Swampland - TIME.com

Just How Lame Is the "Clinton Did It,Too" Charge?

While some on the right have been trying to spin the USA firings as trivial, because "Clinton did it, too," those on the right who actually did the firings had a different view: View image. (Sorry, the email document dump is all in PDF format -- this is from page 20.)

UPDATE: Transcription of email from Kyle Sampson to Harriet Miers, 1/9/06:

In recent memory, during the Reagan and Clinton administrations, Presidents Reagan and Clinton did not seek to remove and replace U.S. Attorneys they had appointed whose four-year terms had expired, but instead permitted such U.S. Attorneys to serve indefinitely.

Emphasis in the original. Rove and others keep pointing to the firing of USAs that happened at the beginning of the Clinton administration (and Reagan administration), but as this email shows, Sampson himself saw that the correct point of comparison was to second term changes.


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About Swampland

Ana Marie Cox

Ana Marie Cox is the founding editor of Wonkette and the author of the novel Dog Days. Read more

Joe Klein

Joe Klein is TIME's political columnist and author of six books, most recently Politics Lost. His weekly TIME column, "In the Arena," covers national and international affairs. In 2004 he won the National Headliner Award for best magazine column. Read more

Karen Tumulty

Senior Writer Karen Tumulty has been TIME's National Political Correspondent since 2001, and has also covered the White House and Congress for the magazine. A native of San Antonio, she is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard Business School, where her career choice has significantly lowered the average salary of her graduating class. But she gets lots of free magazines. Read more

Jay Carney

Jay Carney is TIME's Washington bureau chief. He has covered both the Clinton and Bush 43 White Houses, as well as Congress. Before coming to Washington, he spent three years reporting from TIME's Moscow bureau. In his next life, he would like to write for Sports Illustrated. Read more

Jay Newton-Small

Jay Newton-Small Jay Newton-Small covers politics for TIME. She has covered the Bush 43 White House and also Congress from the DeLay era to the present. And, yes, despite the misleading name SHE is a she. Read more

Michael Scherer

Michael Scherer is a correspondent in TIME's Washington bureau covering the 2008 presidential campaign. He has worked national assignments for Mother Jones magazine and Salon.com. Read more

Mike Murphy

Mike Murphy is a political consultant who helped elect more than a dozen GOP Senators and Governors including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney. In 2000, Murphy was a senior strategist for John McCain's presidential campaign. Read more

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