Rove lies through his teeth....

From American Progress:

ETHICS -- FORMER CLINTON CHIEF OF STAFF REBUTS ROVE CLAIM THAT CLINTON PURGED PROSECUTORS TOO:

At a speech in Little Rock yesterday, Karl Rove described the Bush administration's purge of federal prosecutors as "normal and ordinary," claiming that Clinton did the same thing. "Clinton, when he came in, replaced all 93 U.S. attorneys," Rove said. "When we came in, we ultimately replace most all 93 U.S. attorneys -- there are some still left from the Clinton era in place."

Clinton's former chief of staff John Podesta told The Progress Report that Rove's claim is "pure fiction." "Replacing most U.S. attorneys when a new administration comes in -- as we did in 1993 and the Bush administration did in 2001 -- is not unusual. But the Clinton administration never fired federal prosecutors as pure political retribution," he said.

Earlier this week, Mary Jo White, who was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1993-2002, also stated that the Bush administration's prosecutor purge is unprecedented in "modern history." She told NPR, "[T]hroughout modern history, my understanding is, you did not change the U.S. attorney during an administration, unless there was some evidence of misconduct or other really quite significant cause to do so. And the expectation was, so long as that was absent, that you would serve out your full four years or eight years as U.S. attorney."

As White noted, attorneys need to serve "without fear or favor and in an absolutely apolitical way." By firing well-respected federal prosecutors and replacing them with Republican loyalists, the Bush administration has politicized the judicial system.

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