In the case involving ACORN, Hearne had urged the Justice Department long before the election to investigate the activist organization and similar groups that registered Democrats. When Hearne came to believe that the U.S. attorney for western Missouri, Todd Graves, was not taking seriously allegations that ACORN workers were registering people who did not qualify to vote, he took his complaints to senior officials in Justice's Civil Rights Division and to the White House, according to a former Justice official and a private attorney who worked with Hearne. The private attorney said in an interview that Hearne boasted to him about having discussions with administration officials who wanted Graves replaced.[..]
At the insistence of the Bush administration, Graves resigned on March 10, 2006. Graves has said publicly that he believes his dismissal was the result of clashes he had with his superiors for not aggressively pursuing voting-fraud cases.
That means that Todd Graves is the fourth U.S. attorney out of office because he pissed off Rove and his minions and wasn't bringing phony voter fraud cases that would help the Republicans around election time. Just like David Iglesias in New Mexico and John McKay in Washington state, if they couldn't get them to pursue partisan cases right in front of elections, then they needed to get out of the way. And the LA Times has shown that the Republicans targeted Tom Heffelinger for dismissal for the same reason.
