No Love For TPM At DOJ

By Cernig

Not only were Josh and the gang taken off the DOJ's email list a year ago, they aren't getting back on it. No room, says a Justice hack.

Leahy to Bush - Check, Your Move

By Cernig

I know this is going to upset some who think Bush was involved and should answer, but I think it's an astute move to remove the trapdoor under Rove, Bolten et al.

A powerful Senate chairman acknowledged explicitly on Thursday that President Bush was not involved in the firings of U.S. attorneys last winter and therefore ruled illegal the president's executive privilege claims protecting his chief of staff and former adviser Karl Rove.

The ruling by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy is a formality that clears the way for his panel to vote on contempt citations if Josh Bolten, Rove and others do not immediately comply with congressional subpoenas for documents and information about the White House's role in the firings.

The executive privilege claim ``is surprising in light of the significant and uncontroverted evidence that the president had no involvement in these firings,'' Leahy, D-Vt., wrote in his ruling. ``The president's lack of involvement in these firings - by his own account and that of many others - calls into question any claim of executive privilege.''

Leahy directed chief of staff Bolten, Rove, former political director Sara Taylor and her deputy, J. Scott Jennings, to comply ``immediately,'' but did not set a deadline.

``I hereby rule that those claims are not legally valid to excuse current and former White House employees from appearing, testifying and producing documents related to this investigation,'' Leahy wrote.

Either the White House admits Bush was involved, or it stops blocking the subpoenas, or the White house lawyers have to engage in a very obvious song-and-dance to try to extend the concept of executive privilege to involve matters the president isn't involved in. Nice move, Senator.

Gonzo To Be Replaced By Gremlin?

By Cernig

Over at War and Piece, Laura Rozen has a post about a persistent Hill rumor that says Gonzales is finally going to quit and will be replaced by Michael "The Gremlin" Chertoff.

Since Chertoff's contempt for due process and the Constitution is already well documented ( I collected some of it way back when Chertoff was up for DHS boss) this change, if true, will be a case of plus la meme chose.

The Hanging AG

By Cernig

So yet another little-known provision in the Patriot Act has reared its very ugly head - the most incompetent Attorney general in American history gets to shorten the time that death row inmates have to appeal convictions to federal courts.

Politically, it's another nail in the once-was-conservative coffin of the GOP. Steven Taylor writes:

We should recall that that the entire US Attorney’s mess was brought to us primarily as a result of the same reauthorization of the Patriot Act, as there was a provision that ceded special powers to the AG–in that case the power to appoint interim USAs was taken away from the judiciary and given to the AG.

Setting aside the thorny issue of the death penalty itself, it is unclear as to why the AG of the United States should be involved in the process at all. It certainly is yet another example of the recent trend in the Republican Party, i.e., an interest more in power than in supposedly long-held principles (in this case, federalism).

Taylor is correct, but let's not set aside the thorny issue of the death penalty - or rather, the thorny issue of whether such a casual zealot for executions should be given extra powers over individual capital cases.

My good pal Kyle Moore is sure the answer should be "under no circumstances". Not just because of the zeal which which Gonzales prepared "clemency memos" designed to usher then-Governor Bush along the path to execution of 152 people in Texas with minimal consideration, but because Gonzales has nothing but contempt for laws which get in his way:

With the same disdain that Gonzo has held the Geneva convention, he has also in his time serving George W. Bush, back in the Texas State government also held little regard for the lesser talked about Vienna convention.

According to this accord, in the instance of a foreign national accused of a capital crime on our soil, we have a responsibility to notify the accused’s home nation, and give them the opportunity to represent the accused in our courts.

This was not the case, however, when it came to Ireno Tristan Montoya, a fisherman who was convicted of murder in Texas. In regards to the Vienna convention, Gonzales would provide a precursor to his actions in the White House by legally ninjaing Texas’ way out of having to follow the Vienna convention in the first place.

The logic? Texas never signed on, so it doesn’t have to play. Though, one might wonder that in regards to international affairs, it might rightly be assumed that Texas stands with the rest of the United States, unless of course it would like to leave the union and become its own nation.

...When it comes to state sponsored execution, Alberto Gonzales has no scruples, and he has no interest in fairness.

Today he is widely under fire for his incompetence. When he doesn’t know what he is doing, which seems like a great deal of the time, things fall apart. But he knows about sending people to the gas chamber, he did it often and did it well, and we must under no circumstances give him the power to do it some more.

Agreed. Congress needs to repeal this additional power to the hanging AG as soon as possible. And next time read the damn thing before passing it, you morons!

Impeachy keen

By Libby

We've been having an interesting discussion at this post on impeachment in general and on further reflection, I'm thinking the biggest problem with impeachments is that we need so many of them. The way I see it, we need to impeach Bush, Cheney and Gonzales. The question becomes, in what order. I'm thinking Gonzales needs to go first.

For one thing, it's the easiest sell. Today's NYT editorial cuts straight to the chase on that point.

As far as we can tell, there are three possible explanations for Mr. Gonzales’s talk about a dispute over other — unspecified — intelligence activities. One, he lied to Congress. Two, he used a bureaucratic dodge to mislead lawmakers and the public: the spying program was modified after Mr. Ashcroft refused to endorse it, which made it “different” from the one Mr. Bush has acknowledged. The third is that there was more wiretapping than has been disclosed, perhaps even purely domestic wiretapping, and Mr. Gonzales is helping Mr. Bush cover it up.

Democratic lawmakers are asking for a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Gonzales’s words and deeds. Solicitor General Paul Clement has a last chance to show that the Justice Department is still minimally functional by fulfilling that request.

If that does not happen, Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales.

Personally, I think we should forget about the special prosecutor. It's too time consuming and by the time they prove he really is a lying sack of s**t, we'd still have to impeach him to get rid of him. The man has absolutely no defenders, save one -- the president. And Bush will never fire him.

Josh Marshall puts his finger on the reasons why resignation or termination are not options to be reasonably expected.

Unless the president is party to the wrongdoing that placed the cabinet secretary in jeopardy. And that is clearly the case we have here, which explains the historical anomaly that the possibility of Gonzales' impeachment is even a topic of serious conversation.

Of course, here, as we've noted before, there is an extra wrinkle. Gonzales isn't any cabinet secretary -- not the Secretary of State or Interior. He's the Attorney General, which means that he's the one that can and is bottling up numerous investigations into the president and his appointees. Because the senate will never give the president another Gonzales, the man is literally irreplaceable.

Exactly. Bush's "Fredo" is a loyal henchman who won't ever betray the "family" secrets as long as he feels the White House has his back. They will never throw him overboard as long as he remains steadfast. Further, he can and will do everything in his power to delay and derail any impeachment proceedings against his superiors, just as he has run interference in all the lesser oversight actions to date. It's up to the Congress to disempower him and unclog the system so we can, as Fred Thompson often puts it, "drain the swamp."

Name The Official, Ed!

By Cernig

If you want to know what the White House's defense against contempt charges, subpoenas or any other attack on their beloved doctrine of executive pre-eminence, look no further than Captain's Quarters blog today.

"Captain" Ed was asked by the White House to put together a group of rightwing bloggers who were loyal enough to have a phone conference with an anonymous White House official as he set out the Bush lines of defense.

Ed writes that the White House line will be:

The White House feels that this is just an attempt to embarrass the administration. In fact, Congress has no power to compel prosecution of such a contempt charge from federal prosecutors -- which Pat Leahy confirmed in 1999, in a similar situation during the Clinton administration. It is "of a piece with other actions we have seen," including the subpoena for Karl Rove, which he will not honor.

...* What about the call for a special counsel on Alberto Gonzales? -- The law no longer exists for an independent prosecutor, and the "special counsel" is accountable to ... Alberto Gonzales. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but then again, neither does much of what Congress has tried in this probe, either.

* How do you assess the risks for the executive in this case? SCOTUS has hinted that executive privilege is not unlimited, and that allegations of criminal activity could overcome it -- There has been no evidence of criminality in this probe, so they don't consider it to be very risky at all. The question the court would address will be whether the President properly applied executive privilege, not so much on content but more on process. Most of these areas have not been litigated to any degree -- and that may be why Congress has gone through the criminal process instead.

* Any concern that this is a prelude to impeachment, gathering material for a new effort to remove Bush? -- The Speaker has ruled that out, and the senior official hopes they see the futility of that path. However, this Congress has gone out of their way in breaking precedent in this probe, so no one really knows.

* Congressional oversight; why can they exercise oversight over agencies but not the White House, and what does that have to do with the concept of the "unitary executive"? -- The difference is that the President cannot be subpoenaed, and neither can his advisors, who do not require Congressional confirmation to serve. The President has the power to order them to keep silent about their advisory activities.

My analysis: The White House seems convinced that these efforts by Congress will go nowhere. The path of criminal prosecution is closed to them without consent of the White House, which will certainly not be forthcoming. They so far have not chosen to file a lawsuit in order to gain Supreme Court mediation, which the White House believes they will lose in any case. Their analysis is that the Democrats have gotten so frustrated with their inability to find anything criminal in the firings that they want to offer a futile, asinine denouement that will allow them to retreat, eventually.

So Rove won't answer his subpoena - what a surprise, although it's nice of the Bush official to confirm it.

Other than that bit of new news, it's all pretty much as expected, although following Gonzales perjury yesterday there's now clear-cut evidence of criminality - as if multiple examples of probable Hatch Axt violations weren't enough.

Surely, Ed and the other bloggers on this call know who they were talking to - a "senior official" - and agreed to keep the name a secret. Why? I'm mystified, given that all of this has always been the administration's line. I can only imagine that it's yet another example of the Bush culture's compulsive secrecy. There's no obvious reason for anonymity here.

Come on, Ed, name that official.

New Deputy AG Is Another "Acting Capacity" Appointee

By Cernig

Bush has appointed a new Deputy AG:

The federal prosecutor who helped put a former Democratic lawmaker behind bars was named Wednesday as the Justice Department's No. 2 official.

Craig S. Morford, currently the U.S. attorney in Nashville, was tapped by President Bush to become acting Deputy Attorney General, the Justice Department said. He will replace Paul McNulty, who announced his resignation in June.

Morford is a career prosecutor who has pursued organized crime and public corruption in Ohio, Michigan and Tennessee for the past 20 years.

He is best known for his case against former Rep. James Traficant, an Ohio Democrat convicted in 2002 of accepting bribes and gifts from businessmen in exchange for intervening with government agencies. Traficant is serving an eight-year sentence in a federal prison in Pennsylvania.

...Senate Democrats have made clear they want a career prosecutor in the Justice Department's No. 2 job as a qualification for confirmation. Morford will hold the job in an acting capacity, which does not require confirmation. It was not clear whether Bush intends to nominate Morford for the job on a permanent basis.

Gonzales highlighted Morford's credibility as a career prosecutor. ``With 20 years of experience as a Justice Department prosecutor, I am pleased to have a person of Mr. Morford's exemplary character and integrity in this critical position at this time,'' Gonzales said in a statement.

Isn't it about time that the "acting capacity loophole was closed? I'd suggest 30 days - after that either submit the nominee to confirmation hearings or he's out.

Morford himself is no stranger to controversy, with a webpage dedicated to alleged improrieties and even possible 'criminal conduct" in his prosecution of convicted Ohio Dem, James A Trafficant Jr. who was sent to prison for eight years on corruption and bribery charges.

(Note - I make no judgement on the merits of either original prosecution or later allegations of impropriety. I don't know enough about either to do so. I'm simply noting the website exists.)

White House Given July 9th Deadline On Subpoenas

By Cernig

The heads of the Senate and House Judiciary committees have written a letter to the White House counsel demanding an explanation as to why exactly Bush is claiming executive privilege as defense against answering congressional subpoenas and warning that failure to answer their demand will be met with the full force of the law. The deadline they have given is July 9th.

``The veil of secrecy you have attempted to pull over the White House by withholding documents and witnesses is unprecedented and damaging to the tradition of open government by and for the people that has been a hallmark of the republic,'' Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told Fielding.

They gave the White House until July 9 to furnish the factual and legal bases for the executive privilege claim and documentation that President Bush personally signed off on it.

Whether or not the White House meets the deadline, ``we will take the necessary steps to rule on your privilege claims and appropriately enforce our subpoenas backed by the full force of law,'' Leahy and Conyers wrote.

In a follow-up statement, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said:

``If the committees just want the facts, then they should withdraw the subpoenas and accept the president's offer, instead of this continued pattern of gross overreach and confrontation,''

Because, of course, we all trust White House officials to tell the truth in off-camera hearings with no oath and no official record!

This one's going to the Supremes, I guarantee it.

Executive Privilege and Bush's Private Law

By Cernig

priv·i·lege - a) A special advantage, immunity, permission, right, or benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual, class, or caste.
b) Such an advantage, immunity, or right held as a prerogative of status or rank, and exercised to the exclusion or detriment of others.

The big news today, the one thing everyone in Blogtopia (except the 26%-ers) wants to talk about is Bush's refusal to answer to congressional subpoenas for documents in the AttorneyGate investigations. The White House "also made clear that Miers and Taylor would not testify next month, as directed by the subpoenas" even though neither is actually in the administration any more. They are going to invoke the entirely non-constitutional legal precedent of "executive privilege" and stonewall.

Which is utterly reprehensible. It's probably criminal. It certainly demands that Congress begin impeachment proceedings after charging everyone involved in the decision from Bush on down with congressional contempt.

And then what?

Here's my read on it. The Supreme Court are going to make the decisions on this one, but that's going to take time - plenty of it. There's no chance whatsoever that impeachment proceedings can now be concluded before Bush's time in office is up and he disappears to his new ranch in South America to clear brush forevah. There's probably no chance that congressional contempt charges can clear SCOTUS before Bush's exile begins either. In any case, the way in which Bush has stacked the court means he has to be pretty confident he can get the decision he wants.

And - here's the important bit - this has been Bush's plan all along. His administration have known, since the 2004 election, that the clock was in their favor. There was no chance of a Republican-led Congress doing anything with spine so they were safe until 2006. They figured a Dem-led Congress would take several months to be goaded past the point of their own fear of the GOP's PR boogy-man. So they decided to turn the administration up to 11, knowing they could run the clock out.

The window of opportunity was fleeting, they figured they had it covered, they were right.

Bush Pick for No. 3 at Justice Withdraws

By Cernig

Breaking news has it that Bill Mercer, the US Attorney from Montana who has been working on an interim basis as the number three at the DoJ since September, has withdrawn his nomination to be awarded the post on a permanent basis.

President Bush's pick to be the No. 3 official in the Justice Department asked to have his nomination withdrawn Friday, four days before he was to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Bill Mercer sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales saying it was unlikely that the Senate would confirm him to a post he has held on an interim basis since September. He will leave Washington and turn his full attention to his work as U.S. attorney for Montana.

``With no clear end in sight with respect to my nomination, it is untenable for me to pursue both responsibilities and provide proper attention to my family,'' Mercer wrote.

Ah, the old "family needs before public duty" chestnut.

Not that it has anything to do with a subpoena or his upcoming confirmation hearing, oh no.

The Judiciary Committee had scheduled a hearing on Mercer's nomination for Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the committee had said senators needed the facts from an investigation into the firings of several federal prosecutors before he could be confirmed.

``The White House has found many ways to keep sunlight from reaching some of the darker corners of the Bush Justice Department, but this is a new one,'' Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in a statement. ``With a confirmation hearing looming next Tuesday, they have withdrawn this nomination to avoid having to answer more questions under oath.''

Mercer's name comes up at times in thousands of pages of e-mail exchanges between Justice Department and White House officials discussing the firings. The panel had authorized a subpoena for Mercer as part of its investigation.

Bush can't find loyal Republicans who want to work for him and can stand the light of day shining under their little private rocks. As long as a tame Congress played along with White House Omerta, everything was fine, but now the goodfellas are running for cover.

Those Damn E-mails

By Cernig

A House report says that the abuse of private RNC and Bush/Cheney '04 campaign email accounts by dozens of White House officials to do an end run around the Presidential Records Act is far more extensive than previously thought. We're talking more than a hundred thousand e-mails to or from Karl Rove's account alone, dozens of officials involved, and many deleted in flagrant contavention of the law.

Think Progress and The Gavel have all the details.

I'm with Richard Blair at All Spin Zone on this. "And someone isn’t in jail because…?"

No Business Like Snow Business

By Cernig

My thanks to Crooks and Liars for providing my chortle for the morning. They have the video of Jon Stewart on the Daily Show pointing up the deceptions of the White House press secretary, Tony Snow.

Stewart explained that Snow “was adamant months ago that the dismissal of these attorneys had nothing to do with politics.”

He rolled video of Snow from March 15, saying: “It’s pretty clear that these things are based on performance and not on sort of attempts to do political retaliation, if you will.”

Stewart: “So anyway, that was three months ago. Three months later, a dozen subpoenas, six hearings, . . . thousands of released e-mails, it turns out that their performances were actually pretty good. And all signs are now pointing to political motivations. I wonder how the White House is going to reconcile this apparent discrepancy?”

Stewart then rolled video from Wednesday’s briefing, at which a reporter asked Snow: “At the beginning of this story, the President, you, Dan Bartlett, others said on camera that politics was not involved, this was performance-based, but –”

Snow’s reply: “No, that is something — we have never said that.”…

Is there a sweepstakes pool on the go at the White house or something? The pot goes to the Bush official who can deny the blindingly obvious the most times in a public forum.

Prostitutes

By Cernig

Two days ago, Republicans in the Senate successfully blocked a no-confidence vote in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, thus supporting White House claims that the whole Attorney-Gate scandal is a fabrication for political purposes.

Today, Senate committees issued subpoenas to former White House counsel Harriet Miers and former top Karl Rove aide Sara Taylor over their connections to the scandal. The White House has indicated that it will cite executive privilege and refuse to allow those subpoenaed to answer to Congress.

CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin reports, “The White House has made clear it will cite executive privilege for conversations that took place within the White House on the U.S. attorney matter, and if the people with those conversations happen to have subsequently left the White House, that doesn’t matter. They’re still going to cite executive privilege, and these people are not going to be allowed to testify anytime soon, it appears, if the White House remains as it has been. … Even if they want to testify.”

It is impossible that those Senate Republicans who blocked Monday's vote didn't know this was coming down the pike. They have thus aligned themselves clearly with a White House that, in Senator Patrick Leahy's words:

cannot have it both ways — it cannot stonewall congressional investigations by refusing to provide documents and witnesses, while claiming nothing improper occurred.

Thus those Republican Senators have revealed themselves as prostitutes for The Party rather than as Servants of The People.

Those Elusive Rovian Emails

By Cernig

If you've been following AttorneyGate then you will remember that Karl Rove's lawyer told Congress that a whole bunch of Rove's RNC emails, which are very much of interest to congressional enquiries, had been handed over to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald when he was investigating the outing of Valerie Plame.

What he "forgot" to mention was that he got them back after Fitzgerald was done with them.

Now Senators Leahy and Spector have written to Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, saying they want to know if he still has them.

Cue the next installment of "the dog ate my homework".

White House - Anti-Gonzales Vote a Stunt

By Cernig

The White House has called the upcoming Senate no-confidence vote over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a "political stunt." By which they mean "it won't change our minds and the Senators know it."

President Bush's support for his longtime ally and friend will not waver, said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., on Thursday became the fifth Republican senator to demand that Gonzales leave. Meanwhile, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., suggested that Bush consider ejecting Gonzales if he decides Gonzales is doing more harm than good.

Two Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, said they would offer a nonbinding resolution expressing that Gonzales was too weakened to run the Justice Department. The department is embroiled in probes of the firings of prosecutors and accusations that it has become too politicized.

``I think the time has come for the Senate to express its will,'' Feinstein said. ``We lack confidence in the attorney general.''

``We would consider it another political stunt,'' Fratto said.

He also said Gonzales does not necessarily need Congress' support to continue serving.

``It's important for any public official to have as much confidence as he can garner and it will ebb and flow,'' Fratto said. ``But it will not ebb and flow with this president and this attorney general.''

Has there ever been an executive with more contempt for the other branches of government?

Update The breaking news is that Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Artur Davis (D-AL) have written a letter calling upon their House colleagues to join the Senate in seeking a vote of no confidence in Gonzales. Both are former Assistant United States Attorneys, with a combined 10 years of experience as prosecutors in the Department of Justice. Their letter states:

At this critical time in our Nation's history, when we confront unprecedented challenges posed by global terrorism, and when public confidence in our justice system is a necessity, our country must have the service of an Attorney General who has the full confidence of the American people to enforce the law, defend the United States from threats foreign and domestic, prevent crime and seek punishment for those guilty, and ensure the fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has failed to adequately and properly manage the Department of Justice and faithfully execute the duties of his office, as reflected in his mismanagement of the dismissal of U.S. Attorneys, the conflicting and incomplete testimony before Congress by the Attorney General regarding his actions, and his demonstrated inability to reassure the public that our laws are being enforced in a nonpartisan, judicious manner.

It is our belief that Congress and the American people have lost confidence in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and the Congress should formally express no confidence in his continued tenure as the head of the Department of Justice.

Nancy Pelosi called for Gonzales resignation two months ago and I think will probably support this move.

DOJ Run In Third World Style

By Cernig

Michael Roston of Raw Story has an exclusive interview with Rep. Linda Sanchez, Chair of the House Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law. In it, she attacks the Bush administration's running of the DOJ as being "so third world", calls for the firing of Gonzales and points out that while Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans have also called for Gonzales to go, House Republicans are playing ostrich on the whole matter.

The Republican Senators who recognize that the department basically doesn't have effective leadership, that partisan politics has been injected in many different levels of that, that it's sort of been twisted as a way to help one party gain elections, and that there needs to be accountability, I give them credit for standing up and saying if there's one department in this country that should not be politicized, it's the Department of Justice. Kudos to them for recognizing that our system of justice should be above that.

By the same token, House Republicans show none of that. And I'm sort of amazed and befuddled as to why they wouldn't want to stand up and say, hey, our system of enforcing the laws needs to be above reproach. Because right now, the lack of confidence that people have in the DOJ, the lack of morale at the DOJ, the way it seems to be running seems so third world. It's third world in the way there doing it. And it doesn't seem to trouble my colleagues on this side of the aisle on the House side.

...They seem to be saying there's no evidence of wrongdoing because you haven't caught us yet. My response is, we're still doing the investigation, the evidence that emerges seem to be more and more damaging. Every day there's more and more revelations. And, "Oh, there's no credible evidence." I think the most compelling evidence was when the US Attorneys themselves testified, as to receiving political phone calls pressuring them on their investigations. That to me is extremely troubling, and if it's not troubling to my Republican counterparts here, I think there's something seriously wrong with the way they're looking at this whole issue. [Emphasis mine - C]

Go read the whole thing.

Hagel Joins Calls For Gonzales To Go

By Cernig

Via the AP:

Sen. Chuck Hagel on Wednesday became the latest Republican to call for Alberto Gonzales' resignation, saying revelations about a sick bed visit to his predecessor has undermined his moral authority to lead the Justice Department.

Citing dramatic testimony a day earlier that revealed that Gonzales, then the White House legal counsel, tried to undermine the department he now leads, Hagel demanded the attorney general's resignation.

``The American people deserve an attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer of our country, whose honesty and capability are beyond question,'' Hagel, R-Neb., said in a statement. ``Attorney General Gonzales can no longer meet this standard. He has failed this country. He has lost the moral authority to lead.''

President Bush continued to stand by his longtime friend and adviser. Asked about Hagel's comment on Gonzales' moral authority, press secretary Tony Snow replied: ``We disagree, and the president supports the attorney general.''

Hagel has hinted at seeking his party's presidential nomination but has not officially declared his candidacy. Another GOP contender, Sen. John McCain, last month called for Gonzales' resignation.

Hagel's harsh words came in response to testimony Tuesday by James Comey, deputy to Gonzales' predecessor, John Ashcroft. Comey said that Gonzales pressured an ailing Ashcroft to approve the legality of President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. Ashcroft - critically ill with pancreatitis at the time - rebuffed Gonzales, Comey recalled.

The White House went ahead with the program without Justice Department approval, Comey said. Faced with the resignations of Comey, Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller, Bush relented and changed the program to address Justice's concerns.
The story plus the dustup over the firings of at least eight federal prosecutors inspired Hagel to demand that Gonzales step down.

``Alberto Gonzales should resign now,'' Hagel said.

Hagel's the sanest Republican who might yet run. I wish he would get off the fence because he would attract a lot of GOP moderates who don't currently have a candidate (Rudy doesn't count, he's an uber-hawk) and the GOP really needs to move back towards the center for the good of two-party politics.

Gonzales Drops White House In It

By Cernig

Michael Roston at Raw Story caught Gonzales revealing a new Bush 'conversation' over US attorney firings in his congressional testimony today.

Weeks after the White House ruled out the involvement of President George W. Bush in any discussions on the firing of 8 US Attorneys, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Thursday morning that the President had discussed the matter with advisers in an October 2006 meeting.

"I've now been made aware of the fact that there was a conversation with the President that basically mentioned the same thing in October of 2006," the Attorney General said while answering a question from Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA).

"The same thing" referred to voter fraud cases in three US Attorneys' districts, which Gonzales earlier acknowledged had been raised by Karl Rove in a meeting "sometime in the Fall of 2006."

Gonzales' statement varied from remarks by White House spokespersons that the President had not been involved in any discussions of firing US Attorneys.

"I have said on the record for several weeks now that there is no indication that the President knew about any of the ongoing discussions over the two years, nor did he see a list or a plan before it was carried out," said White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino on March 27, 2006.

Furthermore, in a March 21 press briefing, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow had been asked about a Nov. 15, 2006 e-mail from former Gonzales chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson to former White House Counsel Harriet Miers asking "Who will determine whether this requires the President's attention?"

Snow was then asked "did the President have to sign off on this?" referring to the firing of the Attorneys, to which he responded, "The President has no recollection of this ever being raised with him."

A reporter later clarified, "Just to follow, did you say, again for the record, that the President has no recollection of ever being asked about any of this?"

Snow answered, "Yes, the removal – yes, that is correct."

An aide to Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA), told Raw Story the congressional committee will be investigating the matter further.

So now we know that the Schultzing goes to the very top. Which explains why Gonzales is so confident Bush won't fire him. Gonzales could really drop Bush in it if he no longer had to worry about his job. Murray Waas has the goods on just how hard the White House has worked to keep the sum of their involvement in AttorneyGate out of congressional oversight and just how complicit Gonzales is in making that happen.

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin's appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove's role in supporting Griffin.

...Several of the e-mails that the Bush administration is withholding from Congress, as well as papers from the White House counsel's office describing other withheld documents, were made available to National Journal by a senior executive branch official, who said that the administration has inappropriately kept many of them from Congress.

The senior official said that Gonzales, in preparing for testimony before Congress, has personally reviewed the withheld records and has a responsibility to make public any information he has about efforts by his former chief of staff, other department aides, and White House officials to conceal Rove's role.

"If [Gonzales] didn't know everything that was going on when it went down, that is one thing," this official said. "But he knows and understands chapter and verse. If there was an effort within Justice and the White House to mislead Congress, it is his duty to disclose that to Congress. As the country's chief law enforcement official, he has a higher duty to disclose than to protect himself or the administration."

I tell you, trying to keep up with Gonzales and AttorneyGate is becoming an impossible task unless it's all you're going to write about. That can of worms just keeps expanding. Thank the Gods for Josh Marshall and the TPM crew.

Goodling Under Investigation By DoJ

By Cernig

The AP reports that:

The Justice Department is investigating whether its former White House liaison used political affiliation in deciding who to hire as entry-level prosecutors in U.S. attorneys' offices around the country, The Associated Press has learned.

Doing so is a violation of federal law.

The inquiry involving Monica Goodling, the former counsel and White House liaison for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, raises new concerns that politics might have cast a shadow over the independence of trial prosecutors who enforce U.S. laws.

Justice spokesman Dean Boyd confirmed Wednesday that the department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility were investigating Goodling's role in hiring career attorneys - an unusual responsibility for her to take.

Goodling ``may have taken prohibited considerations into account during such review,'' Boyd told the AP. ``Whether or not the allegation is true is currently the subject of the OIG/OPR investigation.''

Given that Goodling and fellow traveller Kyle Sampson were handed the authority to appoint about 135 politically appointed Justice Department employees who did not require Senate confirmation, in an attempt to stuff the DoJ with loyalists, it seems like a good time to ask whether she had a hand in appointing any of those who will be investigating her.

Shultzing at the DoJ Continues

By Cernig

"To shultz" - to be defined as the action of not being aware of what's going on by virtue of deliberately looking the other way. It is, of course, based on Sgt. Schultz of Hogan's Heroes fame, who always went out of his way to know nothing and proclaimed the fact often and is most often used in cases where someone knows that if they are aware of what is going on then they will be held partly responsible for it.

It's going to be a very useful verb in the last two years of the Bush presidency.

Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker today writes:

We were all treated to Gonzales' historical display of bumbling amnesia before the Senate Judiciary Committee a couple of weeks ago. Now we learn that the second in command, Paul McNulty, wasn't really in the loop, either. From The Washington Post:

Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty told congressional investigators that he had limited involvement in the firing last year of eight U.S. attorneys and that he did not choose any to be removed, congressional aides familiar with his statements said yesterday.

McNulty said he provided erroneous testimony to Congress in February because he had not been informed that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and his aides had been working with the White House on the firings for nearly two years, the congressional aides said.

Put this together with the news yesterday that McNulty, along with other members of the senior leadership in the department, had been cut out of the hiring and firing process for junior political appointees, and it's clear that he really didn't have much to do with running the place. From all evidence, that responsibility fell to Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling, two young aides who acted as little more than proxies for the White House.

As Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) puts it: "If the top folks at DOJ weren't the key decision-makers, it's less likely that lower-down people at DOJ were, and much more likely that people in the White House were making the major decisions."

I posted on this story yesterday too, and ommitted the stuff about McNulty and others being cut out of the loop as decisions were made to take their authority to hire and fire their own staff away from them.

The reason I did so is that I don't believe that they could have been cut out of the loop without their passive aquiesence in doing so. We're talking about powerful administration officials in their own right, heading their own staff's and no doubt playing officie politics while doing their jobs just like every other large organisation in existence. They must have known something was happening and decided to schultz the whole thing. Secondly, at some point they had to have been told they could no longer hire or fire as they used to be able to - and each had the option then to make a stink about it but didn't.

McNulty and other senior DoJ officials thus shultzed the whole issue in order to allow politicization which they had to have had a good idea was an administration aim.