Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy

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On December 7, 2006, the George W. Bush administration's Department of Justice ordered the midterm dismissal of seven United States attorneys.^[1] Congressional investigations focused on whether the Department of Justice and the White House were using the U.S. attorney positions for political advantage. The allegations were that some of the attorneys were targeted for dismissal to impede investigations of Republican politicians or that some were targeted for their failure to initiate investigations that would damage Democratic politicians or hamper Democratic-leaning voters.^[2][3] The U.S. attorneys were replaced with interim appointees under provisions in the 2005 USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization.^{[4][5][6][7][8]}

A subsequent report by the Justice Department Inspector General in October 2008 found that the process used to fire the first seven attorneys and two others dismissed around the same time was "arbitrary", "fundamentally flawed", and "raised doubts about the integrity of Department prosecution decisions".^[9] In July 2010, the Department of Justice prosecutors closed the two-year investigation without filing charges after determining the firing was inappropriately political but not criminal, observing that "evidence did not demonstrate that any prosecutable criminal offense was committed with regard to the removal of David Iglesias. The investigative team also determined that the evidence did not warrant expanding the scope of the investigation beyond the removal of Iglesias."^[10]