Then this from ST Liberal David Postman:>>> Justice Department tried to help McKay get judgeship <<<
March 20, 2007
blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com
Posted by David Postman at 12:21 PM
Former U.S. Attorney John McKay still had friends in high places a few months before he was fired. When McKay did not make a list of three finalists for a Seattle federal judgeship, officials in the White House and the Justice Department came to his defense and he had backing from the state's Democratic senators and former Republican office holders with White House ties.
Soon after a bipartisan judicial review committee forwarded three names to the White House — without McKay among them — Justice Department official Kyle Sampson e-mailed Robert Hoyt in the White House Counsel's office. The Aug. 8 e-mail: said
I heard our U.S. Attorney, John McKay, got screwed by Washington's judicial selection commission. What do you know? Can we let them know that we want to consider him along with the recommended candidates?
(Sampson is the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who resigned over his handling of the recent firing of McKay and seven other U.S. Attorneys around the country.)
What Hoyt did next apparently was call J. Vander Stoep, the Republican co-chair of the six-person committee that made the recommendations. Vander Stoep told me today:
"I received a call from the White House Counsel's office, indicating that a high Justice Department official had asked him to make a special inquiry and I confirmed, yes, McKay had applied but he didn't receive a majority of votes on the panel."
Hoyt wanted to know why McKay didn't make the cut.
"I said first of all in his interview Mr. McKay indicated he had taken through trial fewer than 10 cases. In my mind that was a disqualification to sit on the federal district court bench."
Those 10 were cases McKay personally tried during his career, Vander Stoep said.
Vander Stoep went further than that, though. He told Hoyt that he didn't think McKay shared President Bush's judicial philosophy. He concluded that, he said, from McKay's interview with the panel. The question, according to the committee's printed list of questions asked each candidate, was: "If as a judge you were confronted with a case where you believed that the right result based on policy or fairness indicated one outcome but the legal precedent pointed in a different direction, what would you do and why?"
"He answered it, in my judgment, both ways," Vander Stoep said. He said the answer that would have reflected Bush's philosophy would have been, "Follow the precedent. The law's the law. He gave an answer which I thought would not match the president's judicial philosophy."
At about the same time as the Hoyt call, Vander Stoep also heard from his former boss, former Sen. Slade Gorton. Gorton also wanted to know why McKay hadn't made the final list.
Meanwhile, the White House and the Justice Department were working to see if McKay could get back into the running for the judgeship.
On Aug. 9, Debra Wong Yang, then the U.S. Attorney in Southern California, e-mailed Sampson. The subject was: "Follow-up on McKay."
Additional info regarding the district court position in WDWA (Seattle). Two Dem Senators from the state strongly support his being interviewed. They will also support his nomination. Especially since all Ds on bi-partisan committee voted for him. They will also call WH to request interviewing the three plus McKay.
Local GOP members will also call WH expressing support for McKay and indicating he had strong Rep ties and credentials. Also, the 2 prominent Rs in the state, former ------ and ---- strongly support him.
Let me know what you think his chances are. Also let me know if you need more info.
D
(The names of the prominent Republicans are blanked out in the e-mail.)
Sampson told Yang, "re John, it's highly unlikely that we could do better in Seattle." He forwarded Yang's information about McKay's support on to the White House the same day.
Then on Aug. 17 Yang followed up with a longer e-mail to Sampson.
Subject: John McKay
Kyle:
Sorry we've been playing phone tag. Completely sleep deprived today and trying to get a million things done. Both of us have been too busy. Anyway, I wanted to forward some additional inside information to you re John's situation. Apparently, the Seattle paper is about to run an article that would be embarrassing to the Republicans, saying essentially that they have dissed one of their own in the their ranks. I think the sentiment up there is that if John gets to be interviewed, it's one way of combating that issue. However, more importantly is the issue of seeing if he can get the nod for the district court. To that end, here's some local info from Seattle that might help.
It was three (Republicans) of the six committee members who declined to support John. They pointed to the fact that he "lacked trial experience" when in reality John once served as the head of the litigation department in a very well-regarded law firm in Seattle. As you know, this is the local gamesmanship that goes on, when in actuality it should always be the White House making the final decision whether its U.S. attorney has the trial experience to be a federal judge. In addition, John also has strong political credentials (e.g. he took a year off between college and law school to manage a Republican congressional campaign and served as a fulltime volunteer at the 1996 GOP convention in San Diego). Should John be nominated, it is the understanding from people close to (redacted) that they will support this choice.
I'm not sure what newspaper story the e-mail refers to. The P-I reports today that Bush administration officials were unhappy with McKay about comments he made to the paper in an August 2006 story about budget problems at the U.S. Attorney's office.
In November, The Seattle Times wrote a story that sounds more like what Yang was worried about. The headline was: "Political motives suspected as jobs on bench go unfilled." The story looked at selections for judicial openings in Tacoma and Seattle. As for Seattle, the Times reported:
The delay has raised questions in local legal circles about whether the White House might again reject a merit panel's recommendations, or choose its own nominee.
The questions intensified when rumors surfaced that John McKay, the U.S. attorney for Western Washington, was also interviewed by the White House Counsel's Office. McKay said last summer he applied for the Seattle vacancy, and many local lawyers considered him the front-runner for the job.
The Seattle Times confirmed that McKay traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with White House officials about the vacancy, but sources said it was not clear if it was a formal job interview.
McKay declined to confirm or deny that the meeting took place.
"I'm not in a position to comment on this midprocess," McKay said. "I'm going to wait for the White House to make a decision along with everybody else."
So McKay did get his interview. But not the job. It was announced Monday that Bush nominated King County Superior Court Judge Richard Jones for the position.
Vander Stoep and Richard Derham, another Republican member of the review panel, said that Jones was the first choice of five members of the six-member committee.
More to come. |
