Former White House political adviser Karl Rove helped Department of Justice officials compile a list of U.S. Attorneys to fire in 2006 and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales engaged in a “cover-up” when he offered up reasons to explain the dismissals, according to a report released Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“The evidence shows senior officials were focused on the political impact of Federal prosecutions and whether Federal prosecutors were doing enough to bring partisan voter fraud and corruption cases,” said the 60-page Judiciary Committee report released by Tuesday’s chairman Patrick Leahy. “It is now apparent that the reasons given for these firings, including those reasons provided in sworn testimony by the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, were contrived as part of a cover-up.”

The decision to terminate the prosecutors, the report said, was based on resistance by the federal prosecutors to pursue partisan political prosecutions. Rove was just one top Bush administration official who worked with the Justice Department on compiling the list.

“The evidence…shows that the list for firings was compiled with participation from the highest political ranks in the White House, including former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove,” the report said.

The White House and the Justice Department have previously denied that senior Bush administration officials were involved in the firings.

Many of the report’s findings have already been laid bare in a 356-page report issued in September by the DOJ’s inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility. That report “found significant evidence that political partisan considerations were an important factor in the removal of several of the U.S. Attorneys.”

But the Senate Judiciary Committee’s report is an attempt to establish the justification for holding Rove and other White House officials in contempt for failing to testify before the committee about the firings. On Wednesday, Leahy will discuss the report before a meeting of the Judiciary Committee where he will also submit resolutions of contempt approved in December 2007 against Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten.

Furthermore, the report lays the groundwork for keeping the issue at the forefront of the 111th Congress, said an aide to Leahy, at which time committee members will decide whether to renew their efforts to pursue the sworn testimony of Rove, Miers, and Bolten.

The Judiciary Committee’s report takes on a much harsher tone than the DOJ’s and directly places blame on the White House for orchestrating the attorney firings.

“The Committee has pursued this matter diligently. Based on evidence, information, testimony and interviews, the Committee believes that White House officials are involved,” the report said. “Evidence gathered by the investigating Committees of the Senate and House shows that White House officials played a significant role in originating, developing, coordinating and implementing these unprecedented firings and the Justice Department’s response to congressional inquiries about it.”

President Bush asserted executive privilege to block Rove, Miers, and Bolten from testifying about the scandal and White House officials repeatedly stonewalled Leahy’s efforts to obtain documents that may have shed some light on internal deliberations about the matter.

“The findings of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the course of its investigation into the hiring and firing of U.S. Attorneys have been echoed by the Justice Department’s own internal oversight offices,” Leahy said Tuesday. “Further, the White House’s unsupported claims of executive privilege and immunity designed to shield the President’s advisors from complying with congressional subpoenas have been rejected by the federal court.

“This administration has repeatedly rejected the constitutional oversight role of Congress. The Bush administration’s days may be numbered, but the next Attorney General and the next Congress have much work to do to restore accountability and independence to the United States Department of Justice.”

Leahy said his investigation resulted in evidence that showed “Rove raised concerns with Attorney General Gonzales about prosecutors not aggressively pursuing purported voter fraud cases in several of the districts he discussed in that speech and that prior to the 2006 mid-term election he sent the Attorney General’s chief of staff a packet of information containing a 30-page report concerning voting in Wisconsin in 2004.”

“Mr. Rove also passed on to [Gonzales's former chief of staff Kyle] Sampson the complaints of Wisconsin Republican officials about [John McKay] the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin regarding his failure to pursue voter fraud cases,” the report said. “That U.S. Attorney’s name was added to the list Mr. Sampson was developing for firing in early 2005, two weeks after Mr. Rove reviewed activity about vote fraud in his district. That U.S. Attorney’s name did not appear on subsequent lists and he kept his job after he brought 14 voter fraud cases arising from the 2004 election and prosecuted Wisconsin civil servant Georgia Thompson in a public corruption case connected to Democratic Governor Jim Doyle.

“The Justice Department won only five of these 14 cases and the Georgia Thompson case was later thrown out on appeal by the Seventh Circuit for evidence that was “beyond thin” immediately after oral argument, which is highly unusual. This evidence points to Mr. Rove’s role and the role of those in his office in removing or trying to remove prosecutors not considered sufficiently loyal to Republican electoral prospects. Such manipulation shows corruption of Federal law enforcement for partisan political purposes.”

During the last month of the presidential campaign, Republicans said “voter fraud” was rampant throughout the country and threatened the integrity of the election.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a grassroots group that has registered hundreds of thousands of new voters, was largely the target of these Republican attacks.

Sen. John McCain jumped into the ACORN case, and cited it at the third presidential debate. He declared ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.”

On Monday, Republicans targeted ACORN yet again, in response to Leahy’s report, stating that voter fraud is real and groups like ACORN “tends to target areas where it believes that it can register Democratic voters, such as parks, public-assistance agencies, and liquor stores.”

However, independent studies have shown that voter fraud is largely a myth.

For instance, from October 2002 to September 2005, a total of 70 people were convicted for federal election related crimes, according to figures compiled by the New York Times last year. Only 18 of those were for ineligible voting.

In recent years, federal prosecutors reached similar conclusions despite pressure from the Bush administration to lodge “election fraud” charges against ACORN and other groups seen as bringing more Democratic voters into the democratic process.

David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico who was one of the nine prosecutors fired for refusing to pursue voter fraud cases due to weak evidence, said Leahy’s report, specifically the passages detailing Rove’s involvement, “confirms what I’ve been saying for two years.”

“Obviously I agree with the conclusions with regard to Rove and Miers,” Iglesias said. “But the question I have is ‘what does this mean?’ Is this the final report of this committee or is this a handoff for future action?”

Iglesias said he has been “advised” that the 111th Congress plans to pursue litigation against Rove, Miers and Bolten.

“We won’t know the full extent of what happened and why until Karl Rove testifies,” Iglesias said. He added that integrity couldn’t be restored to the Justice Department until the lingering questions about the reasons for the attorney firings are answered.

The House Judiciary Committee had also spent more than a year investigating the firings and attempted to compel the testimony of Rove, Miers and Bolten.

Last month, however, a Republican-dominated federal Appeals Court panel has blocked the enforcement of the congressional subpoena that sought documents from Bolten and testimony from Miers, effectively guaranteeing that George W. Bush will leave the White House without his senior aides having to explain the prosecutor firings.

The panel also refused to expedite consideration of a White House appeal challenging a District Court ruling that had ordered Miers and Bolten to comply. In other words, the stay either ends the case or forces the next Congress to renew the subpoenas in 2009 after Bush leaves.

Bolten and Miers-and for that matter, Gonzales-still may find themselves subpoenaed by Nora Dannehy, a federal prosecutor from Connecticut who was appointed by Attorney General Michael Mukasey to continue the investigation.

Dannehy is said to have subpoena power, something that DOJ Inspector General Glen Fine and H. Marshall Jarrett, the head of the Office of Professional Responsibility, lacked. She is charged with investigating whether any Justice Department or White House officials committed crimes as a result of the firings and in their efforts to cover it up after the fact.

Dannehy is expected to file preliminary report with the Justice Department at the end of the month.