In fact, a Justice Department spokesperson had told the press, and senior Justice officials had told Pryor in a private meeting, that although it was the common practice when a U.S. attorney resigned to name the first assistant U.S. attorney in the office as the interim, they had not done so in the case of Cummins's departure because his first assistant, Jane Duke, was about to go on maternity leave.

But other Justice Department records show that Sampson and the White House had decided to name Griffin as a U.S. attorney in June 2006 even before Duke knew she was pregnant. And the records show that they attempted to name Griffin as an interim U.S. attorney to either enhance the possibility that he would be confirmed by the Senate or to circumvent Senate confirmation completely.

It seems that not only was their stated reason illegal, it was also false. Whoops.