Attorney Firing Scandal: Now with Local Flavor

You are no doubt aware of the many US Attorneys who are claiming to have been fired for political reasons. But are you aware of the attorney and former employee the Texas Secretary of State's office who makes a similar claim, pointing to Karl Rove as the instigator?

This is pretty cut and dried. You don't need much experience with American politics or even Texas state administration to see how this ordeal played out. Comments attributed to her casting aspersions on Karl Rove's residency status as a registered Texas voter in a Washington Post article earned her the enmity of Rove and, according to her lawsuit, then-Secretary of State Roger Williams. From the article:

The Post article, dated September 3, 2005, told of Rove's reimbursement of Washington, D.C. property taxes amounting to $3,400 because he took a homestead deduction on his D.C. property for which he wasn't eligible, being a registered voter in Texas. (For three years, from 2001 until the sale of his Austin home, Rove claimed homesteads in Texas and Washington, which the article noted was technically illegal.)

In the article, Reyes stated that ownership in and of itself doesn't make a residence, and that in Texas registering to vote where you do not reside can bring voter fraud charges. While she said that Rove's rental cottage in Kerr County "doesn't sound like a residence to me, because it's not a fixed place of habitation," she acknowledged that "questions of residency are ultimately for the court to decide."

Reyes said she was answering a hypothetical question and did not know she was talking with a reporter when she made the comments about Rove. She said his name never specifically came up.

So what was the true context of the quote? It is apparently in line with Reyes' assertions on the nature of the questions she was asked, as the article in question now bears a correction:

Correction to This Article
A Sept. 3 article about whether presidential adviser Karl Rove had legal residency in Texas and a follow-up item Sept. 7 were mistaken in reporting that an attorney with the elections division of the Texas secretary of state's office was speaking specifically about Rove when she described state residency requirements. The attorney, Elizabeth Reyes, was not asked about Rove by name. The articles also should have included Reyes's statement that an individual's intent to return to Texas is a primary factor in qualifying for residency.

The main selling point for me that Reyes was fired due in fact to the brand of "political embarrassment" she describes is that Williams "confirmed that Rove called him after the article appeared, but he said the White House adviser did not ask that Reyes be fired." I understand that it is not necessarily objective for me to ask how I can be expected to believe that the call and the firing had nothing to do with one another, but honestly, how does anyone expect anyone to believe that?