administration appointees who resigned in disgrace which also includes and supersedes the original list of 21 resignations contained in the post below. Click on the link above for the complete list. -Feb 11, 2009

Hardly a month goes by these days without a Bush administration appointee resigning under a cloud of controversy. So many have resigned that it actually has become difficult to remember every one of them. Some were well illuminated by the mainstream media while others were just a passing blip on the political radar. How many Bush appointees do you think have resigned under a cloud of controversy? Would you believe at least 21?

In order to refresh my memory and yours, I’ve compiled a list to track Bush administration officials who resigned under at least questionable if not dishonorable conditions. Sometimes the resignations are ethically based, sometimes legally based, and others are just a matter of sheer ineptitude.

Not all resignations are a result of impropriety and not all resignations of controversial appointees are a result of the controversy. Mr. Karl Rove has number of controversies surrounding his tenure at the White House but his resignation does not appear to be related to any them. Not everyone who has resigned will be found below. Just the resignations that were nothing but cover for being fired or attempting to escape a controversy.

The descriptions below are mostly, but not entirely, quoted or paraphrased from the referenced source reporting. This list also does not address resignations that fall outside of the scope of the Bush administration, such as those in Congress.

In no particular order, here is the rogue’s gallery.

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby- Office of the Vice President Chief of Staff
As reported by the New York Times:

• He resigned after he was indicted by a federal grand jury on five charges related to the Valerie Plame CIA leak controversy.
• Mr. Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice and was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
• His sentence was commuted by President Bush shortly before he was to report to prison.

David Safavian- Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy, Office of Management and Budget, Executive Office of the President
As reported by the Washington Post:

• He resigned and was arrested the same day on charges resulting from the Jack Abramoff corruption investigation.
• He concealed his efforts to help Abramoff acquire control of two federally managed properties in the Washington area.
• He also made repeated false statements to government officials and investigators about a golf trip with Abramoff to Scotland in 2002.
• Mr. Safavian was convicted of lying and obstruction of justice and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

J. Steven Griles- Deputy Secretary of Interior
As reported by the Washington Post:

• Mr. Griles is the highest ranking administration member to be convicted as a resulted of the Jack Abramoff corruption probe.
• Pleaded guilty to lying to the Senate about his relationship with Abramoff and was sentenced to 10 months in prison and a $30,000 fine.
• An 18-month investigation by the department’s inspector general found that he had dealings with energy and mining industry clients of National Environmental Strategies Inc. even as he continued to receive payments from his former firm. The report did not accuse Mr. Griles of violating any laws or federal ethics rules.

Kyle “Dusty” Foggo- CIA Executive Director
As reported by the Washington Post, MSNBC, & San Diego Union-Tribune:

• Mr. Foggo resigned while he was being investigated for using his seniority and influence at his prior CIA job in Europe to steer business deals to his longtime friend Brent R. Wilkes, a California businessman and top Republican fundraiser.
• He has since been charged with fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.

Eric Keroack- Dept. of Health & Human Services, Chief of U.S. Office of Population Affairs
As reported by the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post

• Oversaw the population affairs office which is responsible for providing women with access to contraceptives and counseling to prevent pregnancy and has a $283 million annual budget.
• Served for more than a decade as medical director for A Woman’s Concern, a Massachusetts nonprofit group that discourages abortion and does not distribute information promoting birth control.
• Massachusetts’ Office of Medicaid has taken actions against his private medical practice within the state ordering him to refrain from prescribing drugs to people who are not his patients and from providing mental health counseling without proper training.
• He resigned only five months after he was appointed.

Randall Tobias- Deputy Secretary of State
As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle:

• Mr. Tobias was the director of U.S. foreign assistance and U.S. Agency for International Development administrator and previously had been the White House coordinator for global AIDS relief.
• His name surfaced in connection with the so-called D.C. Madam investigation involving Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who is accused of running an illegal escort service in the nation’s capital.
• He abruptly resigned and stated that he had used the service to provide massages, not sex.

Kyle Sampson- Attorney General Chief of Staff
As reported by the Washington Post:

• Kyle Sampson, proposed selective removal of US attorneys based on performance reviews pegged to how closely the prosecutors adhered to administration policy.
• Mr. Sampson strongly urged bypassing Congress in naming replacements, using a little-known power slipped into the renewal of the USA Patriot Act in March 2006 that allows the attorney general to name interim replacements without Senate confirmation.
• He acknowledged that he did not tell key Justice officials about the extent of his communications with the White House, leading them to provide incomplete information to Congress.
• He resigned after his memos outlining a political strategy for the dismissals were disclosed.

Monica Goodling- Senior Counselor to the Attorney General & Justice Department liaison to the White House
As reported by the Washington Post:

• She refused to answer questions from Congress about the U.S. Attorney firings, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
• Mr. Sampson and Ms. Goodling worked closely together on the firings, particularly in the case of an Arkansas prosecutor removed to make way for a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove. Both participated in briefings for Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and others prior to testimony before Congress that has since been shown to be inaccurate.

Michael Battle- Dept of Justice Director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys
As reported by the NY Times & AP:

• Mr. Battle carried out the U.S. Attorney firings and had contradicted Attorney General Gonzales’ assertions that he had limited knowledge of the dismissals and that the firings were based on performance, according to Sen. Charles Schumer
• Mr. Battle told congressional investigators that a memo about the firings was distributed at a Nov. 27 Justice meeting that Gonzales attended. Battle also said he “was not aware of performance problems with respect to several of the U.S. attorneys” when he called to fire them, according to Schumer.
• Generally believed to have not played a significant role in the decision to remove the United States attorneys, although Justice Department officials said he had accepted it.
• Mr. Battle stated that his resignation had no link to the controversy. He resigned in March 2007 during the height of investigation into the firings.

Paul McNulty- Deputy Attorney General
As reported by the NY Times:

• Mr. McNulty took one prosecutor off the removal list but acquiesced to the removal of seven others, according to Congressional aides’ accounts of his private testimony to Congress on April 27, 2007.
• He blamed himself for failing to resist the dismissal plan when Mr. Sampson brought it to him in October 2006, according to associates.

Michael Elston- Deputy Attorney General Chief of Staff
As reported by the Washington Post:

• Mr. Elston was closely involved in deliberations over the fate of a group of U.S. attorneys last December. He assembled one of the lists of prosecutors to be considered for removal.
• Four of the dismissed prosecutors said they later received inappropriate telephone calls from Elston, who allegedly warned some of them that they would suffer retaliation if they spoke publicly about their firings.
• Mr. Elston and his attorney have denied the allegations.
• He resigned June 2007.

William Mercer- Associate Attorney General (Acting)
As reported by the Washington Post:

• Mr. Mercer was nominated by President Bush as Associate Attorney General September of 2006.
• He also has had a permanent job as U.S. attorney in Montana since 2001
• Mercer was accused of spending much of his time in Washington over the past two years rather than in his permanent job as U.S. attorney in Montana. Mr. Mercer spent an average of three days a month in Billings, according to testimony.
• Montana’s chief federal judge often criticized Mr. Mercer’s absences and asked Attorney General Gonzales to replace him. The attorney general refused and assured the judge in a November 2005 letter that Mercer’s appointment was lawful.
• On the same day that letter was written, however, Mr. Mercer instructed a GOP staff member to insert language into a USA Patriot Act re-authorization bill allowing federal prosecutors to live outside their districts to serve in other jobs, according to documents and interviews. The provision — which retroactively applied to Mercer’s tenure in Washington — was passed by Congress.
• He withdrew his nomination for the job just days before he was scheduled to appear at a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in June 2007 and returned to Montana and his U.S. attorney position.

Sara Taylor- Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Political Affairs at the White House
As reported by the Washington Post & PBS:

• Sara Taylor resigned from her position as the White House Political Director during the height of the U.S. Attorney firings controversy in May 2007 and appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee after being subpoenaed on the matter.
• Most of her testimony was either claiming to not remember events and conversations or claiming to have to adhere to the President Bush’s claim of executive privilege.
• In a revealing moment that displayed her frame of mind about her duties, she claimed to have taken an oath to the president after which Senator Leahy corrected her by pointing out that she took an oath to uphold the Constitution and not the president.

Paul Wolfowitz- World Bank President
As reported by the CNN & the Washington Post:

• A World Bank committee concluded Mr. Wolfowitz violated staff rules when he arranged a raise and transfer for his girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza, a longtime bank employee.
• After Mr. Wolfowitz took over at the bank in 2005, Riza was transferred to a U.S. State Department job at a tax-free government salary of almost $194,000 a year.
• Mr. Wolfowitz said an ethics panel approved the deal, but the panel denies it. An investigative committee found that the deal was a conflict of interest.
• He resigned only after the bank board accepted his contention that he acted “ethically and in good faith.”

Harvey Pitt- Securities & Exchange Commission Chairman
As reported by the USA Today & Forbes:

• Mr. Pitt’s 15 month chairmanship occurred during the wave of accounting scandals that undermined global confidence in the transparency and ethics of corporate finance and the markets in general.
• Mr. Pitt was widely viewed as sympathetic to the accounting industry and took steps to undermine the effectiveness of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act which was designed to prevent future corporate accounting ethical lapses.
• Selected a man to head an accounting oversight board without telling his fellow commissioners that the man he was hiring was also the chairman of the audit committee of an Internet company itself under question for accounting improprieties.
  

Julie MacDonald- Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior
As reported by the NY Times & Contra Costa Times :

• Ms. MacDonald oversaw the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
• Inspector general investigation found she bullied biologists and improperly leaked documents to friends, political allies, and industry lobbyists including the California Farm Bureau, someone at ChevronTexaco and the Pacific Legal Foundation, a Sacramento property rights law firm.
• Federal biologists will reconsider several decisions affecting endangered mice, flies and the Canada lynx after an internal review found eight instances where MacDonald improperly altered scientific findings to change key decisions made in the Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional offices.

Francis Harvey- Secretary of the Army
As reported by CNN & Fox News:

• Mr. Harvey resigned after reports of substandard conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, a key facility treating troops wounded in Iraq, came to light.
• Troops recuperating from wounds they suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan were discovered to be living in substandard conditions in Building 18, an adjunct structure at Walter Reed that was once a hotel. There also were complaints of too much bureaucratic red tape.
• Senior defense officials speaking on condition of anonymity said Secretary of Defense Gates was displeased that the officer Harvey had chosen as interim commander of Walter Reed — Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, the current Army surgeon general and a former commander of Walter Reed — has been accused by critics of long knowing about the problems there and not improving outpatient care

Donald Rumsfeld- Secretary of Defense
As reported by every news agency on the planet:

• Mr. Rumsfeld was 9 days shy of being the longest serving Secretary of Defense when he resigned.
• Numerous controversies surrounded his tenure as secretary. Only a few are listed below.
• Stated desire to attack Iraq and Usama Bin Laden at the same time in a meeting a few hours after the 9/11 attacks.
• He had a reputation for not tolerating dissent and ignoring advice from the military. This was most notably demonstrated when he publicly named the replacement for Army Chief of Staff Gen. Shinseki more than a year before he was to retire because of his public statements about the need for a much larger invasion force in Iraq than Mr. Rumsfeld wanted. This was just one of the many disagreements they shared about the Army of the future. Retired military leaders increasingly called for his resignation as the Iraq war wore on.
• The Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal as well as some of the interrogation techniques used at the Guantanamo Bay military detention facility that critics charge are torture have occurred during his tenure.
• Criticism of his handling of the Iraq war has been bipartisan and has come from both military and civilian circles. The criticism has focused on Mr. Rumsfeld not planning a post-invasion strategy, making several strategic mistakes, being unrealistic in his expectations, alienating national allies, and failing to bring the insurgency to an end, if not preventing it altogether.

Michael Brown- Dept. of Homeland Security Undersecretary of Emergency Preparedness and Response
As reported by Time:

• Mr. Brown’s handling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe can be at best described as anemic and at worst as criminally negligent. His inaction and bungled actions as FEMA Director turned a huge natural disaster into a national catastrophe highlighted by bureaucratic ineptitude which led to his resignation shortly thereafter.
• He was appointed as FEMA director despite not have any significant experience in emergency management.
• He lied several times on his resume and official biography claiming to have served as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight for Edmond, OK when in fact he was an administrative assistant with no managerial duties or authority. He was a student at Central State University at the time.
• He claimed to have been a Political Science professor at University of Central Oklahoma but the university states that Mr. Brown was never a faculty member and was only a student.
• He claimed to have been a director of the Oklahoma Christian Home, a nursing home in Edmond yet no one in that organization has ever heard of him before.

Alberto Gonzales- Attorney General
As reported by the Washington Post:

• Mr. Gonzales resigned as a result of the controversy surrounding selective U.S. Attorney firings that appeared to be politically motivated.
• He was also mired in controversy regarding the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, his redefinition of what legally qualifies as torture, and other applications of the Patriot Act.
• He has been accused of destroying the credibility of the Justice Department’s political independence by politicizing the department’s hiring and prosecution priorities
• Repeated calls for his resignation came from both Republican and Democratic members of Congress.
• Mr. Gonzales repeatedly angered lawmakers by saying that he could not recall key episodes and details related to the U.S. attorneys’ dismissals, testifying nearly 70 times at one hearing alone that he could not remember specific events.
• Justice investigators have said they are examining whether Gonzales purposely misled Congress or attempted to improperly influence a witness in his employ.

George Deutsch- NASA Public Affairs Officer
As reported by the New York Times:

• Mr. Deutsch told public affairs workers to limit reporters’ access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word “theory” at every mention of the Big Bang.
• Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.
• Allegedly played a small but significant role in an intensifying effort at the agency to exert political control over the flow of information to the public.

Crooks and Liars has posted an excerpt from a PBS broadcast of Bill Moyers’ roundtable discussion of impeachment with a conservative guest and a liberal guest. While they may not agree on a lot of issues, they do agree on one thing.

I strongly recommend taking six minutes to view the video.

“Politics is the art of the possible” -Otto Von Bismark

There are growing number of folks with a full head of steam about impeachment. There’s impeachcheney.org. There’s impeachbush.org. The blogosphere is abuzz with the idea. The mainstream media is starting to discuss it. There’s actual articles of impeachment against Vice-President Cheney in the House, submitted by Dennis Kucinich and sponsored by nine other representatives. And it’s going to go nowhere.

Think it through. Let’s start with impeaching President Bush. Let’s say that someone introduced articles of impeachment in the House and the resolution began to take off. All you need is a simple majority to pass the resolution and since the Democrats control the 53% of the seats, it’s fair to say they can accomplish this.

Then it’s on to the Senate which is where the President would have to be convicted by a 2/3 majority. That’s a bit trickier. There’s 49 Senators from each party and two independents. It’ll take some convincing to get at least 16 Republicans to vote against Bush. But let’s assume you get 67 votes to convict and President Bush is removed from office or he resigns prior to the conviction.

The country would now begin to execute a change of course once President Cheney is sworn in. Right?

Impeaching President Bush is comparable to deposing the Queen of England- strongly symbolic but functionally pointless. President Bush is not this administration’s center of gravity. Dick Cheney exerts the real power and sets the strategic direction of this administration. Impeaching Bush without impeaching Cheney is nothing but political theater.

So impeach them both you say! Well ok. Let’s look at that.

Let’s say we got the articles passed in the House, and then the Senate voted to convict them both. Time to play “Hail to the Chief” for President Nancy Pelosi. The Democrat.

Do you think that the Republicans would willingly turn over the White House to the Democrats? Short of discovering Bush & Cheney in the Oval Office with pistols and machetes in their hands amongst bloodstained bodies, there won’t be anyone leaving office for the next 18 months. It’s just not possible.

Those of you who read my July 2nd post knows that the Libby commutation was the final straw in my sincere, perhaps naive, hope that President Bush would rise above politics and bring something -anything- that I consider of value to his Presidency in the second term. I have also laid out where the President has placed his loyalty in spite of vowing to be loyal to the Constitution.

Apparently I’m not the only one who’s reached the end of their patience with the President.

A visibly angry Keith Olbermann, anchor of MSNBC’s Countdown news program, came right out and demanded President Bush and Vice-President Cheney resign after the President’s commutation of the Vice-President’s former Chief of Staff. In a ten minute special commentary on his show, Olbermann used clear and direct language to accuse President Bush of “subverting the Constitution” among a number of other things.

Actually, Olbermann insisted on calling him “Mr. Bush” throughout his commentary. That may seem small, but it’s a damning detail of disrespect for the man who occupies the oval office. Some may say it’s disrespectful to the Office of the President as well but I think his point is clear.

Olbermann also illustrated a parallel between President Bush’s commutation and President Nixon’s firing of the Watergate Special Prosecutor as the defining moment in a failed presidency where they crossed the point of no return and crystallized America against them.

It’s a ten minute video but I strongly urge you to take the time and view it. Whether you agree with him or not, his impassioned argument is worth a listen. The text can be found here.

The only positive aspect of the commutation I can see for the President is that he passed (sort of) the Republican Loyalty Test. The especially sad part is his actions demonstrate that he considered that to be more important.

During Tony Snow’s White House Press Briefing on Tuesday, June 3rd, he fielded 43 questions related to President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby and he failed to answer over 75% of them. What a dismal level of openness that the White House is displaying. How did Tony Snow manage to not answer 33 different questions?

Some of the time he tried make false assertions to undermine the basis of the question.

MR. SNOW: …I think if you took a look at the trial record, at what the parole commission recommended, that what the parole commission recommended was highly consistent with what the President thought was an appropriate punishment here.

Q: Well, no, they talked about 16-plus months.

MR. SNOW: No, that is — there’s a range of — what you’re taking a look — this gets very complicated.

Actually it isn’t very complicated at all. As you can see above, Tony Snow tried to give the impression that Judge Walton ignored the recommendation of probation officials and sentenced Libby to prison. According to the Associated Press,

That isn’t what happened. Probation officers recommended Libby serve 15-21 months. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald recommended more than 30 months. Libby’s attorneys asked for probation.

Tony actually made that same assertion a few more times as if he hadn’t already been proven wrong.

Tony Snow also tried to assert that there was some question about Joe Wilson’s truthfulness and when he was asked to specify what was under question, he failed to address it. He also tried to say President Bush had previously apologized for the leak, but when asked when that occurred, he stammered a little bit and just let the subject die without any further mention. Tony made seven demonstrably false assertions in the briefing as a way of avoiding answering questions.

Tony’s favorite tactic, by far, was misdirection. At least 15 times he avoided answering questions by trying to speak about something that wasn’t asked yet making sound as if it was.

Q: Tony, does the President believe that prison time for perjury is excessive, per se? And if he does not believe that, what is it about this case, beyond the fact that Scooter Libby worked for this administration, that led him to commute the sentence? What are the factors here?

MR. SNOW: Again, we are not going to get you into the — I’m not going to delve you into the deep considerations, other than to tell you the President considered it excessive –

Q: Does he think prison for perjury is excessive?

MR. SNOW: — as did a parole board. As did the parole board. So I’m simply telling you that — what you’re trying to do is to set up a false distinction here as — acting as if this were not the sort of punishment that would be meted out in a perjury case. It is.

Rather than answer the question, “Does the President think prison for perjury is excessive, per se”, Tony tries say that parole is what would normally be handed down. Nobody asked that question.

Sometimes he would just ignore the question.

Q: But how could it not be extraordinary to grant (commutation) to someone who didn’t even ask for it?
MR. SNOW: I just think that’s the President, again, using his commutation power to do what he thought was necessary to address what he thought was an excessive punishment.

And if ignoring it doesn’t work, try a little more misdirection.

Q: But absent a request, he wouldn’t even have known about this case if it didn’t involve his former aide.
MR. SNOW: Well, no, I think you probably would have reminded him of it. The fact — you talk about, if it had not involved a former aide — this is a thing that has been in the headlines for quite a while.

The reporter was referring to a formal request for commutation and Tony answered about the President’s general awareness of the Libby trial.

So given all the questions Tony Snow didn’t want to answer, which ones did he answer?

Q: Was the President scared that if Scooter Libby went to jail that he might then talk about some secrets in the White House that would damage the President?
MR. SNOW: No, he thought it was an improper punishment…
Q: So politics did not play into this decision at all?
MR. SNOW: That is correct.
…
Q: Won’t this encourage other members of his administration to obstruct justice?
MR. SNOW: No.

It appears he has no problem answering questions about his talking points for the briefing.

When I put my hand on the Bible that day in January 2001, I will swear — I will swear to uphold the laws of the land. But I will also swear to uphold the honor and the integrity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God.
-George W. Bush August 11, 2000

This is the day that President Bush lost what little remaining credibility he had with me and likely with the vast majority of Americans. He just commuted Scooter Libby’s 30 month sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice. The commutation means that Libby will still have a felony conviction on his record and will have to pay a $250,000 judgment but will not have to serve any time in prison. This is the final straw.

For a man who built a reputation as a strict enforcer of law & order as governor, this is a slap in the face of every law-abiding American.

Q Given — given recent developments in the CIA leak case, particularly Vice President Cheney’s discussions with the investigators, do you still stand by what you said several months ago, a suggestion that it might be difficult to identify anybody who leaked the agent’s name?

THE PRESIDENT: That’s up to –

Q And, and, do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. And that’s up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts.

-June 10, 2004 Press Conference

President Bush has not fired Karl Rove nor pushed for indictment of Rove or Richard Armitage for leaking Valerie Plame’s undercover CIA role to Robert Novak. He hasn’t even stripped anyone of their security clearances over this.

President Bush flouting the law and the Constitution is not new but this is certainly the most public and flamboyant action he has taken. He has repeatedly exempted his administration from the full force of the law through his unparalleled use of signing statements which he uses as a way of “reserving the right to revise, interpret or disregard provisions on national security and constitutional grounds.” In effect, he uses them to exempt him and his administration from the rule of law- the exact law he is signing for everyone else to obey, -as he feels necessary. A very imperial notion, indeed.

We have a Vice-President who also seems to believe he is not beholden to the law, not required to disclose his public activities, and not even required to obey executive orders. The Vice-President, according to the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office,”does not believe it is included in the definition of ‘agency’ as set forth in the Order” and “does not consider itself an ‘entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.’”

In his 2004 State of the Union address President Bush said “America is the land of second chance, and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.” Apparently if your a loyal Bushie, they don’t even need to open the entrance gate, much less the exit.

President Bush has repeatedly worked to keep judicial and legislative oversight of his administration’s activities at arm’s length, if not totally removed. And now, when the Judicial branch has gotten ahold of a loyal Bushie, he has used his power to keep a convicted felon who betrayed the public’s trust from serving any jail time. He has just confirmed what some have been saying and many more have been suspecting; President Bush has no respect for the law or his fellow Americans. He has failed to keep his promise to us, to America, and to God.