Palast: How Tim Griffin Commited Vote Fraud and Lied About It

Remember a few months back, when we learned that Karl Rove had engineered the firing of several highly competent, high-performing U.S. Attorneys and their replacement by Bush loyalists who wouldn’t question their orders?

One of those who got kicked out was Bud Cummins, who was replaced by a particularly disgusting hack named Tim Griffin–a good friend of Karl Rove’s.

Griffin, according to BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast, left his cushy appointment in a hurry once the story broke about his criminal activities stripping likely Democratic voters, disproportionate numbers of whom happened to be black–including active-duty service men and women in Iraq!–of their right to vote, through a process known as “caging.”

Palast says:

“I didn’t cage votes. I didn’t cage mail,” Griffin asserted.

At the risk of making you cry again, Tim, may I point you to an email dated August 26, 2004. It says, “Subject: Re: Caging.” And it says, “From: Tim Griffin - Research/Communications” with the email tgriffin@rnchq.org. RNCHQ is the Republican National Committee Headquarters, is it not, Mr. Griffin? Now do you remember caging mail?

If that doesn’t ring a bell, please note that at the bottom is this: “ATTACHMENT: Caging-1.xls”. And that attachment was a list of voters.

Two U.S. Senators have already formally asked Attorney General Gonzales to investigate.

This, of course, is only one scandal. Just a week ago, I wrote two posts about Cheney setting himself up as above the law, again. If you want more background on that, I heartily recommend the Washington Post’s four-part series on Cheney’s various power grabs. And then of course there’s the stuff we’ve known for years–lying about WMDs, cooking up backroom deals with big energy corporations, suspending the civil liberties of Americans (including illegal wiretaps), intimidation and fraud in multiple elections, and on and on it goes.

And still, the Democrats don’t talk about impeachment. Just what will it take to get these villains out of office?