Schumer Thunders

JMM:

Sen. Schumer (D-NY) catches Mr. Gonzales in one of several lies. Gonzales says Carol Lam was well aware of the DOJ's concerns about her immigration policy. Lam says that's false. Kyle Sampson says that's false. The documents say that's false.

First he claims the 'documents' show she was told. Not true. He gives up on that. Now he's saying that members of Congress told her, which is of course a non-sequitur since the question is whether the DOJ told her that they were concerned.

This is a telling moment for Gonzales since not only is he lying but he doesn't even seem to be even marginally prepped with what's in the public record.

And it gets much worse.

On December 15, Abu G had a conversation with Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas. Bud Cummins was just forced out of the US Attorney seat there, and Tim Griffin, Karl Rove's oppo research guy, was installed as an interim USA. Gonzales told Pryor that he would have a chance to nominate someone else and that they would not use this Patriot Act provision to keep Griffin installed. Four days later, in an email dated December 19, Sampson details a plan to keep Griffin in the office. Sen. Pryor basically went nuts on this and said "The Attorney General lied to me and the people of my state."

Abu G kept saying "I didn't like" the Patriot Act provision, but yet his Chief of Staff was implementing it. Schumer finally said, "Who's running the department?" and concluded that:

It defies credulity that your Chief of Staff, 4 days after you assuring Mark Pryor that you would go one way, he went the other way. And Sampson says that you never rejected the plan even though you said you did.

Indeed, Gonzales has said a few times today that he supported the provision.

This guy's just a liar.

Man, even Lindsay Graham's saying that they "made up reasons" to fire the US Attorneys. This should be called off as a TKO.