U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, And Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007

Floor Speech

U.S. TROOP READINESS, VETERANS' CARE, KATRINA RECOVERY, AND IRAQ ACCOUNTABILITY APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2007 -- (Senate - May 17, 2007)

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, today I was shocked to read in the Washington Post that Tom Heffelfinger, the former U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, was among those recommended for removal by the Justice Department under Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Tom Heffelfinger had previously been appointed U.S. attorney for Minnesota by the first Bush administration in 1991 and had the distinction of being appointed again in 2001 by George W. Bush.

During his second term as U.S. attorney, I had the privilege of working with Tom as a district attorney and chief prosecutor for Minnesota's largest county. The relationship between the U.S. attorney and the district attorney for a large metropolitan county is a very important one but also a difficult one. I can tell my colleagues this: It has been my experience that the people of this country don't care who prosecutes a case. They don't care if it is a local attorney or a State attorney or a Federal attorney. They just want us to get the job done. That was the spirit in which I worked with Tom Heffelfinger and his predecessor, B. Todd Jones, who was appointed by President Clinton.

When I was first elected in 1998, B. Todd Jones had been appointed by President Clinton. Todd Jones and I forged an excellent relationship. We spoke often about the various cases in our jurisdiction and the surrounding area, and we worked together when jurisdictional lines were blurred, deciding if a case would be prosecuted federally or locally. It is not a small thing. In other jurisdictions there are often disputes that are not in the best interests of the citizens, but we were able to forge that relationship.

I remember we made a plan early on, and that is that we were going to work together. I remember when Mr. Jones and I decided we would have a party for our joint offices, and he invited the county attorney's prosecutors over to the U.S. attorneys, and I have to tell you, there is traditionally a little bit of jealousy that goes on. The county attorneys always look at the U.S. attorneys and figure they can have less cases and fewer resources to do those fewer cases, and the U.S. attorneys may look at the county attorneys and say, oh, why can't they spend more time on a case.

So we decided we would bring the people together. I still remember when we had the party at their beautiful offices. I got there first, and I never told my office, but U.S. attorney Todd Jones got on the intercom, and before my office came over, he said: Nail down the furniture; The cousins are coming over.

Since then, we forged an amazing relationship. So when George W. Bush appointed Tom Heffelfinger as U.S. attorney--Tom Heffelfinger, of course, was a Republican; I was a Democrat--you might think there would be problems. Well, there weren't. Tom Heffelfinger basically ran the office the same way Todd Jones did, in a professional manner. Many of the same people continued to work there and, in fact, the chief deputy remained the same under both the Republican-appointed U.S. attorney and the Democrat-appointed U.S. attorney.

An example of Tom's professionalism comes to mind. When there was an armored truck robbery in the southern suburbs in our metropolitan area, the victim was killed execution style, kneeling next to a truck. It was a Brink's truck driver. The case had gone unsolved for a number of years. Tom came to my office. I want my colleagues to know he didn't have to do this. He could have had just a press conference and announced the charges, and that would be the end of it. But he came to my office weeks before the case was charged to tell me he thought they were closing in on the suspect; to tell me he knew in most cases murders were handled by our office, but that this case was going to be different. It was different because the Feds had been investigating it for a number of years, and it was different because it involved an armored truck. It was also different because it could potentially be eligible for the death penalty, and he knew I was personally opposed to the death penalty and Minnesota didn't have a death penalty. Nothing required him to come and talk to me about that case, but Tom Heffelfinger did because he had the respect for me and he had the respect for our office that you don't always see with people in government service.

Our office jointly prosecuted many cases, and when there was a jurisdictional issue, Tom and I would always talk about it. We did a number of criminally focused initiatives together. We saw our offices as partners, not as rivals, and as time went on, as the years went on, the respect between both our offices grew. As I said, each came to see each other, the people in our office, not as rivals, but as partners in justice.

This is why I am so appalled that Tom Heffelfinger was targeted for firing. I take Tom at his word--and we have talked many times in the last few months--that he had made a decision to leave the office, that he never knew he was on

such a list, and he made the decision based on the fact that his wife was going to retire. But the issue is not that he made the decision on his own, the issue is that someone of such integrity as Tom Heffelfinger was ever targeted by this Justice Department for firing.

I have always believed, as a prosecutor, you do your job without fear of favor. It may not be easy, but whatever your decisions--and you know they are not going to make everyone happy, but whatever your decisions, you want to know at the end of the day that you did the right thing and that you had no regrets.

We have learned these past few months that our Nation's chief law enforcement officer, our leading guardian of the rule of law in this country, has allowed politics to creep too close to the core of our legal system. This administration has determined that Washington politicians--not prosecutors out in the field, and even perhaps in some cases not the facts themselves--would dictate how prosecutions should proceed. The consequences are simply unacceptable. Good prosecutors like Tom Heffelfinger who, by all accounts, were just doing their jobs--upholding their oaths, following the principles of their professions--we find out were targeted for firing. The new information we also received this week is while this administration repeatedly said we were only focusing on these eight prosecutors, it turned out to be 26 people who they were considering.

This is why I am asking the Justice Department today to tell us why Tom Heffelfinger, someone of such integrity, would even be on this list. I am asking our Judiciary Committee to look into the fact that this man--this good man--was even on this list.

We have seen cases all over the country now where prosecutors were pressured, where they were fired, where they were unfairly slandered by this administration. All of this, it would seem, was motivated by rank politics.

This week was Law Enforcement Week. It made me a little melancholy for my previous job. I had many police officers come in and talk to me, so many I had known and worked with, and we talked about cases. I also treasured the work that I did with prosecutors throughout our State, from the smallest counties to the U.S. Attorney's Office. This is what our justice system is about in America. It is about putting justice first. It is about doing our jobs without fear of favor.

That is why I believe this Attorney General must resign. I have been saying it for months. You simply cannot have a cloud over the Justice Department, where they can't do their jobs because they are constantly plagued by investigations and by everything that has been going on because of the brute political decisions made by this administration.

This is just wrong. I call for the resignation of this Attorney General, and I ask that the country understand what a great man Tom Heffelfinger is, that he should never have been on this list. And I will stand tall to tell the people of my State how this is a man of integrity and that I respect him very much.

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