­A remarkable revelation in the findings of a special report released recently on an investigation into the Bush U.S. Attorney scandal [1] and the departure of Todd Graves from the Western District of Missouri.  From page 331 of the report (emphasis added)...­

C. Reasons for the Removals of Individual U.S. Attorneys

In Chapters Four through Twelve, we analyzed the reasons proffered by Department officials for the removal of each U.S. Attorney. Those chapters demonstrate how flawed the removal process was, and the evidence in those chapters also contradicts the Department’s initial claims that U.S. Attorneys were removed for performance reasons.

In January 2006, Missouri U.S. Attorney Todd Graves was the first U.S. Attorney told to resign. As described in detail in Chapter Four, while our ­investigation into Graves’s removal was hindered by the refusal of Goodling and key officials in the White House to be interviewed, the evidence showed that the ­primary reason for Graves’s removal was complaints from the staff of Missouri Senator Christopher S. “Kit” Bond. Bond’s staff urged the White House Counsel’s Office to remove Graves because he had declined to intervene in a conflict between Senator Bond’s staff and the staff of Graves’s brother (a Republican Congressman from Missouri). Thus, it appears that Graves was told to resign because of a political dispute among Missouri politicians, not because of an objective assessment of his performance as U.S. Attorney.

Todd Graves has repeatedly asserted that his dismissal from the U.S. Attorney's office was the result of his "refusal" to prosecute certain politically motivated vote fraud cases --an assertion that has always been unsupported by little to no evidence.  Unfortunately, Graves' self-justifying rationale has often been passed along uncritically by members of the press. 

But the new Justice Department report provides the definitive debunking of the notion that Graves was some sort of martyr for having stood up to partisan chicanery by the Bush administration.