Cummins fears corruption investigation led to his firing

Cummins, a federal prosecutor in Arkansas, was removed from his job along with seven other U.S. attorneys last year.

In January 2006, he had begun looking into allegations that Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt had rewarded GOP supporters with lucrative contracts to run the state's driver's license offices. Cummins handled the case because U.S. attorneys in Missouri had recused themselves over potential conflicts of interest.

But in June, Cummins said, he was told by the Justice Department that he would be fired at year's end to make room for Timothy Griffin -- an operative tied to White House political guru Karl Rove.

In an interview Thursday, Cummins expressed disgust that the Bush administration may have fired him and the others for political reasons. "You have to firewall politics out of the Department of Justice. Because once it gets in, people question every decision you make. Now I keep asking myself: 'What about the Blunt deal?' "

Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill have cited the firing of Cummins and the corruption investigation he was supervising as evidence that the dismissals were politically motivated.

What happened to Cummins appears similar to the termination of U.S. Atty. David C. Iglesias in Albuquerque. Iglesias, who was in the midst of a long government corruption case against New Mexico Democrats, has said he believes some GOP lawmakers in Washington wanted the probe speeded up to help the Republican candidate in a tight House race there.

"As we examine how these U.S. attorneys were fired, we must not lose sight of the real story," Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said Thursday. "The fired U.S. attorneys were aggressively investigating public corruption cases, and they were fired ostensibly for job performance -- which in this White House means you're guilty of doing your job."

The Missouri corruption allegations centered on a change in the law that allowed for privatization of the state's license fee agencies. In 2005, Missouri newspapers began reporting that some of the contracts went to Blunt's supporters, including the wife of the U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Todd Graves.