The meeting to fire her apparently occurred in November 2007. But she was not fired until June of 2009 by THE OBAMA JUSTICE DEPARTMENT, 8 days after submitting a June 1, 2009 letter to ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER. How do you explain that she remained on the job during the BUSH administration for God's sakes, but gets fired during the Obama administration?
From the Scott Horton Harpers article referenced above
"Eight days after submitting these meticulously documented complaints, many of which echo concerns stated by others in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Montgomery, Grimes received a reply of sorts. She was fired. Grimes notes in a press release that she was informed of her dismissal in a letter from Terry Derden of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys. Derden formally denies that Grimes’s dismissal is related to her status as a whistleblower. On the other hand, his denial is pretty thin gruel. According to the Grimes press release, the decision to fire “arose from a management decision made after-hours meeting in the lobby bar at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Montgomery, Alabama.” That meeting occurred on November 1, 2007, and it was an all-in-the-family affair, involving U.S. Attorney Leura Canary and her then first deputy Patricia Watson. Watson is married to Leura Canary’s first cousin, and both Canary and Watson were the direct targets of Grimes’s whistleblower complaints. The appearance of an act of retaliation could not be stronger."
She was notified of her firing in a letter from the
Executive Office of the US Attorneys. The way the people she outed for their apparent prosecutorial conduct could very well have been crafted at the after-hours meeting in a bar(!). In order to flaut the protections against retaliation of whistleblowers, they found a loophole - they rescinded her security clearance. No security clearance, no job.
More from the article:
"According to the Justice Department, Grimes was terminated because she presented “an unreasonable risk to operational security.” The Justice Department apparently reached that conclusion because of her denunciation of the “victory at all costs” tactics adopted by the Public Integrity Section, and her objection to juror tampering, witness cajoling, and similar criminal capers also provided justification for termination of her security clearance. The Justice Department’s conduct looks increasingly like a Sicilian mob group: you commit the crimes the bosses order and you keep quiet about it, or the consequences will be fearsome. The No Fear Act purports to shield whistleblowers from acts of retaliation against employees who disclose misconduct. However, the clever consigliere of the Bush Justice Department, who amazingly continue to control all aspects of the case involving Siegelman five months into a new Democratic administration (including Leura Canary, who is still on the job in Montgomery), are not about to be stopped by legislation that protects whistleblowers. They detected the chink in the armor: the decision to terminate security clearance is not reviewable in a whistleblower setting. And once security clearance is lifted, it becomes very easy to fire the person involved.
In response to an inquiry about the Grimes termination, Justice Department spokesman Tracy Schmaler states, “The Department takes seriously its obligation under the whistleblower law and did not violate it with regards to the termination of this employee. For privacy reasons, it would be inappropriate to comment any further on this personnel matter at this time.
Why are these Bush miscreants STILL ON THE JOB in Alabama?!! There have been more than enough questions raised about the conduct in that office for them to be dismissed by a new President and a new AG, as is COMMON!
And finally, your absolutely absurd sentence that:
'Grimes concludes her own press release placing the blame clearly where it belongs, in Alabama, while expressing positive confidence in Holder:"My hope remains with the Attorney General of the United States. I remain confident that Mr. Holder will provide assistance to the employees of the United States Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Alabama, to wrongfully terminate employees of the U.S. Attorney's Office,..."
She references Alabama as being the place where the misconduct occurred, but she is clearly appealing to HOLDER as the highest official of the government entity that fired her, THE US JUSTICE DEPARTMENT to review and overturn her firing, while making it very clear to anyone who chooses to be a whistleblower that there are loopholes big enough to drive trucks through in terms of job protection.
Here is her press release so that others may judge for themselves.
http://harpers.org/media/image/blogs/misc/tamarah_grimes_press_release.pdf
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