Tag: Alberto Gonzales (page 6)

McClatchy newspapers has posted yesterday's document dump in the U.S. Attorney firing scandal.

The problem for Alberto Gonzales in a nutshell:

The e-mails, delivered to Congress Friday night, show that Gonzales attended an hourlong meeting on the firings on Nov. 27, 2006 - 10 days before seven U.S. attorneys were told to resign. The attorney general's participation in the session calls into question his assertion that he was essentially in the dark about the firings.

At a news conference last week, Gonzales said....
"We never had a discussion about where things stood," Gonzales said on March 13. "What I knew was that there was an ongoing effort that was led by Mr. Sampson ... to ascertain where we could make improvements in U.S. attorney performances around the country."

Also check out the LA Times:

More below, including the 16 day e-mail gap and DOJ lawyer Monica Goodling goes on personal leave.

Bloomberg News reports Harry Reid said on their tv program, to be aired this weekend, Alberto Gonzales will be gone in a month, "one way or the other."

As to the others,

``Certainly, Karl Rove, with his resume, would have to be under oath,'' Reid, 67, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV's ``Political Capital with Al Hunt,'' scheduled to air this weekend. ``He simply in my opinion, and I think the majority of the American people, is not trustworthy.''

The House and Senate judiciary panels voted this week to authorize subpoenas to compel testimony by Rove and other White House officials. The administration is insisting that the officials be permitted to talk in private with lawmakers and not under oath.

Reid stressed that he thinks a compromise is possible, and that not all officials need to give sworn statements. ``Well, I think that there could be some testimony taken in private'' and ``would be recorded,'' Reid said. ``We could do that.''

[Hat tip Raw Story.]

Remember when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he wasn't very involved in the firing of U.S. Attorneys?

He said at a news conference on March 13 that he had not participated in any discussions about the removals, but knew in general that his aides were working on personnel changes involving United States attorneys.

The AP now reports that documents released today show he signed off on the plan.

A Nov. 27 meeting, in which the attorney general and at least five top Justice Department officials participated, focused on a five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors, Gonzales' aides said late Friday. There, Gonzales signed off on the plan, which was drafted by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. Sampson resigned last week. Another Justice aide closely involved in the dismissals, White House liaison Monica Goodling, has also taken a leave of absence, two officials said.

[Hat tip Atrios.]

Update: The Daily Background provides a review and analysis of the newly released documents.

Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says he will not resign.

And, he's about to go on the road.

Starting in the next few days, Mr. Gonzales will be meeting with most of the current United States attorneys as he makes a long-scheduled trip to several cities to promote Justice Department programs.

Sen. Arlen Specter says the subpoena fight could take up to two years to resolve.

Fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias has an op-ed in today's New York Times.

United States attorneys have a long history of being insulated from politics. Although we receive our appointments through the political process (I am a Republican who was recommended by Senator Pete Domenici), we are expected to be apolitical once we are in office. I will never forget John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, telling me during the summer of 2001 that politics should play no role during my tenure. I took that message to heart. Little did I know that I could be fired for not being political.

He goes on to describe the telephone calls from Sen. Peter Domenici and Congresswoman Heather Wilson.

More...

The Senate has Senate voted to repeal the secret Midnight Patriot Act provision that granted AG power to appoint interim US Atty's without Senate confirmation:

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to end the Bush administration's ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors.

. . . With a 94-2 vote, the Senate passed a bill that canceled a Justice Department-authored provision in the Patriot Act that had allowed the attorney general to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation.

. . . Essentially, the Senate returned the law regarding the appointments of U.S. attorneys to where it was before Congress passed the Patriot Act, including the unilateral appointment authority the administration had sought in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.

More on the bill from Jeralyn.

The LA Times and other news sources have given this list of names circulating around the White House for possible replacements of Alberto Gonzales:

People close to the administration said that any list of possible candidates would include Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; Larry D. Thompson, the deputy attorney general under John Ashcroft; and Theodore B. Olson, the solicitor general under Ashcroft.

Prediction: It won't be Ted Olson. For the same reasons he will never make it to the Supreme Court. Larry Thompson might not want the job, he's doing great at Pepsico. Even Chertoff must know he hasn't wowed anyone with his tenure at Homeland Security -- think of his Katrina performance. But he was a federal judge and prosecutor before being named to Homeland Security, so he might be easy to convince.

I like Larry Thompson, he's fair and he's been both a defense lawyer and a prosecutor. The criminal defense bar likes him, and that's something when it comes to a prosecutor. I've endorsed him before, and I'd do it again.

But, I wonder, with only 22 months left in his Presidency, will Bush take chance on a non-loyalist Attorney General or someone outside his immediate circle ...or will he find someone from his dad's reign to help bail him out. That's more in keeping with his character and his pattern of appointments. When things get tough, he raids his dad's cabinet.

Conservative publication American Spectator has a new twist on PurgeGate: Alberto Gonzales is being done in by his own employees at the Justice Department.

As another Department of Justice paper dump related to the botched firings of eight U.S. Attorneys takes place on Capitol Hill today, it is becoming increasingly clear that Department of Justice insiders have been using the controversy to perpetrate what some Bush Administration loyalists are calling a "coup." Those activities appear to be occurring in the offices of the Deputy Attorney General and the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys.

Catch this:

The American Spectator has learned that members of McNulty's staff are supporting the possible nomination to one of the vacant U.S. Attorney slots of a former government lawyer who had an affair with a colleague and now resides with not one, but two women in what some in the DAG's office have termed a "tri-sexual" relationship.

"That residential situation would be adjusted if the name was put forward," says someone familiar with the thinking in McNulty's office.

I think Page Six needs to get on this one.

Here are the first 50 pages (pdf) of e-mails released by the Justice Department today pertaining to the firing of U.S. Attorneys.

Seven more batches are available here.

Update: The New York Times provides some preliminary analysis. The Daily Background finds a Randy Cunningham link to Lam's firing.

ABC News on the new documents. See also, ABC News on the Bud Cummins resignation.

TPM Muckraker is seeking reader assistance in pouring over the 3,000 pages of released documents.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was on the low ranking list, during his tenure over the Plame investigation.

The LA Times reviews the new documents and shows how DOJ tried to limit the fallout.

As Sen. Patrick Leahy promises subpoenas to testify will issue Thursday to Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and others, Adam Cohen of the New York Times posits that criminal laws may have been broken.

“I do not believe in this ‘We’ll have a private briefing for you where we’ll tell you everything,’ and they don’t,” Mr. Leahy said on “This Week” on ABC, adding: “I want testimony under oath. I am sick and tired of getting half-truths on this.”

Cohen consulted with Congressional staff and law professor Stephen Gillers and comes up with this list of possible crimes:

• Misrepresentation to Congress: 18 U.S.C. 1505
• Calling Prosecutors: 18 U.S.C. 1512©
• Witness Tampering: 18 U.S.C. 1512(b)
• Firing the Attorneys: 18 U.S.C. 1512©

More...

The Chicago Tribune has some new details about the difficulties Attorney General Alberto Gonzales overcame in his life:

Gonzales' father was arrested for drunken driving five times in 17 years covering much of Gonzales' childhood and adolescence. Pablo Gonzales died in an industrial accident in 1982 when Gonzales was at Harvard Law School.

A younger brother, Rene Gonzales, died under mysterious circumstances in 1980. In 1991, the same year Alberto Gonzales became one of the first Hispanic partners at the white shoe Houston law firm of Vinson & Elkins, his younger sister Theresa pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine with intent to deliver. Nine years later, while Gonzales was on the Texas Supreme Court, his mother and another brother signed over their houses to a bail bondsman to raise bail for Theresa after she was charged with the same offense.

Most of these details did not arise in his Senate confirmation hearings, even though they might reasonably have been thought to affect his views about crime, drug and alcohol policy, and sentencing--all issues overseen or influenced by an attorney general.

What does the omissions of these details mean?

More...

It's not only Alberto Gonzales who's in trouble, Karl Rove has some explaining to do as well. As Shakespeare wrote,

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.

Dan Froomkin, writing in Friday's Washington Post, The Politics of Distraction, warns us not to miss the forest for the trees. Whether Alberto Gonzales stays or goes, there's more to the story of the U.S. Attorney firings, and Karl Rove is in the midst of the soup.

More....