From the email document dump, we have now learned that the latest “reason” the US Attorneys were fired was not only fake, but it was fully premeditated as fake. This email was sent from a DOJ official to a White House staffer:

“The one common link here is that three of them are along the southern border so you could make the connection that DOJ is unhappy with the immigration prosecution numbers in those districts,” Tasia Scolinos, a senior public affairs specialist at the Justice Department, told Catherine Martin, a White House communications adviser, in an e-mail.

“Which ones are they?” Martin replied.

Scolinos was clearly unprepared for the furor that resulted from the dismissals.

“I think most of them will resign quietly – they don’t get anything out of making it public,” she told Martin. “I don’t see it as being a national story – especially if it phases in over a few months.”

The email was sent on November 17th, just before the now-famous 18-day “gap” in email documentation. It leaves no doubt, zero, none at all, that the DoJ and the White House were plotting to fire the attorneys before immigration was brought up, and that the whole “not performing well on immigration” story was a premeditated fiction designed to cover for a purely political firing. This is the proverbial smoking gun as far as that part of the issue is concerned.

But how about the rest of it? The firings in order to obstruct justice, the fact that Bush was advised and approved of it, that Rove and Gonzales were at the heart of the effort? Well, some of that is already established, but some of it may never be: it seems pretty clear that the White House destroyed incriminating emails. While it is possible that they’re still around and could be uncovered, everything seems to point to the White House having digitally shredded them.

Time will tell.