Reid proposes rehiring Bogden

WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday he has recommended to the White House that Daniel Bogden get his old job back as U.S. attorney for Nevada.

Reid said Greg Brower, who currently holds the post, has done a fine job. But Reid said Bogden deserves to be reappointed to the post, which was taken from him more than two years ago in a firing that was never fully explained.

"I just think it is so unfair what happened to him," Reid, D-Nev., said of Bogden.

A Reid aide said Bogden was being vetted by the Obama administration. If the White House agrees to the recommendation, Bogden's nomination could move to the Senate in the next month or so.

Bogden was fired by the Bush administration on Dec. 7, 2006, as the chief federal prosecutor for Nevada. Six other U.S. attorneys from other states were fired that same day. Two others had been fired earlier in the year.

The highly unusual mass firings within the Department of Justice provoked a storm of reaction on Capitol Hill. House and Senate judiciary committees convened investigations that revealed Bush officials had politicized hirings and firings within the department.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and eight senior officials resigned from the Justice Department by September of 2007 in the wake of the congressional probes.

Justice officials gave differing reasons why Bogden was let go but nothing definitive emerged. Some officials, including Gonzales, told Congress they did not understand themselves how Bogden ended up on the pink slip list.

The investigations ended at the White House as the Bush administration claimed executive privilege, blocking the testimony of officials there who were believed to have played a role in the firings.

But the House Judiciary Committee announced last week it reached an agreement to receive testimony from former White House political adviser Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, former White House counsel, what they knew about Bogden and the eight other U.S. attorneys.

Reid said Bogden deserves to be fully vindicated.

"It is just not fair to have Bogden with this mark, this scarlet letter, of being a bad U.S. attorney," Reid said. "Everyone who knows him knows there was nothing bad about him. He was a good guy."

When Republicans had the power to fill federal vacancies during the Bush administration, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., had suggested Bogden for the U.S. attorney's job in 2001. Bogden was a Nevada staff prosecutor at the time.

"Greg Brower and Dan Bogden have been tremendous public servants for Nevada," Ensign said Monday. "Dan Bogden continues to be a highly respected professional, litigator and manager. I am confident in his ability to once again lead our U.S. Attorney's office."

Bogden, who is registered as a nonpartisan, now is in private practice at the McDonald Carano Wilson firm in Nevada. He could not be reached for comment Monday, but Reid said Bogden has agreed to return to the post that he had held from 2001 until his final day in February 2007.

Reid said he discussed Bogden's possible return with federal judges in Nevada and with staffers in the U.S. attorney's office in the state.

"I didn't just do this as a whim," he said. "I have gone into it in some detail."

Brower said Monday he was unaware of the development regarding Bogden and declined to comment on it.

But Brower said he was expecting that a change was likely at some point as the new president moves to put his stamp on the pursuit and prosecution of federal lawbreakers.

Steve Myhre, a deputy in the prosecutors' office, served as acting U.S. attorney in the months after Bogden left. Brower, a Republican, has served as U.S. attorney since January 2008.

"Most of us take the job with a willingness to serve a four-year term if the president so desires," Brower said. "But the reality is that is not going to happen in most districts."

Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760.