From
PR/US Newswire:
Chuck Canterbury, National President of the Fraternal Order of Police, dismissed the controversy surrounding the firing of several U.S. Attorneys as "politics as usual" on Capitol Hill.
"There are those who are trying to make this handful of firings into a scandal," Canterbury said. "But the fact is that U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President and can be dismissed with or without cause at any time."
Canterbury noted that all of the U.S. Attorney's which had been fired were appointed by President Bush in the first place and he rebuffed insinuations by some Members of Congress that the dismissals were motivated by a desire to disrupt investigations into public corruption.
"We have been treated to a lot of hyperbole on this particular issue," Canterbury said. "Cases in U.S. Attorneys' offices are always ongoing, there's never a day or an hour when there is not a case or an investigation pending, so to try and create indignation by saying that they were dismissed in the middle of this case or that investigation is pure theatre."
"We have a few Members of Congress incensed about the way a handful of U.S. Attorneys were asked to resign and who claim the entire U.S. Department of Justice has been compromised," said Canterbury. "Ironically, their solution is force the resignation of the sitting U.S. Attorney General and then to control the selection of his successor. How is this not a political power exercise?"
The key phrase is this one:
"But the fact is that U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President and can be dismissed with or without cause at any time."
