Trip through the archives a good refresher on Bogden’s situation
Memories fade, so while reading political consultant Karl Rove’s testimony and suddenly the names of seven Nevadans popped up, I asked one of the seven — political consultant Steve Wark — why he was mentioned.
Wark reminded me of a 2007 column by Erin Neff, the former political columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which speculated that Dan Bogden might have been fired by the Bush administration because of his handling of three cases.
Both Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers were asked during House Judiciary Committee hearings this summer whether they recalled any discussions of these Nevadans.
Both denied the seven names came up as part of the discussion of whether to fire Bogden.
Neff’s column was included as an exhibit before the committee.
She suggested Bogden’s actions as a prosecutor in the three cases stepped on Republican toes and landed him on the firing list.
One involved whether then-Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., improperly used office phones to make campaign fundraising calls in 2006. (No charges were brought but Bogden forwarded the case to the FBI for investigation instead of sitting on it.)
Another involved the prosecution of radio talk show host Walter "Eddie" Floyd on drug charges. Floyd was a friend of then Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller and one of the cars seized in the case belonged to Heller, a Republican running for the House. Democrats did guilt-by-association ads against Heller, who still won his seat.
The third involved the 2005 indictment of Dr. James Forsythe, who was acquitted of charges by a jury in 2007. The homeopathic physician is married to former Nevada Republican Party Chairman Earlene Forsythe. Wark, who has his own relationships with the GOP, is married to their daughter Lisa Marie.
The testimony of Rove and Miers is available on the House Judiciary Committee web site.
Miers, former White House counsel, remembered nothing about why Bogden was placed on the list of prosecutors to be fired.
My Thursday column discusses Rove’s testimony that Bogden asked for more resources to prosecute pornography cases and immigration cases.
But while a single pornography case had been mentioned previously, Bogden was never before accused of sloughing off on immigration cases. However, that was one of the claims used against the U.S. attorney in San Diego, Carol Lam, one of the nine fired. It almost sounded like Rove was confusing Bogden with Lamm, but Rove was not asked to expand on his claims Bogden was reluctant to prosecute immigration cases without more staff.
The U.S. attorney’s office declined Wednesday to provide figures of how many immigration cases had been prosecuted during Bogden’s tenure.