by hilzoy
The Washington Post:
“Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales met with senior aides on Nov. 27 to review a plan to fire a group of U.S. attorneys, according to new documents released last night, a disclosure that contradicts Gonzales’s previous statement that he was not involved in “any discussions” about the dismissals.
Justice Department officials also announced last night that the department’s inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility have launched a joint investigation into the firings, including an examination of whether any of the removals were improper and whether any Justice officials misled Congress about them.
The hour-long November meeting in the attorney general’s conference room included Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, and four other senior Justice officials, including the Gonzales aide who coordinated the firings, then-Chief of Staff D. Kyle Sampson, records show.
Documents showing the previously undisclosed meeting appear to conflict with remarks by Gonzales at a March 13 news conference where he portrayed himself as a CEO who had delegated to Sampson responsibility for the details of firing eight U.S. attorneys.
“I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on,” Gonzales said.
Spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said last night that there is no “inconsistency” between the Nov. 27 meeting and Gonzales’s remarks. She argued that Gonzales was simply emphasizing at the news conference that he was not involved in the details of Sampson’s plans.”
And Tony Snow wonders why Democrats want these guys under oath, with transcripts.
Karl Rove may be able to survive the revelation that he flat-out lied. I’m not sure Gonzales can.
A comment on this story at Macsmind:
Words fail.
It’s an article of faith that GWB and his merry band could never, ever, do anything illegal, or indeed ever make a mistake at all (Harriet Miers’ nomination being the one exception). If anything is a “scandal” or looks really bad or if things appear to be failing in Iraq, it’s because of the nasty and biased em ess em or because Bush’s communication strategy is flawed.
The ridiculousness in comments at Bizarro World over Plame’s testimony and Hayden’s statement to Waxman was just astonishing (“plame lied, waxman lied about what hayden said, hayden lied to waxman” etc.)
A reader at TPM guessed Gonzales would resign today, this might do it.
OT – I see that the judge in Padilla’s trial decided that the 3 1/2 years he was held in military custody “didn’t count” when it came to determining his constitutional right to a speedy trial. Super.
The new document dump contains evidence that the complaints about immigration enforcement were bogus:
So there are people out there carrying “Drudge rules our world” to its logical conclusion: if it’s not on Drudge, it doesn’t exist.
Ugh, that’s funny about Padilla because when Gitmo prisoners are returned to Yemen (a) they promptly get trials and (b) if convicted, they get credit for time served.
Maybe our justice system needs a new motto. The United States: not as good as Yemen, but we’re trying.
glad to see this up on the front page. I’m sure Mr. Doe has an explanation.
This story is a lot like Plame’s, in that the firings were planned and done, and the emails about them sent, in November 2005 – that is, before the Democrats took control of Congress. The WH never thought the issue would ever come up or, if it came up, that Congress would cover for them. (Like Libby et al. felt safe lying to investigators about Plame because it never occurred to them that a real prosecutor would be chosen to handle the case.)
Specter’s been working hard to set up his own “compromise” with the WH over this, just as he oh so politely looked the other way when the no-confirmation clause was slipped into the Patriot Act. Such a nice boy, that Arlen. Still doing his best to cover for the Bush Administration, even though he’s no longer Chair.
I don’t see Gonzales quitting, nor Bush firing him. There’s nothing to be gained for either of them, and plenty to lose. I’d say Gonzales is in impeachment territory on this revelation alone.
Unnamed Democrats, unnamed Iranians, and unnamed Al Qaeda operatives inside the Justice Department are manipulating unnamed Republicans to destroy unnamed George W. Bushes.
Guy-in-a-retro-hat Matt Drudge is like the guy Leonard Dicaprio (Al Qaeda environmental wacko) played in the movie “Catch Me If You Can”. He’s a fake (without the good looks and the native talent), a poseur (if you’ll pardon the French terrorist lingo) who knows nothing, is trained in nothing, has academic credentials in precisely nothing — all of the traits this acid-spewing, unAmerican alien thing called the modern Republican Party looks for in their experts.
Like the thieves and bulletheads who have destroyed what Saddam Hussein forgot to destroy in Iraq, like the condom-less ideological androids in suits who have infiltrated every agency of the U.S. Government like little mechanical termites and receive their baksheesh in church collection plates sporting corporate logos, like the oozing seed-pods in the basement of a once-functioning democracy, waiting for the folks upstairs to turn in for the night.
Hillary, John Edwards, Obama, Bill Richardson and the rest of the Democratic field just don’t look up to the job of the purge that is required in America, the good hard retching and emetic that the body politic is going to require to rid us of the poisons.
Thullen has a (kaleidoscopic) point.
Bush has not only stocked the federal government with hacks, there are bound to be agents saboteurs all over the place, too: Linda Tripp types, and other of what Ann Coulter once called “little elves.”
If (please, oh please) a Democrat wins the Presidency in 2008, the only way to clean house will be wholesale firings, possibly down to the filing clerks. Not only the President, but the Cabinet Secretaries and agency heads, will need to go through all the personnel rosters with a fine-toothed comb.
I’d like to think that civil service protections still mean something, so am not quite as eager as CaseyL for purges below the political appointee level.
given the news that a Bush appointee politicized the ranks of the Civil Rights Division of the DoJ, I think civil service protections can apply after everyone is fired. If they don’t have the taint, rehire them.
I blame Jimmy Carter for expanding the roster of positions available for political appointees. But at least he wanted technocrats of one stripe or another in the positions, to make things work better.
I blame for the Reagan Administration for expanding that roster yet again, this time to be filled by ideologues whose ideology was that making things work better was a dubious endeavor, because who wants government to be effective, when ineffective government is such a hot-button bullet point in a demagogic political platform.
The senior Bush and Clinton I blame for various things but not so much of the above, though I realize the Right couldn’t stand the fact that senior Bush was pretty much a career government operative, and no one liked the look of the Clinton travel office firings. Least of all me.
This Bush Administration, an extension of the 1994 House revolutionaries, is a whole new set up — with government-hating velociraptors learning how to cooperate in their eating of government function, morale, and reputation and reptilian aliens ejaculating themselves down the throats of the bureaucracy to hobble the host and spread their ideological mantra in exact likeness from top to bottom. That mantra being if you can’t neuter it, steal it.
All political appointees, regardless of Party should be required to resign on inauguration day and should not be permitted to apply for civil service positions for … a long time.
There aren’t too many file clerks left in the Federal government. Most of those positions have been eliminated or contracted out. Except the ones who are paid to shred Republican operative files.
The career civil servant (my wife is one) has been on the Republican enemies list, near the top, along with anyone else who looks at them wrong. Read a little Grover Norquist or whatever other unAmerican Republican think tank scribblings they’ve coughed up over the past three decades and learn how they hated the generation of good people who went to work for the government coming out the of Sixties because many of those folks wanted government to work.
The Republican Party cannot abide such thinking, because it’s not in the Bible and it can’t be sold to their sponsers and their corrupt contributors. Timmy McVeigh bought the fertilizer from Newt Gingrich. The third man, the John Doe, seen at the crime was Grover Norquist.
Federal workers are retiring in droves, taking their expertise with them, fed up and disgusted. I want civil servant protections strengthened. Destroy the civil service and you will be pretty much left with something Fidel Castro would like.
Boy, it sure would be nice to find out if they really can survive it, under oath and on the record.
Karl Rove may be able to survive the revelation that he flat-out lied. I’m not sure Gonzales can
It’s not lying. It’s ‘serving a higher truth’.
Gonzales was on some talk radio show yesterday, in a smarmy little puff piece for the DOJ’s new plan to stamp out Internet pedophiles (the plan: run some ads telling kids to be careful). The host went along with it for a while, but then couldn’t resist asking something about whether AG was worried about the subpoenas.
AG kind of lost it. His tone stayed kind of perky and hopeful, the way he usually sounds (even the saving-our-children bit, which Ashcroft would’ve delivered in a more wrathful mode), but he became unable to make sentences and started literally repeating everything he said three times. It was more or less like this: “I think the real issue is these political appointees can be replaced by the President for any reason, or for no reason, so it’s really not an issue, because these political appointees can be replaced for any reason, or for no reason, and, uh, I think the Congress will eventually understand that, because, as political appointees, the President can replace them for any reason, or even for no reason.”
Doesn’t prove that he’s really in trouble and knows it, just that he’s not particularly smooth. Still one can hope.
I think the real issue is these political appointees can be replaced by the President for any reason, or for no reason…
He keeps saying those words. I do not think they mean what he thinks they mean.
It’s like a right-to-work state, where your boss can fire you for any reason or no reason – unless you get fired because the boss doesn’t like your race, religion, or gender. Then it’s a civil rights violation.
If, as seems increasingly provable, those attorneys were fired to protect Republican criminal activities and conspiracies, then it’s no longer a matter of Presidential privilege. Otherwise, what’s to stop a President from using any part of the government to engage in criminal activity?
“It’s like a right-to-work state, where your boss can fire you for any reason or no reason”
Got news for you: “At will” employment is the norm in states where you can be forced to join a union, too.
Dirty Harry says “b’bye Gonzo, one way or the other.”
Hob, I think everybody at 1600 knows how much trouble he’s in, but His Majesty’s viziers haven’t been able to figure out what to do. Seriously, if you look at this from the Bushie POV it’s a crazy Kafkaesque nightmare.
They absolutely can’t let Gonzo go. For one thing, when Gonzo loses the protection of his official position he’s liable to wind up in jail himself. Gonzo, one of the “made guys” no less, in jail! Worse yet there’s no way to replace him, because anybody congress would be willing to confirm would send the rest of them to jail. And they can’t ride out the rest of the term with an acting AG either, because all the plausible acting AGs are also tainted. They all knew.
OTOH they absolutely can’t keep him either. Every day this stays in the headlines is another day that impeachment (of Gonzo) becomes more and more likely. Every day is a day when the problem inches closer to Karl, closer to Shrub, closer to the electoral and contracting fraud that lurks beneath the surface…
Odin’s beard! I almost feel sorry for the poor suckers.
Surely if Gonzales does go, Bush will just use a recess appointment to replace him and avoid Senate approval. Yes, it will anger the Senate, but how much angrier can they get (I’m still assuming the Republicans will stick to tut-tutting Specterism at most)?
“Gonzo loses the protection of his official position he’s liable to wind up in jail himself.”
For what? Lying to Congress? Has anybody ever gone to jail for that? Maybe some of the domestic surveillance stuff was illegal but who’s going to try Gonzales for carrying out WH policy this late in the game?
Maybe some of the domestic surveillance stuff was illegal but who’s going to try Gonzales for carrying out WH policy this late in the game?
Anyone who actually believes in the principle of upholding the law?
KC, yeah, but recess is a long way away… At this rate, by summer things could be pretty dire.
“Anyone who actually believes in the principle of upholding the law?”
… and ponies.
Er, yeah, that. Congress is pretty steamed, and Gonzo’s already agreed to talk to them some more, which means he has no choice but to lie some more, which means…
But what I was really trying to get at is the protocol. Once he’s out of office he’s just another citizen. It becomes a lot harder for the WH to throw up roadblocks if congress wants him to come back, or tells DoJ that he’s in contempt. If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is held to be in contempt the WH can make a fuss about it being political. When it’s Citizen Alberto Gonzales then the DoJ basically has no choice but to throw him in the brig.
Gonzales, as citizen or as AG, can plead the 5th.
I’m not sure how far that gets him, though, considering the documentary evidence already available.
… and ponies.
Well, yes. Avedon’s been fairly scathing about the fact that everyone in the US who’s been paying attention knows Bush, Cheney (and Gonzales) have been breaking the law, and yet there’s no move to, you know, actually enforce the law by prosecuting the self-confessed criminals who broke it.
To me, a Brit, this is incomprehensible. It’s not as if Bush is claiming he didn’t break the law: he admits what he did, and what he did is illegal. What follows is straightforward: he’s prosecuted for breaking the law.
In the UK, this is not a pony fantasy: this is what would happen. To anyone.
It’s a tough spot. The AG needs a blonde to go missing. Or a new Paris Hilton sex tape. Or some big Iranian provocation.
It’s not as if Bush is claiming he didn’t break the law: he admits what he did, and what he did is illegal.
It helps enormously if you have predatory legal advisors (including the very AG now under investigation) to propound a Unitary Executive theory giving you quasi-monarchial immunity to the law.
It also helps enormously if you have a single-Party Congress that agrees with the Unitary Executive theory, because it’s good for said Party.
Also helpful is a compromised news media that goes along to get along, for the sake of maintaining access to unnamed Senior Officials; without which, they’d have to actually talk to people not already on their Rolodex, and not on society hostess’ A lists. Quel horreur!
Laws aren’t magic. They’re only as good as their enforcement. If no one who can enforce them feels like doing so, they might as well not exist.
“In the UK, this is not a pony fantasy: this is what would happen. To anyone.”
Did Blair & Co not lie to Parliament or otherwise break laws leading up to the Iraq War?
Did Blair & Co not lie to Parliament or otherwise break laws leading up to the Iraq War?
Nice bait-and-switch, Rilkefan! Thus far, the evidence that Blair lied (and knew he lied) is rather more shaky than the evidence that Bush lied and knew he lied. (David Kelly very conveniently committed suicide, and is therefore not around to testify any more.) Was this illegal? Good question – where is the law that specifically says Bush must tell the truth in the SOTU? Where is the law that says the Prime Minister must speak the truth to Parliament?
But, the evidence that Bush and Cheney committed multiple crimes in authorizing the wiretapping without warrant of so many phonecalls is in. Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales admit that this was being done. This was illegal – straightforwardly, no question, against the law. They are self-confessed criminals. Yet, they are not being prosecuted. And you claim that it’s a pony-dream to imagine that they ever will be. It’s not a pony-dream in the UK. But, you live in a country ruled by men, not laws.
Radish, Bush can make a recess appointment over a weekend when Congress isn’t in session. That sort of thing isn’t completely unprecedented, and even if it were, in this administration “unprecedented” is practically a recommendation for action.
I should say that i never meant this to get into a your-country my-country thing. If the UK had been ruled for six years by the same kind of fascist government as the Republican Party, our legal system would doubtless be looking on as powerlessly as yours is: not least because while Blair would be prosecuted for as blatantly breaking the law as Bush has, in the UK, he wouldn’t break the law because MI5/6 would wiretap “suspected terrorists” anyway, and file the results under the 50-year rule to avoid any embarrassment. (There was a period in the early 1980s when my dad’s home phone was probably being wiretapped by MI5, due to perfectly legal anti-government activities that he had been involved in for decades: his children – we were all under 16 – thought that this was very amusing and used to ring our friends and make loud, excited conversation about plans to blow up Parliament. My dad said he presumed the security forces had enough sense to realize they were listening to children, and took care to organize his perfectly legal anti-government activities via his work phone, which was never tapped. Neither was he arrested. Nor were we, for that matter.)
(I stupidly posted this on the wrong thread: my computer seems to be messing up and reverting me to that thread if I blink at it. Possibly I am too tired to be on the Internet. Ten days in Belgium. Exhausted.)
“Nice bait-and-switch, Rilkefan!”
Just a question. Your faith in your political system sounded a touch on the naive side to me, the kind of thing I might have said pre-Bush – but I don’t follow English politics or even current events so I was curious what your viewpoint was on Blair, the Downing Street Memos, …
Jes: If the UK had been ruled for six years by the same kind of fascist government as the Republican Party
I did say that I missed you right 🙂
OCSteve: I did say that I missed you right 🙂
I was very touched! But your aim’s improving. 😀
Rilke: Your faith in your political system sounded a touch on the naive side to me, the kind of thing I might have said pre-Bush
I think that’s because (see Hilzoy’s latest post) I still live in a country where my government acknowledges there are limits. To you, after six years of Bush, my belief that even the most powerful members of government must obey the law* sounds naive: but that’s because you live in what has essentially become a fascist monarchy, where the king can acknowledge that there’s a law saying the government isn’t allowed to do stuff (specifically, wiretapping people without a warrant) but that the law doesn’t apply to him.
Now, the reason your trying to change the subject onto international law is a bait-and-switch is because the issue of a government breaking international law is a rather different situation from members of government breaking their own domestic law. If you can’t see that this is so, I can’t help you: I see a distinction.
*While acknowledging that in my country, Blair wouldn’t indulge in warrantless wiretapping in the way Bush has done because he wouldn’t have to: he’d hand it off to MI5, whose job it is to spy on disaffected elements in the UK, and we would then not be allowed to find out about this for fifty years. But then, I live in a constitutional monarchy. Which is rather better than a fascist monarchy, I can tell you.
True, but at this point that would pretty much guarantee a total breakdown of relations with the “moderate” Senators. I don’t think Karl wants that. Or does he? Point taken about unprecedented actions.
Anyway, I did a quick bit of research, and I see that it may not work the way I thought it did. I was under the impression that the Senate can simply “adjourn” for five minutes, start a new session, and vacate any recess appointments if it wants to, but it’s not clear that that’s the case. Both the intertubes and the Senate rulebook were surprisingly unhelpful on how that would work out in practice. This pdf had a nice overview of the politico-legal landscape around recess appts though, and suggests that a “trivial adjournment” is not an option. The question is bothering me enough that I may actually call DiFi’s office to ask about it.
All in all, it looks like the durability of recess appointments is still a murky issue, with conflicting precedents and customs, and lots of potential for ugly showdowns… You’re probably right that I should expect the craziest possible response.
Jes: “Now, the reason your trying to change the subject onto international law”
You’re mistaken.
Oh? So why were you bringing up the issue of international law-breaking when we were discussing domestic law-breaking?