My Interview With Former US Attorney Bud Cummins

Bud Cummins, the former US attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas who was forced out of his position last year to make room for a protege of Karl Rove, is a staunch Republican who is vocal about his loyalty to GOP causes and President Bush.

But, Cummins believes that the fallout from the US attorney scandal will continue to affect the integrity and credibility of the Justice Department unless the White House replaces embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

"I think a new attorney general would be helpful," Cummins told me, during an exclusive interview at the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Cummins said he has a difficult time believing Gonzales's sworn testimony before Congress earlier this year in which the attorney general stated he could not recall the events that led to the firings of 7 of Cummins' colleagues last year.

"It's disappointing to see someone with that much authority and responsibility be so unwilling to take responsibility," Cummins told me. "I don't think I'm alone in having difficulty believing all [of Gonzales's] claims that he doesn't really remember meetings that he was in. It's been maddening to me to see an attorney general of the United States claim that he was responsible for a decision and he owns it but he doesn't know why it was made and he doesn't know who made it. That's kind of crazy."

Cummins said he believes perjury or obstruction of justice charges could be brought "against any number" of Justice Department officials who testified before Congress in recent months. However, Cummins believes such charges would be unlikely largely because of the difficulty in proving claims of obstruction of justice and perjury.

Former Gonzales Chief of Staff "Kyle Sampson knows exactly where these decisions came from," Cummins told me. Sampson testified before Congress that he did not know the identity of the official or officials responsible for selecting US attorneys to fire.

"I don't think [Sampson] was truthful," Cummins told me. "But it's very difficult to prove a perjury."

Unlike some of his former colleagues who believe their dismissals were based on their failure to pursue public corruption or voter fraud cases involving Democrats, or their pursuit of corruption cases involving Republicans, Cummins said his removal from office boils down to this: "Based on everything I know it's a simple as there was a fellow from Arkansas working at the White House that wanted to be a US attorney and so they got impatient with me waiting for me to move on and asked me to go ahead and move," Cummins told me, referring to his replacement, Tim Griffin, a former opposition researcher for the Republican National Committee and a close confidant of Karl Rove.

Cummins disputed published reports that suggested he was fired because he was investigating an alleged public corruption case in the state of Missouri that may have involved Matt Blunt, the state's Republican governor. Cummins was investigating whether Blunt's office had awarded state contracts to political contributors. Blunt was asked to take over the investigation because of a conflict of interest involving several of Missouri's US attorneys.

Cummins told me that during the course of the investigation he received numerous telephone calls from William Mateja, an attorney who represented Blunt, and was retained by Mark "Thor" Hearne at Blunt's request. Hearne is closely aligned with Karl Rove and the RNC and may have been instrumental in pushing for the firings of some of the other US attorneys based on their refusal to prosecute alleged cases of voter fraud. Mateja had formerly worked at the Department of Justice as Senior Counsel to Deputy Attorneys General Larry Thompson and James Comey.

Cummins said Mateja had phoned him numerous times last year to check in on the status of Blunt and whether he was implicated in the corruption investigation Cummins was probing. Cummins did not provide Mateja with details of whether or not Blunt was a subject or target of the investigation. Cummins was asked to resign last June. Cummins, however, said he doesn't think that Mateja's phone calls to his office or his connection to Hearne and Rove lead to his dismissal.

"I had told everybody that asked is there a connection between this Missouri investigation and being asked to resign," Cummins told me, "Based on everything I do know my answer's been 'no,' I don't have any evidence that there's any connection. Nobody's ever told me anything or suggested anything to me that gives me concern about that. I have never been concerned personally that there's a connection between the Blunt case and my case."

Cummins told me that Blunt was never a subject, target or witness in the probe. But White House officials were unaware of that fact when Cummins was asked to resign last June, while Cummins was still probing the allegations against the Blunt administration.

In October 2006, a month before the midterm elections, Hearne urged Mateja to obtain a letter from Cummins and asked him to make a public statement exonerating Blunt in an effort to put to rest rumors about the governor's role in the corruption case. Cummins obliged, however, he said he was unaware that Hearne was the one making the request nor was he aware of Hearne's connection to Rove and the RNC.

Democrats now believe Hearne was trying to effect the outcome of the election between Republican incumbent Jim Talent and Democrat Claire McCaskill. Ensuring voters that the Republican governor was never involved in the corruption scandal by having Cummins publicly clear Blunt may have helped Talent at the polls, Democrats charged. It didn't. McCaskill won.

After discussing with Cummins both Mateja and Hearne's close connections with Rove and the White House, Cummins' said he still believes his firing had nothing to do with the fact that he was investigating the Blunt administration.

Still, forcing Cummins out and installing Griffin during the middle of a president's term, Cummins told me, was "bad policy" and as far as he knew "unprecedented." Griffin stepped down as US attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas last week.

In response to an accusation made by Sara Taylor, a former official who worked under Karl Rove, who stated in an email to Sampson that Cummins was "lazy" and that's the reason "we got rid of him," Cummins told me "there was no basis for someone in the White House to have an opinion like that."

Cummins disputed Taylor's claim that he was "lazy."

"Our office was extremely productive," Cummins told me. "I'm pretty confident about my work ethic."

Cummins further added that there is no basis for Taylor nor anyone else at the White House to form an opinion about the way he conducted himself as US attorney.

"I'm not going to get into a debate with some woman I've never met that's making personal attacks about my professional work ethic. I had admitted to the press that I was asked to resign and I had told [the media] what [the Justice Department] had told me was that it was so Tim Griffin could have my job and apparently that single fact set {Sara Taylor] off and she viewed me as kind of off the reservation."

Cummins told me that Griffin knew Taylor and that there was a possibility that Griffin may have told Taylor that Cummins was "lazy."

Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.

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