Senate Majority Leader Loses Top Aide Over Democrat Memos

Summary: Senate Republicans have lost a faithful man over the exposure of memos showing collusion between Senate Democrats and leftist special interest groups over Bush's judicial nominees.

Manuel Miranda, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's (R-TN) staff lawyer has resigned under pressure for his role in exposing memos from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee showing collusion over President Bush's judicial nominees.

Democrats have successfully turned attention away from the content of the memos-and possible ethics violations-to focus attention on the whistleblowers who exposed the collusion.

The Coalition for a Fair Judiciary has posted the content of many of these memos on its web site. The focus should be on the unethical conduct of Senators on the Democratic side who have worked with liberal special interest organizations to hold up or block Bush's nominees: CFJ

In December, TVC issued a press release to defend Manuel Miranda from the attacks of Senate liberals against him. Mrs. Lafferty said in part: "Republican leaders should demand to know who wrote these memos and to find out if Democrat staffers on the Judiciary Committee violated Senate ethics laws instead of blaming the person who exposed this corruption."

Mrs. Lafferty has recently joined with other conservative leaders in Washington, D.C., to send a letter of concern to the Justice Department. The letter urges an investigation into the corruption of the judicial process by Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. We have reprinted this letter below.

Please circulate this among your friends and send a copy to your two U.S. Senators asking them to join in the call for a thorough investigation by the Justice Department of the relationship between Senate Democrats and outside pressure groups.

In a recent complaint addressed to the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee, Mr. Manuel Miranda, former Majority Counsel to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and General Counsel to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, apprised Committee Chief Counsel Robert Walker of the following revelation: "I have read documents evidencing public corruption by elected officials and staff of the United States Senate. . . . This includes evidence of the direct influencing of the Senate's advice and consent role by the promise of campaign funding and election support in the last mid-term election. . . . The proof of my Clause 9 [Code of Ethics for Government Service] disclosure is currently held and preserved by the Sergeant at Arms in a hard drive belonging to the young Hatch staffer who discovered a glitch in the Judiciary Committee's shared server that allowed these documents to be read. This hard drive was seized over two months ago in the course of the current Democrat memos investigation."

Miranda has also made this statement in writing: "The ones [memos already] made public are the least indicting of the documents I came to see."

Upon information and belief, we the undersigned tender the following allegations in support of our request for an investigation.

The Sergeant at Arms of the United States Senate is in the sole possession of credible and unambiguous evidence of crimes that fall within the jurisdiction the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice.

These documents are in no way, shape, or form privileged or otherwise confidential. Even in the event such a dubious and hollow claim for privacy is made [either by the custodian or the likely targets of a prospective criminal investigation], a wealth of case law holds that such a consideration must necessarily be subordinated to and trumped by their probative value and relevance to a criminal investigation.

We humbly suggest that agents of the United States Department of Justice should endeavor to take immediate possession of the aforementioned memoranda so as to preclude the possibility that [negligent or unscrupulous] employees of the Office of the Sergeant at Arms inadvertently or intentionally destroy evidence of a crime.

Lest you fear duplication or concurrent jurisdiction between investigative arms of the executive and legislative branches, please note that the investigation of the Sergeant at Arms is exclusively focused upon and limited to the mere propriety of the method of partial disclosure of the memoranda, not their content.

In short, these memoranda have not yet been examined or scrutinized with an eye towards ascertaining the applicability of criminal statutes to the conduct of their authors and recipients.

The Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice has both a statutory duty and moral imperative to probe the relevant criminal misconduct that is manifested by and memorialized through these memoranda.

Thank you in advance for your immediate attention to this grave matter of public concern.

(partial listing - other signatories pending) Kay Daly, President, Coalition for a Fair Judiciary
Paul Weyrich, Chairman and CEO, Free Congress Foundation
David Keene, Chairman, American Conservative Union
Mark R. Levin, President, Landmark Legal Foundation
Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council
Chuck Muth, President, Citizens Outreach
George Landrith, President, Frontiers of Freedom
Sandy Rios, President, Concerned Women for America
Grover G. Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform
Ray Ruddy, Gerard Health Foundation
Jeffrey Mazzella, Executive Director, Center for Individual Freedom
Niger Innis, National Spokesperson, Congress for Racial Equality
Kelley Shackleford, Chief Counsel, Liberty Legal Institute
James J. Fotis, Executive Director, Law Enforcement Alliance of America
Nancie G. Marzulla, President, Defenders of Property Rights
Raymond J. LaJeunesse, Jr., VP & Legal Director, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Inc.
Jim Backlin, Director of Legislative Affairs, Christian Coalition
Audrey Mullen, Independent Women's Action Project
Larry Cirignano, Esq.
Elizabeth Sheld, Chairman, Free Republic Network
Amy Ridenour, President, The National Center for Public Policy Research
Mychal Massie, National Advisory Council, Project 21
David Almasi, American Criminal Justice Center
Andrea Lafferty, Traditional Values Coalition

cc: The Hon. John D. Ashcroft, Attorney General of the United States
The Hon. James B. Comey, Deputy Attorney General of the United States
The Hon. Christopher Wray, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division
The Hon. Roscoe Howard, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia
The Hon. Paul McNulty, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia

More on Miranda controversy has been published by the Washington Post.
See Fox News, Washington Times, Call for Probe, and NewsMax.com.

O.K. I'll start:

This is going to be a catastrophie. For the Republicans. They already fired a staffer which leaves the door open for the Dems to claim the high ground. Second, the limpwristed Pubs are too frightened to take on the bare knuckles Rats and the their press toadys.

If I were the RAT leadership I'd use this as in issue during election time, knowing the Pubs will misplay their hand, and/or continue to cower in the corner.

That in turn will add to a long list of issues where conservatives are already pi**ed at the Pubs, and many will just chuck-it-all on election day.

The time for Republicans to voice dissent is now, during the Primaries. Toss the encumbants out if that is what you believe. I think that leadership failed us on the issue of these memos too.

Staying home on election day will only ensure that the Democrats have that many more seats from which to use in the manner described these memos.

With 50% of elligible voters typically sitting home on election day, what kind of message does staying home tend to give?

Are individual taxpayers allowed to add their names to the list of claimants? If so, I'd like my name added.

I don't know. Try going to the site and see whether there's a place to add your name. Sorry I can't be more of a help.

Why the hell aren't the pubbies investigating the substance and content of the memos? They're letting the RATS take the issue away from them (as usual). Whew! it gets tougher, day by day, to be a conservative.

As a comparison:

Q: What happened to Daniel Ellsberg after his "memo leak"? It could be argued that Daniel's leak was a very serious breach resulting in loss of life and aid to our enemies. Not just embarrassing for one political party.
A: Zip. Nada. Nothing. All charges were dismissed and Danny boy was lauded by the press as a hero. He's now a cherished liberal saint.
Q: Did the media concentrate on the criminality of Daniel's leak or the content of the leak?
A: The NYTs and the WP fought tooth and nail to help Daniel get out every bit of the Pentagon Papers that they could.

Any appearance of impartiality on the part of media today is nothing but a pathetic joke.

To reiterate, they've permitted Ted Kennedy to lie about the situation. He has called it a "virtual Watergate". Except that Watergate was a private office. These files were on a government computer and required no falsification of ID or hacking to access. There is no DNC owned drive on the government system, that is a government owned computer.

Miguel Miranda was a whistleblower. Certainly didn't hear this uproar from the Democrats when that couple was tailing Newt's lawyer taping his cellphone call with scrambler. At that phone conversation contained no illegal act.

Does anyone here think we will ever win teh Senate back???
I thought we had but I was dead wrong. It is controled by the extreme left. If I was Hatch or Frist I would resign in discrace!!!!!!

And it's not as if we aren't helping. Diotima, Bob J,Nick Danger, JMStein, myself, and other members of FRN have put up and publicized the IntelMemo web site which lists all the facts, but even then the big guys on the hill won't fight. Ah well, that just means we have an opportunity to elect stronger representatives...

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