Lawyers for indicted ex-Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) assert that documents released earlier this month by the House Judiciary Committee show the Justice Department unlawfully revealed information about him in 2006, Politico reported last night.

Rick Renzi (Gov)

The House Judiciary Committee released more than 5,000 pages of documents regarding the 2006 U.S. Attorney purge August 11. Renzi’s attorneys claim that a panel interview with former White House counsel Harriet Miers and some of the e-mails released by the committee “strongly suggest that officials in the highest levels of the Justice Department leaked grand jury material and that those leaks were done at the behest of White House officials for improper political purposes,” according to a motion filed Wednesday and obtained by Politico.

Renzi, who served in Congress from 2003 to 2009, was indicted in February 2008 on a number of federal corruption charges.

His attorneys have said before that articles published in the Arizona Republic only weeks before the 2006 election included information unlawfully disclosed by DOJ about the Renzi probe, according to Politico. Now, the Renzi legal team is using an Oct. 24, 2006 e-mail exchange between Miers and Bush Political Affairs Deputy Director Scott Jennings about the leak to bolster their argument, Politico said.

Miers told Jennings that she had contacted former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty to find out why a DOJ official had disclosed that Renzi was being probed, according to Politico.

Shortly after the e-mail exchange, an unnamed DOJ official told the Arizona Republic that the Renzi probe was “not a well-developed investigation, by any means.” Read The Republic article here.

The DOJ official said that The Republic should “be careful” in its coverage of the investigation.

“I can confirm to you a very early investigation,” the DOJ official told the newspaper. “But I want to caution you not to chop this guy’s [Renzi] head off.”

Tim Griffin (DOJ)

The firing of Arkansas Eastern District U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins to make way for former White House aide Tim Griffin to head the office was one of the central dramas of the 2006 U.S. Attorney firings scandal.

We already knew Griffin leveraged his close relationship with his boss, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove. But emails released this week by the House Judiciary Committee raised our eyebrows even higher, because they showed more than the usual sucking up. Griffin, one could almost conclude, practically had a man-crush on Rove.

Cue the Barry Manilow.

Griffin to Rove: “Btw my wife is pregnant. We are thinking about naming him karl. Lol.”

Love is in the air.

Griffin to Rove: “Thank you for the Christmas card. We loved it.”

Love is in the air.

Griffin to Rove: “LOL. I know where the true power lies!”

Love is in the air.

Griffin to Rove: “You are in my thoughts and prayers.”

Oh oh oh.

Bud Cummins (DOJ)

Griffin was appointed interim U.S. Attorney by then-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in December 2006 as a means of padding his resume for higher office. But it all backfired. Griffin resigned in June 2007 after news leaked out that Rove orchestrated Cummins’ ouster to make way for Griffin. And Griffin recently declined to mount a challenge to Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas.

The thousands of emails released by the panel revealed a little more about the process behind replacing Cummins.

Bush Political Affairs Deputy Director Scott Jennings to Political Affairs Associate Director and Arkansas native Jane Cherry: (An email of an article headlined “U.S. Attorney Firings Set Stage for Congressional Battle” in The Washington Post.)

Cherry to Jennings: “Good lord. What have you done?”

Jennings to Cherry: “Followed orders.”

Cherry to Jennings: “Isn’t that what the Nazis claimed?”

Jennings to Cherry: “shut up. these things always roll down hill. you are the one in the office iwth (sic) the most motive to help Griffin, so i’m guessing you are going down.”

Cherry to Jennings: “(Unreadable) do I have the least motive? Tim Griffin made my life absolutely miserable for 5 months. Plus, my mother was Bud’s first assistant. He was a good family friend. I think I could argue I was pushing to keep him around but you were the one who wanted him out. Heheh.”

Then, there’s a e-mail chain between Jennings and Bush Political Affairs Director Jonathan Felts about Griffin’s declining fortunes, specifically a story titled  ”U.S. attorney flap escalates” in The Morning News.

Felts to Jennings: “Dude – I think he’s toast. I don’t see how he survives this.”

Jennings to Felts: “He will never be nominated.”

Felts to Jennings: “Does he know that?”

Jennings to Felts: “If he doesn’t, he’s retarded.”

Felts to Jennings: “I wonder if he can appreciat (sic) the irony of the situation?”

Rick Renzi

In 2006, then-Rep. Rick Renzi’s re-election was in serious jeopardy. Rumors were flying that Arizona Republican was the target of a federal criminal investigation. Reporters were picking up on them. Scott Jennings, a senior aide to Karl Rove, warned White House counsel Harriet Miers of the issue in 2006, according to according to emails released by the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday. Miers’s response? She called Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty to ask him to issue a statement to dispel the Renzi rumors. The only problem: The rumors were true. Read Murray Waas’s report in The Huffington Post here.

Harriet Miers

Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton, who was leading the investigation, already had found enough evidence of alleged criminal misconduct to warrant the Department of Justice approving a request  that Charlton seek an application from a federal judge to wiretap Renzi’s telephone.

In 2008, a federal grand jury indicted Renzi on 38 counts of money laundering, extortion, insurance fraud, and other alleged felonies. Renzi left office in January 2009, after announcing he would not seek another term in office.

Paul Charlton

Charlton, one of nine U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration, told Waas in an interview Tuesday: “It’s a great disappointment that the White House not only would ask that the Justice Department comment about an ongoing investigation but also lie about that investigation. And it is even a greater disappointment that the Gonzales Department of Justice and would comment at all about an ongoing investigation let alone make untruthful comments about an investigation.”

Paul McNulty

In June, career federal law enforcement officials involved in the Renzi investigation told Waas they wanted Attorney General Eric Holder to initiate a formal investigation of the Miers intervention. (At the time it was unknown that at least three of Bush’s top aides were involved in the control effort to protect Renzi’s reputation and re-election chances).

In his interview with Waas, Charlton said he hoped Nora Dannehy, the special prosecutor investigating the U.S Attorney firings, also would investigate the Bush White House’s damage control efforts on Renzi. “”It is my understanding that the new information and documents are almost certainly in the possession of the U.S. Attorney [Dannehy] and I expect that she will take the appropriate next steps,” Charlton told Waas.

Diane Humetewa

Senior Bush administration officials balked at nominating Diane Humetewa as U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona two years ago, even though she had the support of both home state senators, according to emails released by the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday.

Scott Jennings, then the special assistant to President Bush, was unsparing in a Feb. 16, 2007 e-mail to Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, calling Humetewa “simply unacceptable.”

The e-mail, which was also sent to Rove’s executive assistant Taylor Hughes, said, “DOJ believes (and we concur) that Humetewa is not a viable candidate to be the U.S. Attorney for the following reasons.” (Oooh! What? Damn. The next page of the email giving the explanation is blacked out, we presume because it was a gratuitous trashing of Humetewa.)

Rove’s response?

“Replace Blanquita.” (Apparently intended as a racial epithet for the Hispanic-looking Humetewa.)

But Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for whom Humetewa once worked on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and who had been unable to mask his contempt for Bush after losing to him in the 2000 Republican presidential primary, refused to submit other names for the post, according to the e-mail. Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R) joined his home state colleague in his recommendation.

Jennings wrote in an email that the White House counsel’s office and the Justice Department were asking Rove to “personally engage to move this process along.” Rove failed, apparently.

Humetewa, the first female Native American U.S. Attorney, was sworn in Dec. 17, 2007.  She replaced Paul Charlton, who was among the U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration in 2006. Daniel Knauss served as interim U.S. Attorney for one year between Charlton and Humetewa.

The emails were released as part of the House panel’s investigation of the Bush administration’s politicized firings of six U.S. Attorneys in late 2006.

In June, Humetewa received the “Women in Federal Law Enforcement Foundation President’s Award” — the highest award given by the Women in Federal Law Enforcement Foundation. McCain and Kyl had said they hoped President Obama would keep her on. They also said they would work with the Obama administration to select a new U.S. Attorney.

Humetewa resigned earlier this month. Dennis K. Burke, a senior advisor to former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, who is now the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, has been nominated to replace her.

Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove played a bigger part in the 2006 U.S. Attorney purge than previously known, The Washington Post reported this afternoon.

Karl Rove (Gov)

E-mails obtained by The Post give new insight into the former Bush official’s role in the purge. Two of the e-mails focus on then-New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias and Timothy Griffin, who replaced then-U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas Bud Cummins.

In an October 2006 e-mail, White House political affairs aide Scott Jennings informed Rove that then-Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and his chief of staff, Steve Bell, wanted Iglesias out of office.

“I received a call from Steve Bell tonight. . . . Last week Sen. Domenici reached the chief of staff and asked that we remove the U.S. Atty. Steve wanted to make sure we all understood that they couldn’t be more serious about this request,” said the Jennings e-mail obtained by The Post.

Rove told The Post he was only a messenger. The former Bush official said he had “no recollection” of how he learned that Iglesias was fired.

“Yes, I was a recipient of complaints, and I passed them on to the counsel’s office to be passed onto Justice,” Rove told The Post.

In a February 2005 e-mail, Rove told deputy Sara Taylor that he wanted to replace a U.S. Attorney with his protege, Griffin.

“Give him options. Keep pushing for Justice and let him decide. I want him on the team,” said the Rove e-mail obtained by The Post.

Then, White House Counsel Harriet Miers contacted Taylor a month later.

“Sara, Karl asked me to forward you a list of locations where we may consider replacing the USAs…,” said the Miers e-mail obtained by The Post.

Rove personally suggested that Griffin should replace Cummins, according to The Post.

Assistant U.S. attorney Nora R. Dannehy and the House Judiciary Committee are investigating the purge. Today, the former White House deputy chief of staff wrapped up the second day of closed-door House hearings about the U.S. Attorney purge, The Post said. A transcript of the hearings could be made public in August, according to The Post.

“I certainly can confirm that Karl answered all of the committee’s questions fully and truthfully,” Rove attorney Robert Luskin told The Post. “His answers should put to rest any suspicion that he acted improperly.”

Acting Connecticut U.S. Attorney Nora R. Dannehy will question former Bush White House senior aide Karl Rove tomorrow as part of an investigation into the firing of nine Bush-era U.S. Attorneys, The Washington Post reported this afternoon.

Dannehy had been quietly obtaining documents on the firings since she was named to the investigation last year by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey, but now she is interviewing former Bush aides, including former White House political director Sara Taylor and deputy director of political affairs Scott Jennings, The Post said.

In addition, the Post reported she has been in contact with advisers to former-Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), who improperly called then-New Mexico U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias, urging him to quickly push through Democratic corruption cases in New Mexico. A month after Iglesias refused the request, he was purged by the Bush administration.

The House Judiciary Committee also plans to interview Rove and former Bush aide Harriet E. Miers on the firings. The committee will hold a closed-door hearing with the two former advisers sometime in June, the Post said.