Posted on 02/04/2004 10:58:47 PM PST by Jean S
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s (R-Tenn.) top aide on judicial nominees is expected to announce his resignation at the end of this week — a sacrifice offered by the GOP leadership in hope of persuading the Democrats to wind down the fight over leaked Judiciary Committee memos.
The aide, Manuel Miranda, had spearheaded the Republican effort to push President Bush’s judicial nominees through the Senate in the face of fierce Democratic opposition.
Miranda declined a request for comment. But The Hill has learned that he agreed to resign under pressure from Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). The Democrats have not agreed to scale back their demands for wide-ranging punishments following a full-blown leak inquiry.
Since switching from the Judiciary Committee to Frist’s office in February last year, Miranda had overseen a multi-pronged strategy to confirm judges whom Democrats had blocked with filibusters and other procedural tactics.
Miranda helped galvanize the Senate Republican caucus and outside constituent groups such as Hispanics and Catholics behind the nominees. In previous years, most of the Senate Republican caucus, apart from members of the Judiciary Committee, remained aloof from the fight.
The aide’s departure signals that Senate Republican leaders will likely pull back from confrontation over Bush’s judges. Last year’s high-intensity battles included a GOP-staged 40-hour marathon debate on blocked nominees.
As an aide in Frist’s office, Miranda was able to organize the Judiciary Committee with outside groups that communicated the Republican message on judges. Without the heft of Frist’s office behind the campaign to confirm Bush’s judges, the Senate Republican Conference, will have a tough time overcoming turf battles with the committee.
If they can tamp down the furor over the leaked memos, Republicans could focus on the content of the documents, which illustrate the influence outside groups such as the NAACP and People for the American Way have had on Democratic decisions to block nominees.
“It’s capitulation to the old Democratic trick that if you catch us with our hands dirty, we’ll blame Republicans for dirty tricks,” said a GOP aide.
Miranda admitted to the sergeant at arms that he had read Democratic memos that a Republican staffer on the Judiciary Committee accessed through a glitch on the panel server. But it is unclear what rules if any Miranda broke. His defenders say that the files were openly available to Republicans through their desktop computers and that there is no such thing as a property right to a federal document.
Sergeant at Arms Bill Pickle’s investigation of how internal Democratic memos were leaked to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times has halted the momentum Republicans built last year on judicial nominees. It has also generated bad publicity for Republicans.
Frist’s staff told The Boston Globe two weeks ago that Miranda had been placed on paid leave pending the results of the investigation. But Miranda’s fate may have been sealed by Pickle, who urged Frist chief of staff Lee Rawls to sack him, according to several Senate aides.
Miranda confronted Pickle in an e-mail last week.
“Do you think that it is appropriate to go to the GOP bicameral [retreat] today and lobby Frist staff and senators to have me fired, as I am told you have been doing? Do you think that will at all taint the report which you are soon to issue? Do you think it is proper?” Miranda demanded of the sergeant at arms.
Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said no staff in the Majority Leader’s office reported being lobbied by Pickle.
“I have no idea what he’s referring to,” said Stevenson in response to the allegation.
Democrats had threatened Hatch Monday to hold up the proceedings of the Judiciary Committee unless he agreed to schedule a briefing by Pickle for Republicans and Democrats on the the investigation’s progress.
Pickle will reportedly participate in a senators-only briefing next Tuesday. His office’s investigation, which has interviewed over 100 staffers and seized several computers, is expected to conclude soon.
Some GOP senators resent the way the controversy turned from Democratic to Republican impropriety.
“Right now I think that was pretty unfair,” Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said of the probe’s focus on Miranda. “I don’t have the impression he did anything wrong and we just completely quit looking at was done and what was found [in the memos]. I don’t know the details, but I would not be a friend in firing a highly qualified staffer.”
“Miranda has really been the quarterback on the Republican side for much of the Senate activity on this,” said Sean Rushton, the executive director of the Committee for a Fair Judiciary.
Republicans are also losing senior counsel Rena Comisac, who headed the Judiciary Committee’s nominations team. She will start working at the Justice Department next Monday.
Responsibility for judicial nominees in the majority leader’s office will now be assigned to Bill Wichterman, Frist’s director of coalitions.
But some conservatives are worried that Wichterman, who handles a wide array of issues and coalitions, will not be able to devote the same specialized attention as Miranda did to judicial nominees.
Dems never assuaged
when will the GOP ever learn?
Orin Hatch needs to have a backbone implant, and he might as well have some ethics installed at the same time.
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What idiot would believe anything will assuage the Dems.
You've got to be dreaming!
Lott was the Democrat's darling Cheer Leader....
There is a reason the Republicans are called the Stupid Party....
They just don't have the survival instincts - won't go for the jugular...
Semper Fi
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