Perjurer General Misremembers Again

So FBI Director Robert Mueller gave up his notes about the "Enzo the Baker" meeting between Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card and a drugged-up John Ashcroft, and guess what they reveal?

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 — John Ashcroft was “barely articulate,” “feeble” and “clearly stressed” as he sat in a hospital room chair in March 2004 when top White House aides unsuccessfully tried to persuade him, as the Attorney General, to sign an extension for warrantless domestic eavesdropping on Americans, according to notes made by Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I.

Mr. Mueller’s notes of his visit to Mr. Ashcroft’s hospital room provide another eyewitness account of the dramatic confrontation over the secret surveillance program. They confirm an account of the encounter given by James B. Comey, the former deputy attorney general, who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about it in May.

Mr. Mueller’s typed notes, which are undated, also reveal a series of meetings earlier and later that month between the F.B.I. director and other administration officials, including Mr. Comey, Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House Counsel and General Michael V. Hayden, then the director of the National Security Agency, which conducted the electronic monitoring program.

This completely contradicts Gonzales' account to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he claimed that Ashcroft was "lucid" and did "most of the talking" in the midnight meeting. This is yet another lie for Abu G, yet somehow he's still the nation's highest-ranking law enforcement official, because Democrats refuse to go to the mat to get him removed.

So what does Judiciary Committee chair Senator Leahy plan to do about it? Hold more hearings? Ooh, scary. We have a criminal as the top law enforcement officer in the land and you people do nothing about it except hold hearings and issue press releases. He has lied to you. He has even lied to you when you asked him about his previous lies. Yet you do nothing. We have a word for people like you. It's "chump." You have the power of the purse. You have the power to defund Gonzales 100% if he doesn't step down. You have the power to defund the US attorney for DC if he won't file charges. You have the power to impeach Gonzles. But instead you hold hearings. When I worked for Ted Stevens, in the minority in the early 90s, with Clinton as president, we simply moved ahead with plans to cut the budget of a senior agency official who crossed our path. It worked wonders.

Aravosis makes the salient point that voters perceive Democrats by their ACTIONS rather than what they say. If they continue to not hold the Bush Administration accountable, they will be perceived as weak. They can hold as many hearings and write as many angry letters as they want. It's about action, not talk.

I mean, we still don't even know how many US Attorneys were targeted for dismissal. How can the Justice Department still be funded without knowing that answer? The same for the Vice President's office, which to the credit of Democrats they did try to defund once before:

Thanks to superfluous information provided by Robert Mueller, we now have a good indication of who was behind the initiation and execution of the NSA-driven Warrantless Wiretapping Program:

The Grand Wizard of Darkness: Dick Cheney [...]

It is clear from the Mueller notes that the final word on the Warrantless Surveillance Program and the Hospital Visit was Vice President Cheney's. The Buck Stopped There.

This is gathered through the record logs of the various meetings between Mueller and Administration officials, including the Vice President. Go read, drational makes a compelling case.

The Noose Tightens on Abu G

As if more documentary evidence is necessary, FBI Director Robert Mueller took notes about the March 2004 bedside "Enzo the Baker" meeting between Andy Card, Abu G and John Ashcroft, notes which will almost certainly reveal that the program in question was the "Terrorist Surveillance Program," in contradiction to what Abu G claimed to Congress under oath.

John Conyers wants the notes.

We already know that Mueller believes that James Comey was talking about "the much discussed surveillance program" when he testified to Congress about the meeting. He also confirms that he had reservations about the program, contrary to Gonzales' testimony:

Watt: Can you confirm that you had some serious reservations about the warrantless wiretapping program that kind of led up to this?

Mueller: Yes.

Spencer Ackerman and Paul Kiel try to put their arms around what Abu G is up to, which appears to be a technicality designed to conceal just how horrible the initial warrantless wiretapping program was:

Alberto Gonzales' testimony that there was "no serious disagreement" within the Bush Administration about the NSA warrantless surveillance program has left senators sputtering and fulminating about the attorney general's apparent prevarications. But a closer examination of Gonzales' testimony and other public statements from the Administration suggest that there may be a method to the madness.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that Gonzales's careful, repeated phrasing to the Senate that he will only discuss the program that "the president described" was deliberate, part of a concerted administration-wide strategy to conceal from the public the very broad scope of that initial program. When, for the first time, Program X (as we'll call it, for convenience's sake) became known to senior Justice Department officials who were not its original architects, those officials -- James Comey and Jack Goldsmith, principally -- balked at its continuation. They did not back down until the program had undergone as-yet-unspecified but apparently significant revisions. But when President Bush announced what he would call the "Terrorist Surveillance Program' in December 2005, he left the clear impression that the program had always functioned the same way since its 2001 inception.

The administration's consistent refusal to discuss any aspect of the program -- current or former -- aside from what President Bush disclosed in December 2005 appears to be intended, specifically, to gloss over Comey and Goldsmith's objections. If that's the case, it could mean that the public has been presented with an inaccurate picture of the origins and scope of Program X. The Bush administration is currently contesting a Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena for documentation establishing Program X's history -- in essence, trying to ensure that the public never learns more about the program and the internal deliberations over it than what President Bush chooses to reveal.

I actually discussed this the other night at Drinking Liberally with Digby. She consulted a couple lawyers and came to the conclusion that Gonzales is saying that there are two separate programs: what the Administration was doing since 2001, and what was revised after this showdown. He's saying that the program in the showdown, the SAME PROGRAM with revisions, is somehow different. This is designed to conceal what was really so objectionable with the initial program that Comey and others threatened to quit the Justice Department.

What we don't know about this Administration's recklessness between September 11 and the second term could fill several novels. We just learned in the infamous Abu G hearing that Fourthbranch "had been granted authority parallel with the President on intervening in pending matters at the Justice Department." The predations of this Administration are absolutely unbelievable. They have thrown out the Constitution and made up the rules as they went along.

Abu G may go down for this one. But Democrats must see that as a beginning and not an end. If we allow some of these things to congeal into precedent, this will be an utterly different country, and for the worse.

Attorney General Idunno Fibs Again

I'm on deadline today and won't have much of a chance to participate in any bloggy goodness. But I did see that Alberto Gonzales is trying to set a record for how many times you can lie to Congress and get away with it. He was boxed in by his multiple statements about the domestic spying program, saying first that there was no disagreement within the Justice Department about the program, and then when confronted by James Comey's claim that several members of the Department were ready to resign over it, claimed that Comey was talking about a different program than the warrantless wiretapping which has been revealed to the American people by the President. This contradicted an earlier statement from June, and the Attorney General repeated that contradiction today. My favorite part is how he tried to explain it:

Gonzales said that he misspoke when he said at a press conference in June that he and former deputy attorney general James Comey were referring to the same warrantless wiretapping program.

“I clarified my statement two days later with the reporter,” Gonzales told Schumer. “What did you say to the reporter?” Schumer asked. “I did not speak directly to the reporter,” replied Gonzales.

“Ok,” Schumer continued, “what did your spokesperson say to the reporter?” “I don’t know,” Gonzales said. Schumer then summed up the exchange:

In all due respect, you’re just saying, well, it was clarified with the reporter and you don’t even know what he said. You don’t even know what the clarification is. Sir, how you can say that you should stay on as Attorney General when we go through exercises like this where you’re bobbing and weaving and ducking to avoid admitting that you deceived the Committee?

Hey, bobbing and ducking and weaving has worked thus far, why not go with what you're best at?

(By the way, how much you want to bet that Dan Eggen has NEVER been contacted by the Attorney General's office about retracting the statement?)

Well, the Senate is going to open a perjury investigation, and my hope is that they will see it through AFTER Bush leaves office, charge this clown, and put him in jail. That's the message that has to be sent to Republicans who act as if they are above the law.

There are so many other crazy things Gonzales said today, I could fill a book. TPM Muckraker did, so I would be duplicative. This is embarrassing to the very notion of justice in this country.

Fourthbranch Oozes Back Into The Third Branch - But Still Stonewalls

Mike Allen definitely got played when he wrote this headline:

Dems force Cheney flip-flop on secret docs

Dick Cheney's office is abandoning a justification for keeping the Vice-President's secret papers out of the hands of the National Archives.

Officials working for Cheney had tried to claim he is separate from the executive branch, but they will no longer pursue that defense, senior administration officials tell The Politico.

Believe me, I like any headline that begins "Dems force Cheney." But they haven't force him to do a whole lot. While his lawyers are giving up on trying to justify the ridiculous Fourth Branch of government claim, they aren't at all done resisting efforts to release information:

Dick Cheney's chief of staff, David Addington, issued a letter to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) today defending the Vice President's interpretation of his office being outside the executive branch - only this time, he said it was because Cheney's office isn't an "agency."

A copy of the letter from David Addington to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., was released to RAW STORY. Kerry said the "legalistic" response from Addington "raises more questions than it purports to answer."

"Dear Senator Kerry," Addington writes. "The executive order on classified national security information -- Executive Order 12958 as amended in 2003 -- makes clear that the Vice President is treated like the President and distinguishes the two of them from 'agencies.'"

No longer satisfied with the Vice President's office's claim that Cheney is actually an admixture between the legislative and executive branch, Addington now posits that the Vice President's office is not an "agency."

"The executive order gives the [Information Security Oversight Office], under the supervision of the Archivist of the United States, responsibility to oversee certain activities of 'agencies,' but not of the Vice President or the President."

It will not surprise you to know that if you're a constitutional scholar and you actually READ the executive order in question, Addington's reasoning is transparently silly.

Most importantly, Addington's argument would appear to be inconsistent with the statute that required the promulgation of the E.O. in the first place, the Counterintelligence and Security Enhancements Act of 1994, which requires (50 U.S.C. 435(a)) the President to "establish procedures to govern access to classified information which shall be binding upon all departments, agencies, and offices of the executive branch of Government." (Thanks to "gnarly trombone" in the comments for the cite.) Unless there is some reason to think that Congress did not mean to cover the Office of the Vice President in this directive -- which would surprise me, although I don't know anything about the intracacies of this statute -- then the E.O. must be construed to cover that Office. (Unless, of course, the statute would to that extent unconstitutionally impinge on the Commander in Chief's authority . . . but who would be so audacious as to make that far-fetched argument? (Yes, that's a rhetorical question.)

TPM Muckraker has more on this.

The Senate Judiciary Committee decided to step into this nonsense, albeit from a different angle, by issuing subpoenas for documents relating to the warrantless wiretapping program. This impacts Abu G as well, last seen dodging protestors in Idaho, since he claimed under oath that there was no internal disputes about the warrantless wiretapping program, yet James Comey testified the exact opposite and in fact detailed the nature of the dispute (as well as his Midnight Ride to stop Fredo and Card from preying upon John Ashcroft when he was sick in the hospital. The Judiciary Committee is seeking documents from DoJ as well.

But the fact that they're subpoenaing documents from the OVP means that Fourthbranch will have to trot out an executive privilege argument again. At which point he'll be again asked to comply with executive branch rules regarding oversight of classified information procedures. So Fourthbranch has stepped into a vicious cycle.

The Democrats in the Congress have really pounced on this. It's great theater. Hopefully they can walk and chew gum, and press this advantage elsewhere as well.

UPDATE: Fredo's also been dragging his feet on the supposed "investigation" of Cheney's exemption from oversight rules, and so House leaders have written him.

Godfather IV

I really need to get the proper tools to transfer video on the teevee into digital files, because I had this idea a few days ago but not the proper equipment to pull it off. That said, fine work here:



In further Alberto Gonzales news, my preferred candidate for President in 2016, Eliot Spitzer, takes Abu G apart in this soundbite:

"I think it is a blight upon the Department of Justice that Alberto Gonzales is still the attorney general," Mr. Spitzer said in an interview last week.

"We are brought back to the days, the dark days of the Nixon era, where the tentacles of politics reach into the Department of Justice and threaten our core notions of what justice means," he added.

Also, there was another document dump last night, one which proves that Gonzales lied to Sen. Pryor and planned all along to install Rove protege Tim Griffin into the USA for Arkansas job. By the way, Griffin is STILL the USA for Arkansas, over 120 days after he was installed as an "interim" attorney.

...Oh yeah, and Gonzales' immediate excuse for the James Comey Midnight Ride was that "he didn't know" (sound familiar?) Comey was Acting Attorney General. Except:

....Just days earlier, Justice's chief spokesman had publicly said Comey would serve as "head of the Justice Department" while Ashcroft was ill. Justice officials had also faxed over a document to the White House informing officials of this. When a Gonzales aide claimed the counsel's office could find no record of it, DOJ officials dug out a receipt showing the fax had been received. "People were disgusted as much as livid," said the DOJ official. "It was just the dishonesty of it."

Impeach Al Gonzales

On the eve of a no-confidence vote, there's a new site calling for Abu G's impeachment.



There's also news that Democrats will seek legal action for Gonzales' "Midnight Ride" to John Ashcroft's hospital bed to get him to sign off on the illegal wiretapping.

Indeed, congressional sources tell U.S. News that Democrats will ask the Texas Bar Association to determine whether Gonzales violated his code of professional responsibility or broke laws by bringing up the NSA program in the hospital in front of Ashcroft's wife, who lacks security clearances. "I am not going to speculate on discussions that may or may not have taken place," Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd responded, "much less attempt to render a legal judgment on any such discussions."

Last Friday Douglas Kmiec, the chief spinner on legal issues for the White House, printed a completely dishonest editorial that tried to absolve Gonzales in the "Midnight Ride" fiasco, and Marty Lederman takes him apart. A portion:

Kmiec then attacks Senator Specter for suggesting that the hospital incident has an air of the Saturday Night Massacre about it -- "the comparison to Watergate is wholly inapt," writes Kmiec, because "Watergate involved a real crime."

Well, this case involves a "real crime," too -- systematic violations of a very important federal statute designed to protect Americans from wiretapping by their government, 18 U.S.C. 1809. But that's not really the central point for these purposes, because Specter's obvious reference was simply to the remarkable parallel in that the President and his closest aides had so egregiously departed from institutional legal norms that the entire top echelon of the Justice Department was prepared to resign in a manner that would signal to the public that something was greviously awry within the Administration. Attorney General Richardson and DAG Ruckelshaus did not resign in October 1973 because they concluded there had been a "burglary for purposes of political dirty tricks," in Kmiec's words. The burglary was an old story. They resigned because the President insisted that they fire prosecutor Archibald Cox when Cox subpoened Nixon's tapes. In other words, Nixon was trying to subvert the established procedures of the Justice Department. As were Bush and Gonzales.

That said, it's somewhat easy to see why the President won't fire Gonzales. First of all, he doesn't like being told what to do. Second, losing Gonzales would mean a replacement and a confirmation battle, and like I said, he doesn't like being told what to do. Third, who the hell would want to be this President's Attorney General after what we know? Nobody even wants to be the deputy!

Few in Washington have envied Paul McNulty over the past three months. But with the deputy attorney general’s resignation last week amid the scandal over the firings of at least eight U.S. attorneys, there’s one person whose position might be even less desirable: McNulty’s yet-to-be-named successor.

“I’d rather trade places with Jose Padilla,” jokes Viet Dinh, a former senior Justice official under then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

So, given that Bush is extremely unlikely to fire Gonzales or even let him resign, I think the Congress has to do the heavy lifting here. Gonzales has committed multiple impeachable offenses. I think it's warranted for the good of the country. And at least we wouldn't have to hear "but then Cheney will become Attorney General!" from the more "sensible" elements of the Democratic Party.

UPDATE: See, Bush ain't cuttin' bait. He actually thinks it makes him look strong to be defiant. Even when it's being defiant of reality.

26

Someone's got another I lied to Congress issue:

The Justice Department considered dismissing many more U.S. attorneys than officials have previously acknowledged, with at least 26 prosecutors suggested for termination between February 2005 and December 2006, according to sources familiar with documents withheld from the public [...]

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified last week that the effort was limited to eight U.S. attorneys fired since June, and other administration officials have said that only a few others were suggested for removal.

It's no more an issue to fire 26 attorneys as it is 1, really, if the reasons are equally flawed. But the fact that lots of the prosecutors on the list of two dozen are in either swing states or states with competitive 2006 House races is the key.

Feb. 24, 2005

Thirteen U.S. attorneys recommended for removal by D. Kyle Sampson, who sends the list to the White House in early March.

Steven Biskupic (Milwaukee)
Margaret Chiara (Grand Rapids, Mich.)***
Bud Cummins (Little Rock)***
Thomas Heffelfinger (Minn.)*
David L. Huber (Louisville, Ky.)
Carol C. Lam (San Diego)***
Dunn Lampton (Jackson, Miss.)
John McKay (Seattle)***
Greg Miller (Tallahassee)
Paula Silsby (Maine)
Ana Mills Wagoner (Greensboro, N.C.)
Kasey Warner (Charleston, W.Va.)**
David York (Mobile, Ala.)*

--

January 2006

Justice documents show two separate lists compiled by Sampson around this time.

List 1, 5 names

Todd P. Graves (Kansas City, Mo.)***
Heffelfinger (Minn.)*
Bill Leone (Colo.)*
David O'Meilia (Tulsa, Okla.)
Silsby (Maine)

List 2, 8 names
Chiara (Grand Rapids, Mich.)***
Cummins (Little Rock)***
Graves (Kansas City, Mo.)***
Lam (San Diego)***
Kevin Ryan (San Francisco)***
Heffelfinger (Minn.)*
Leone (Colo.)*
O'Meilia (Tulsa, Okla.)

Sept. 13, 2006
Sampson sends a memo to White House including nine prosecutors recommended for firing, five of whom would be dismissed.

Daniel Bogden (Nevada)***
Chiara (Grand Rapids, Mich.)***
Paul K. Charlton (Arizona)***
Lam (San Diego)***
McKay (Seattle)***
Thomas Marino (Scranton, Pa.)
Miller (Tallahassee)
Silsby (Maine)
Wagoner (Greensboro, N.C.)

Nov. 1, 2006

Michael Elston, chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, suggests five other firing candidates.

John Brownlee (Roanoke, Va.)
Christopher J. Christie (Newark, N.J.)
Colm F. Connolly (Delaware)
Mary Beth Buchanan (Pittsburgh)
Frank Maxwell Wood (Macon, Ga.)

Remember, the whole motivation for these firings comes from Karl Rove's "permanent Republican majority" fantasy (along with the hive mentality of protecting Republicans from prosecution and investigating Democrats). The entire process here was to fire as many attorneys as was politically allowable, to ensure that the new hires would use their office to intimidate voters push bogus voter fraud cases and suppress the vote.

McClatchy adds to this tonight, focusing on two of these new attorneys selected for prosecution, Gregory Miller, of the northern district of Florida in Tallahassee, and Bill Leone, of Colorado. Once again, they're both swing states, and voter fraud allegations have run rampant in both places. And Josh Marshall notices a huge catch at the end of the article, at a part where the writer is going through other USA cases:

A U.S. attorney in Minnesota, who disagreed with the Justice Department on a case involving voting rolls, was asked to resign early last year.

Wha now? Thomas Heffelfinger, who was replaced by the notorious Rachel Paulose, was asked to leave his job because he wouldn't purge the voter rolls? Can we have more about this, please?

Gonzales has to be gone now, right? I mean, the Senate is openly questioning whether he lied to them during hearings on the warrantless wiretapping case, in the wake of James Comey's riveting testimony yesterday (shades of John Dean in 1973). And now, this out-and-out lie to Congress. I would like to see Abu G prosecuted for contempt of Congress and sent to hais namesake prison, frankly. I'll SETTLE for a resignation.

Lawless Authoritarian Thugs

I guess I didn't take much notice of James Comey's amazing story about his mad dash to John Ashcroft's hospital to head off Abu G and Andy Card from getting a bedridden Ashcroft to sign off on the warrantless spying program. That's because it was already known to me for at least a year. But it is significant that Comey testified to it in open testimony, because it forced the traditional media to take notice:

JAMES B. COMEY, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source. The episode involved a 2004 nighttime visit to the hospital room of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft by Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff. Only the broadest outlines of this visit were previously known: that Mr. Comey, who was acting as attorney general during Mr. Ashcroft's illness, had refused to recertify the legality of the administration's warrantless wiretapping program; that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card had tried to do an end-run around Mr. Comey; that Mr. Ashcroft had rebuffed them.

Mr. Comey's vivid depiction, worthy of a Hollywood script, showed the lengths to which the administration and the man who is now attorney general were willing to go to pursue the surveillance program. First, they tried to coerce a man in intensive care -- a man so sick he had transferred the reins of power to Mr. Comey -- to grant them legal approval. Having failed, they were willing to defy the conclusions of the nation's chief law enforcement officer and pursue the surveillance without Justice's authorization. Only in the face of the prospect of mass resignations -- Mr. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself -- did the president back down.

The real revelation in the testimony is that, when Comey asked what Gonzales and Card were doing at the hospital and if they were going behind his back, they replied that "they were just making a social call." That's well-written black comedy right there.

And apparently the President himself was involved in this:

COMEY: Mrs. Ashcroft reported that a call had come through, and that as a result of that call Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales were on their way to the hospital to see Mr. Ashcroft.

SCHUMER: Do you have any idea who that call was from?

COMEY: I have some recollection that the call was from the president himself.

So the President himself was instructing his personal Rosencrantz and Guildensterns to get the near-unconscious Attorney General to sign a piece of paper essentially allowing illegal spying to continue for another 45 days. And there's another disturbing side to this testimony.

In a 2006 hearing, when Sen. Chuck Schumer asked him about Comey’s objections to the NSA wiretapping program, Gonzales denied there was any “serious disagreement about the program“:

GONZALES: Senator, here is a response that I feel that I can give with respect to recent speculation or stories about disagreements. There has not been any serious disagreement, including — and I think this is accurate — there has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed. There have been disagreements about other matters regarding operations, which I cannot get into. I will also say –

SCHUMER: But there was some — I am sorry to cut you off, but there was some dissent within the administration, and Jim Comey did express at some point — that is all I asked you — some reservations.

GONZALES: The point I want to make is that, to my knowledge, none of the reservations dealt with the program that we are talking about today.

Gonzales’ answer suggests two possibilities.

1) Comey’s objections apply to the NSA warrantless wiretapping program that Gonzales was discussing. If so, then Gonzales quite likely made serious mis-statements under oath. And Gonzales was deeply and personally involved in the meeting at Ashcroft’s hospital bed, so he won’t be able to claim “I forgot.”

2) Perhaps Comey’s objections applied to a different domestic spying program. That has a big advantage for Gonzales — he wasn’t lying under oath. But then we would have senior Justice officials confirming that other “programs” exist for domestic spying, something the Administration has never previously stated.

Gonzales often used weasel phrases like that when talking about the spying program, confining his remarks to "the program we are talking about today." It was often suspected that there are other, more wide-ranging programs that have yet to be determined. So I opt for #2.

Glenn Greenwald, who rose to prominence over the warrantless wiretapping story, writes a tour de force post about this new development today, focusing not on the high drama of the Ashcroft visit, but what else Comey's long-sought testimony revealed. He makes clear that Ashcroft and Comey both believed that the NSA program was illegal, and that the President sought to continue the program anyway without authorization from the Justice Department (This was back when the Justice Department wasn't headquartered under the RNC). So lawbreaking wasn't really a problem to this White House.

The overarching point here, as always, is that it is simply crystal clear that the President consciously and deliberately violated the law and committed multiple felonies by eavesdropping on Americans in violation of the law.

Recall that the only federal court to rule on this matter has concluded that the NSA program violated both federal law and the U.S. Constitution, and although that decision is being appealed by the Bush administration, they are relying largely on technical arguments to have it reversed (i.e., standing and "state secrets" arguments) and -- as has been true for the entire case -- are devoting very little efforts to arguing that the program was actually legal or constitutional [...]

But the more important issue here, by far, is that we should not have to speculate in this way about how the illegal eavesdropping powers were used. We enacted a law 30 years ago making it a felony for the government to eavesdrop on us without warrants, precisely because that power had been so severely and continuously abused. The President deliberately violated that law by eavesdropping in secret. Why don't we know -- a-year-a-half after this lawbreaking was revealed -- whether these eavesdropping powers were abused for improper purposes? Is anyone in Congress investigating that question? Why don't we know the answers to that? [...]

How is this not a major scandal on the level of the greatest presidential corruption and lawbreaking scandals in our country's history? Why is this only a one-day story that will focus on the hospital drama but not on what it reveals about the bulging and unparalleled corruption of this administration and the complete erosion of the rule of law in our country? And, as I've asked many times before, if we passively allow the President to simply break the law with impunity in how the government spies on our conversations, what don't we allow?

If we had a functioning political press, these are the questions that would be dominating our political discourse and which would have been resolved long ago.

The Bush Administration simply feels that they have no checks on their power because the press, and to some extent the Democrats, and certainly the American people, don't bother to hold them accountable. This is the most lawless Administration in history, beyond even that of Ulysses S. Grant. They have nothing but contempt for the rule of law, and the lasting impact of that was on display at yesterday's "Three Cheers for Torture" Republican debate. This needs to be swiftly and directly rejected. I feel like we're on the precipice of an era not unlike the fall of Rome.

UPDATE: Chuck Hagel thinks Gonzales should resign now, and therefore gives me a sliver of hope that all is not lost in this country.

Finding a Scapegoat

For my money, this is about the stupidest thing Abu G could have done, and so he followed precedent and went ahead and did it.

During an event this morning at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Attorney General Alberto Gonzales launched an unabashed and shameless finger-pointing campaign at outgoing Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, blaming him for the U.S. attorney scandal.

Minimizing his own role, Gonzales said McNulty has “most of the operational authority and decisions” at the Department of Justice.

First of all, this is far more detailed information than he ever supplied to Congress, and he supplied it the day after McNulty resigns. Gonzales always said that the target list reflected the "consensus opinion" of his senior staff. Now he's intimating that it reflecting the consensus opinion of Paul McNulty.

Despite having delegated the task of putting together the list of fired U.S. attorneys to his chief of staff Kyle Sampson, Gonzales claimed that “the one person I would care about would be the views of the Deputy Attorney General. … At end of the day, my understanding was that Mr. Sampson’s recommendations reflected the consensus view of the senior leadership of the Department — in particular the Deputy Attorney General.”

When asked why two inexperienced staffers — Sampson and Monica Goodling — were given prominent roles in the firing process, Gonzales responded, “Well again you have to remember at the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the Deputy Attorney General. He signed off on the names and he would know better than anyone else.”

Whether or not you believe that McNulty was involved in the discussions to hire and fire US Attorneys, the idea that his judgment was of primary importance is brand new information. At no time prior to today's remarks at the National Press Club has Gonzales ever singled out a member of his senior staff as the key recommender.

It's extremely clear what's going on here. Abu G wants to hand off the responsibility for this scandal to the departing McNulty, as a way to innoculate the White House from any further scrutiny. The mission is to have this die at the Justice Department, particularly to die with people who have already left the Justice Department.

But here's why this is colossally stupid. While McNulty didn't speak up before about the wrongness of politicizing the Justice Department as part of an overarching program to intimidate voters and suppress voter turnout, he still will be an asset to the investigation. We know that he has ties to Senate Judiciary Committee member Chuck Schumer. And we know that he's already been angered by criticism leveled against him for committing the cardinal sin of telling the truth at early Congressional hearings. The DoJ and the White House are actually isolated enough to think they could have gotten away with this, if only McNulty hadn't told Congress that Bud Cummins was moved out to make room for Rove oppo research guy Tim Griffin. Of course, that was but one of the many openings for the investigation.

But I would think that the last thing you do when you have a potential hostile witness who may testify against you is to make him MORE hostile by trying to pin the entire blame on him. Of course, this is SOP for the Bush Administration, just your basic sliming of a critic (in this case, even before they become a public critic). You know that McNulty will play a role in future hearings; John Conyers has come out and said so. Why would you give him a reason to be angrier with the process and less willing to qualify his statements?

As much as the White House would like everyone to think so, Paul McNulty didn't put any federal prosecutor on a target list. But he may know who did. And now he has every reason to tell the world.

UPDATE: James Comey was on the Hill today, detailing how Abu G and Andy Card went to John Ashcroft in the hospital to get him to approve the warrantless wiretapping program while he was barely conscious.

According to Comey's testimony this morning, only when faced with resignations by a number of Justice Department officials including Comey, his chief of staff, Ashcroft's chief of staff, Ashcroft himself and possibly Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, did the White House agree to make changes to the program that would satisfy the requirements of the Justice Department to sign off on it (Comey refused to name the program, but it's apparent from the context and prior reports that this was the warrantless wiretapping program).

The events took place in March of 2004, when the program was in need of renewal by the Justice Department. When then-Attorney General John Ashcroft fell ill and was hospitalized, Comey became the acting-Attorney General.

The deadline for the Justice Department's providing its sign-off of the program was March 11th (the program required reauthorization every 45 days). On that day, Comey, then the acting AG, informed the White House that he "would not certify the legality" of the program.

According to Comey, he was on his way home when he got a call from Ashcroft's wife that Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card were on their way to the hospital*. Comey then rushed to the hospital (sirens blaring) to beat them there and thwart "an effort to overrule me."

After Comey arrived at the hospital with a group of senior Justice Department officials, Gonzales and Card arrived and walked up to Ashcroft, who was lying barely conscious on his hospital bed. "Gonzales began to explain why he was there, to seek his approval for a matter," Comey testified. But Ashcroft rebuffed Gonzales and told him that Comey was the attorney general now. "The two men turned and walked from the room," said Comey.

I remember this story, but to hear it from Comey is really unbelievable. The ruthlessness of these people is enough to make you sick.

UPDATE II: Unbelievably, Gonzales also said that McNulty was not a "top aide" when asked if he should resign like other "top aides." So McNulty was completely responsible for signing off on the fired prosecutors, and his recommendation was crucial in shaping Gonzales' eventual sign-off, but he's not a "top aide."

The logical through-line here looks like a Jackson Pollock painting.

US Attorney Update

Too much for paragraphs, I'm going to bullet points:

• McClatchy has confirmed that as many as 12 US Attorneys were targeted in the initial effort to fire federal prosecutors. The others were Steven Biskupic in Wisconsin (who may have saved his job by indicting Georgia L. Thompson), Todd Graves in Missouri (who ended up resigning), Thomas Heffelfinger in Minnesota (resigned) and Thomas Merino in Pennsylvania (still on the job). Both Graves and Heffelfinger were replaced by two of the most partisan operatives in the whole Justice Department.

• James Comey's testimony to the House Judiciary Committee last week was pretty damaging. He called the fired attorneys "some of the best" prosecutors in the system. He also claimed that he didn't know about the firings, despite being the deputy attorney general when discussions were in place. We still don't know who directed this effort.

• But we're getting closer, with this report showing that Karl Rove was involved in coaching Justice Department officials on their testimony to Congressional committees. Oddly, his point in that coaching was that the officials needed to provide a concrete reason for the firing of the various attorneys. This was probably what made the scandal even worse, as the reasons were quickly shown to be bogus. If the Justice Department simply said that the prosecutors lost the confidence of the President, it would be hard to argue. But by giving specifics that could be rebutted, the scandal spun out of control. And Rove's supposed to be the Boy Genius? Dan Froomkin has more.

• Pulitzer Prize winner Charlie Savage has a good rundown of Bradley Schlozman's role in the scandal, his baseless voter fraud investigations in Missouri, his work to suppress voting rights in the Civil Rights Division, etc. Not much of this is new, but for those who want to catch up, it's a great way to understand Schlozman and his importance. He essentially proves the point that the Justice Department had a specific concern to use their power to help ensure Republican electoral successes. Actually this McClatchy article moves the story forward, showing that Congress is investigating Schlozman's hiring practices while in the Civil Rights Division (it appears to be based on how Republican the applicants were). Incidentally, the Civil Rights Division doesn't have any black people in it.

• The US Attorney in Washington State, John McKay, may have been fired because he was investigating the murder of his former colleague Tom Wales. Wales was a major proponent of gun control legislation, and his murder is still unsolved, though two and two can be put together...