We can't recall exactly what it was that he did

That was good for the country. Nothing comes to mind. We can't recall.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- under whose tenure the Justice Department often appeared to take its orders from the White House political office -- sat down with the Wall Street Journal in an effort to clear his name. But we're guessing he did himself more harm than good.

Gonzo appeared genuinely unable to grapple with why he might be unpopular. "What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he asked.

He doesn't recall? Let's help him remember:

Quibbling with the Constitution and the right of Habeas Corpus.

Dragging his heels about sharing info on the anthrax attacks.

Harassing Ashcroft as he was recovering in the hospital from gall bladder surgery, trying to make him sign off on warrantless wiretapping.

Perverting the judicial system and FISA, and demanding that judges do what the president wants.

Lying to Congress. As Attorney General. LYING to the nation. Lying about the firing of the US attorneys.



Caging voters.

Going down to Gitmo and WATCHING an interrogation or two.

Quibbling about the meaning of the word torture and redefining torture so it no longer means torture even though it is just because Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld liked torture. (And those lawyers and doctors who helped establish torture techniques? We want their names.) And no one has asked the question WHY?



Being a total toadie for Georgie Bush. Surrounding himself with toadie minions, zealots intent on bringing the US a theocracy, and loyal bushies.



Being thrown under the bus and thinking we should feel sorry for him.



Blaming everybody else.

Being a toadie sucks when you're facing a war crimes tribunal, doesn't it, Abu?

crossposted at American Street

It couldn't happen to a nicer toadie

I-cannot-recall Gonzales is back in the news:

It's looking more and more like prosecutor Nora Dannehy's investigation into the US Attorney firings has Alberto Gonzales in its crosshairs.

Earlier this week we reported that Dannehy had contacted the ex-AG in connection with the probe.

Now, we've been tipped to legal filings showing that Gonzales' lawyer, George Terwilliger Jr. of White & Case, is no longer representing Gonzo in a separate case, a civil suit alleging that law students were denied DOJ jobs thanks to illegal politicization at the department under Gonzales.

Since it worked so well the last few times...

It's going to be used to explain how Obama's election and presidency are a sham:

Let's be clear about what this is. These are random stories about fake vote registrations. The Drudges and Fox scoundrels of the world seem to think that if someone fills out a voter registration card for Mickey Mouse, that Mickey Mouse might show up and cast a vote they're not entitled to cast. It doesn't and there is zero evidence of any voter fraud or anything that would make voter fraud more likely. The level of lying, bad faith or at best ignorance of the people making these claims is really beyond imagining. This isn't vote fraud. There's no evidence of vote fraud. Nothing. This is an effort of a losing political party to a) lay the groundwork for challenging their defeat at the polls b) lay the groundwork to pass laws to make it harder for poor people and minorities to vote.

And in the 2004 election:

The Republicans making these claims argued that these problems with registration cards were opening the coming election up to widespread vote fraud. Logically, this makes no sense. And, more importantly, all evidence shows this has never happened, certainly not in any widespread sense. Every person who claims otherwise is either ignorant or speaking in bad faith.

Nonetheless, CNN and other national news outlets and especially local media outlets, either out of ignorance or bad faith, ran hard with these stories -- just as CNN is doing now.

After the election, there was a lot of pressure from Republicans in states like Nevada, Washington, New Mexico, etc. (not surprisingly, all key swing states) to have local US Attorneys prosecute these cases. The word came down from Washington, DC, particularly the political office at the White House that this was a top priority. And the local US Attorneys launched into it.

But there was a problem. Most of these were ethical prosecutors. And when they looked into it there just wasn't anything there. Most of the stories weren't even true. And those that were, were obviously isolated and in most cases not done with malice. The number of people who could actually be prosecuted could be counted on one hand. Local Republicans got angry; Karl Rove got angry. And the US Attorneys got fired.

That's the real story of the US Attorney firing scandal. And what we're seeing today is textbook -- exactly the same as what we saw in 2004 and 2006. It's a scam. And the very recent history should be enough for news networks like CNN and others not to let themselves become complicit in this disgrace.

Republicans lose if everyone votes. Democrats win if everyone votes. Guess what the Republicans will do?

Let's make it a baker's dozen!

Eleven have resigned:

The following individuals have resigned from the Bush administration amid the furor following last year's firings of nine U.S. attorneys and the perceived politicization of the Justice Department.

Justice Department officials:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales - Resigned Monday, effective Sept. 17.

Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff - Resigned in March.

Monica Goodling, Gonzales' counselor - Resigned in April.

Michael Battle, head of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys - Resigned in March.

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty - Resigned in May, effective late this summer.

Michael Elston, McNulty's chief of staff - Resigned June 15.

Tim Griffin, interim U.S. attorney for Arkansas - Resigned effective June 1.

Bradley Schlozman, former acting civil rights chief and U.S. attorney for Kansas City - Resigned from a Justice Department post in mid-August.

Wan Kim, chief, Civil Rights Division - Resigned Aug. 24

White House officials:

Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, White House's top political adviser - Resigned effective at the end of this week.

Sara Taylor, political director -- Resigned in May.

Do I hear twelve? Dick? Georgie?

The Rovian justice system

Toxic from the top down:
Christy Hardy Smith at Firedoglake on what it does to integrity, honesty, and the prosecutors:

As a prosecutor, the most valuable asset that you have in the courtroom and out of it is your reputation for honesty and integrity, and for upholding the rule of law in a fair and just manner. The Bush Administration tossed that aside for each and every decent attorney working in USAtty offices across this nation in a bid to gain some temporary political advantage is a craven example of how low a regard the Bushies have for any sort of standard of ethics. And how much emphasis they placed on loyalty to Bush Administration aims above all else, including to the nation as a whole.

Everything is subordinate to Rove’s math. Everything.

So every time you walk into a courtroom, you will want to ask: Was this judge, attorney general, lawyer hired by George W. Bush? Did (s)he keep her/his job during the Great Purge? What was done to do to keep it?

More of Schlozman's handiwork

Showing what a loyal Bushie is supposed to do:

"Bradley J. Schlozman is systematically attempting to purge all Civil Rights appellate attorneys hired under Democratic administrations," the lawyer wrote, saying that he appeared to be "targeting minority women lawyers" in the section and was replacing them with "white, invariably Christian men." The lawyer also alleged that "Schlozman told one recently hired attorney that it was his intention to drive these attorneys out of the Appellate Section so that he could replace them with 'good Americans.'"

The anonymous complaint named three female, minority lawyers whom Schlozman had transferred out of the appellate section (of African-American, Jewish, and Chinese ethnicity, respectively) for no apparent reason. And in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week in response to questions from senators, the Justice Department confirmed that all three had been transferred out by Schlozman -- and then transferred back in after Schlozman had left the Division.

What is a Good American? One that wears a little American flag on his lapel? Is not a minority nor a woman? Christian and white? .... saaaaayyyy... just what kind of last name IS Schlozman, anyway?

Californians now get to watch George Cardona like a hawk

Thanks to Abu.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) revealed today that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had once again bypassed the Senate and used an obscure Patriot Act provision to appoint an interim U.S. attorney in California. The authority Gonzales used was at the heart of the U.S. attorney scandal, and was banned in a bill that passed both chambers of Congress with strong bipartisan support earlier this year. The legislation was sent to the President for his signature on June 4.

Bush delayed just enough so:

Thanks to his delay, Alberto Gonzales was able to install George Cardona as an interim U.S. Attorney in the Central District of California.

Thanks, Georgie and Abu! Now we get to ask why George Cardona was so important that they needed to sneak him in like this.

Schlozman's finger-pointing backfires

As the lawyers in the Public Integrity Section refuse to take the blame:

Bradley Schlozman, who as U.S. attorney in Kansas City obtained indictments charging workers for an activist group with submitting fake voter-registration forms, defended the timing of the case to the Senate Judiciary Committee this week by saying he acted ``at the direction'' of the department's Public Integrity Section.

The explanation, which Schlozman repeated at least nine times during the June 5 hearing, infuriated public integrity lawyers, who say it implied the section ordered him to prosecute, said two Justice Department officials. Public integrity attorneys handle sensitive cases involving politicians and judges and pride themselves on staying out of political disputes.

A clarification of Schlozman's testimony would stress that he consulted with the section and was given guidance, not direction, said the officials, who asked to remain anonymous because the matter is being deliberated internally. The clarification wouldn't say that Schlozman's Senate testimony was inaccurate, the officials added.

[snip]

Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), a Vermont Democrat, said the timing of the charges was contrary to agency policy outlined in a manual for prosecutors. The rule says that ``most, if not all, investigations of an alleged election crime must await the end of the election to which the allegation relates.''

In response, Schlozman told the panel that he raised the issue with the Public Integrity Section's election crimes chief.

``I did what I did at the direction of the Public Integrity Section,'' Schlozman said.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department, declined to comment on whether Schlozman would revise his testimony.

Boyd said the department guidelines cited by Leahy don't flatly forbid the filing of voting-related charges just before an election. ``The policy is not absolute and exceptions may exist,'' he said.

Ah! Kinda like 'You didn't specifically tell me not to jump rope by your cliff, so you're the one responsible'?



I'm afraid Bradley Schlozman's picture will be in the dictionary beside the definition for 'breaking out in a sweat when realizing you've been left hanging'.

Accountability

How sweet the sound.

From Talking Points Memo:
Leahy pressing Schlozman on the ACORN indictments he brought in Missouri just days prior to the 2006 elections.

Monica's blue blue dress...

Goodling's that is. Greg Palast at the Brad Blog points out the committee missed the most amazing confession and link to a crime during Monica Goodling's testimony:

This Monica revealed something hotter --- much hotter --- than a stained blue dress. In her opening testimony yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee, Monica Goodling, the blonde-ling underling to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Department of Justice Liaison to the White House, dropped The Big One....And the Committee members didn't even know it.

Goodling testified that Gonzales' Chief of Staff, Kyle Sampson, perjured himself, lying to the committee in earlier testimony. The lie: Sampson denied Monica had told him about Tim Griffin's "involvement in 'caging' voters" in 2004.

[snip]

Here's how caging worked, and along with Griffin's thoughtful emails themselves you'll understand it all in no time.

The Bush-Cheney operatives sent hundreds of thousands of letters marked "Do not forward" to voters' homes. Letters returned ("caged") were used as evidence to block these voters' right to cast a ballot on grounds they were registered at phony addresses. Who were the evil fakers? Homeless men, students on vacation and --- you got to love this --- American soldiers. Oh yeah: most of them are Black voters.

Why weren't these African-American voters home when the Republican letters arrived? The homeless men were on park benches, the students were on vacation --- and the soldiers were overseas. Go to Baghdad, lose your vote. Mission Accomplished.

How do I know? I have the caging lists...

I have them because they are attached to the emails Rove insists can't be found. I have the emails. 500 of them --- sent to our team at BBC after the Rove-bots accidentally sent them to a web domain owned by our friend John Wooden.

Here's what you need to know --- and the Committee would have discovered, if only they'd asked:

1. 'Caging' voters is a crime, a go-to-jail felony.
2. Griffin wasn't "involved" in the caging, Ms. Goodling. Griffin, Rove's right-hand man (right-hand claw), was directing the illegal purge and challenge campaign. How do I know? It's in the email I got. Thanks. And it's posted below.
3. On December 7, 2006, the ragin', cagin' Griffin was named, on Rove's personal demand, US Attorney for Arkansas. Perpetrator became prosecutor.

The committee was perplexed about Monica's panicked admission and accusations about the caging list because the US press never covered it. That's because, as Griffin wrote to Goodling in yet another email (dated February 6 of this year, and also posted below), their caging operation only made the news on BBC London: busted open, Griffin bitched, by that "British reporter," Greg Palast.

Ask the questions, Congress! Palast has written it all down for you if you are brave enough to use them. Go and look at his evidence.

Monica's clothes were actually more black than blue, but anyway....

Fredo's Revenge

Godfather Part IV...


(via d r i f t g l a s s)

Impeach Gonzales

Watch the video:


Sign the petition.

Greg Palast says Rove may have already stolen the 2008 elections

But we may be able to stop it:

BuzzFlash: You’re having incredible success with the new expanded paperback edition of Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans -- Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild. Of course, the electronic voting machines and how they function is a very significant issue, but your specialty has really been how the Bush/Rove GOP political machine keeps persons who are likely to vote Democratic or Independent from voting.

Greg Palast: Yes. People ask me: Are they going to steal the 2008 election? No, they’ve already stolen the 2008 election. We still have a chance of swiping it back, but the reason I’ve expanded and put out the new edition of Armed Madhouse is to tell you how they will steal in 2008, and what to do about it. That’s one of the main new things. Plus a special chapter on New Orleans and my bust down there.

Of course, I was very flattered that the first review of the new edition of Armed Madhouse was written by Karl Rove and the Rove-bots -- it was subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee -- I can’t make this up. On February 7th, the Rove team, which had been writing several e-mails screaming about Armed Madhouse and "that British reporter," Greg Palast, were gloating that no U.S. media had picked up my stories. And they had a .pdf file attached. Of course, the reason my book was subpoenaed is that it has to do with the US prosecutor firings. The prosecutor firings were 100% about influencing elections -- not about loyalty to Bush, which is what The New York Times wrote. The administration team couldn’t tolerate appointees who wouldn’t go along with crime. In the book I present the evidence that Karl Rove directed a guy named Tim Griffin to target suppressing the votes of African American students, homeless men, and soldiers.

Gonzales suddenly can recall

That it was alllllll that evildoer bad bad man McNulty's fault:

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.

Gonzales gestures to the man who made him do such bad bad things:


Oops, sorry. Wrong bad guy:


Right back atcha, Gonzo!

Update 5/'16: Paul Kiel of TPM Muckraker reminds us that there is enough blame to spread around. McNulty was a passive drone rather than a leader and he did what he was told to do:

Gonzales' appalling dereliction of duty has tended to obscure McNulty's appalling dereliction of duty. It shouldn't. There's plenty of blame to go around.

Here, for instance, is how McNulty's predecessor, James Comey, described the duties of the deputy attorney general:

"I was the direct supervisor of all the U.S. attorneys, and so dealt with them quite frequently on a variety of matters: resolving disputes, talking with them about resources, trying to support them in any way that I could."

"Trying to support them in any way that I could."

By contrast, we have a deputy attorney general who allowed himself to be steamrolled by his inferiors to fire eight U.S. attorneys for, in most cases, no apparent reason. And then after that was done, he helped smear their reputations in order to cover for the Department and the administration.

Another one bites the dust....

And Abu Gonzales still can't recall.

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said Monday he will resign, the highest-ranking Bush administration casualty in the furor over the firing of U.S. attorneys.

Tick tock tick tock....

If it wasn't for those pesky emails

They'd've gotten away with it, too! Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker:

Murray Waas has a new story on the U.S. attorney firings, this one leading to the inescapable conclusion that the administration was complicit in attempts to cover up White House involvement in the firings.

The revelations come from emails that the Justice Department is withholding from Congress.

A "senior executive branch offiical" tells Waas that it's no accident that Congress hasn't gotten their hands on these documents:

Damn those internetal tubes!

And did you assume the missionary position?

Monica Goodling got to ask some very intriging questions. (My bold):

[Goodling] appeared to take similar concerns about political leanings into account when making decisions about promotions and special assignments for Justice Department lawyers.

Robert Nicholson, a career lawyer from the Southern District of Florida, was asked some unusual questions when he applied for a post at the Justice Department headquarters, according to two department lawyers, including Margaret M. Chiara, the former chief prosecutor Western Michigan.

“Which Supreme Court justice do you most admire and why? Which legislator do you most admire and why? And which president do you most admire and why?” Mr. Nicholson was asked by Ms. Goodling, according to Ms. Chiara and the other lawyer, who asked not to be named.

Mr. Nicholson, who did not get the job, did not dispute the account, but he declined to comment, citing the investigation of Ms. Goodling.

In another instance, two Justice Department officials said, Ms. Goodling decided she did not like the applicants for one prestigious posting at department headquarters and decided to offer the job to David C. Woll Jr., a young lawyer who she knew was a Republican. In the interview, a department official said, she asked Mr. Woll if he had ever cheated on his wife. Mr. Woll declined to comment for this article.

Update 5/12: Is it true you lose immunity if you lie under oath?

A federal judge approved an immunity deal Friday allowing former Justice Department aide Monica Goodling to testify before Congress about the firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Goodling, who served as the department's White House liaison, has refused to discuss the firings without a guarantee that she will not be prosecuted. Congress agreed to the deal, Justice Department investigators reluctantly agreed not to not oppose it and U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan gave it final approval Friday.

When a religious goody twoshoes gets to join the inner sanctum of power

She finds herself doing things she knows are wrong.... but it was really all in God's name... really!:

A federal judge approved an immunity deal Friday allowing former Justice Department aide Monica Goodling to testify before Congress about the firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Goodling, who served as the department's White House liaison, has refused to discuss the firings without a guarantee that she will not be prosecuted. Congress agreed to the deal, Justice Department investigators reluctantly agreed not to oppose it and U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan gave it final approval Friday.

"Monica Goodling may not refuse to testify," Hogan began his brief order, which said that Goodling could not be prosecuted for anything other than perjury in connection with her testimony.

Remember, even though there has been horrific damage done to the Department of Justice, she really really feels it:

May 4 (Bloomberg) -- A former U.S. Justice Department official and central figure in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys tearfully told a colleague two months ago her government career probably was over as the matter was about to erupt into a political storm, according to closed-door congressional testimony.

Monica Goodling, at the time an aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, sobbed for 45 minutes in the office of career Justice Department official David Margolis on March 8 as she related her fears that she would have to quit, according to congressional aides briefed on Margolis's private testimony to House and Senate investigators. The aides spoke on condition of anonymity.

Margolis's description of the emotional scene in his office sheds new light on divisions that were developing in the Justice Department's Washington headquarters as the Democratic-controlled Congress was demanding documents that might show White House involvement in the dismissals.

Goodling, 33, who was Gonzales's White House liaison, resigned April 6 and has invoked her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to refuse to answer lawmakers' questions about her role in the firings. Her lawyers cited accusations by Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty that Goodling and others had misled him about the firings as a basis for refusing to testify.

Oh... wait. She's crying about losing her job, isn't she?

Update: The New York Times:

“She was inexperienced, way too naïve and a little overzealous,” said Mr. Cummins, a Republican from Arkansas. “She might have somehow figured that what she was doing was the right thing. But a more experienced person would understand you don’t help the party by trying to put political people in there. You put the best people you can find in there.”

Ms. Goodling, now 33, arrived at the department at the start of the Bush administration after working as an opposition researcher for the Republican National Committee during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Her legal experience was limited; she had graduated in 1999 from Regent University School of Law, which was founded by Pat Robertson. Deeply religious and politically conservative, Ms. Goodling seemed to believe that part of her job was to bring people with similar values into the Justice Department, several former colleagues said.

Living inside the bubble

Apparently creates an echo:



Attorney I-Don't-Recall mangles his testimony when questioned by Congressman Steve Cohen:
(links via egalia at Tennessee Guerilla Women)

I hate to break it to Monica Goodling, but that notice she put on her emails?

Is fucking illegal and will earn her five years in the clink:

Let's review the timeline. On January 17, 2007, Senators Feinstein and Leahy grilled Alberto Gonzales on the recent spate of U.S. Attorney firings. On January 25, 2007, Senator Schumer announced that he was going to hold hearings on the firing of U.S. Attorneys. And on February 6, Schumer held the first set of hearings, in which Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified that Bud Cummins was not asked to leave for "performance-related" reasons, but rather to make way for Karl Rove protege Tim Griffin. That damaging testimony helped propel this story to the front pages.

And two days later, on February 8, 2007, Senators Durbin, Schumer, Murray, and Reid sent a follow up letter to Alberto Gonzales asking all sorts of questions arising out of McNulty's testimony, including a number of questions about the replacement of Bud Cummins with Tim Griffin.

It is in this context that Monica Goodling, four days later, sends out the above-displayed email, which attaches updated talking points re: Griffin/Cummins and various other U.S. Attorney related issues and instructs the recipients to delete prior versions of the documents.

As a litigator, I can tell you, that's a real no-no. You never instruct people to delete documents that are relevant to a pending investigation. Never. That's true even when the investigating body hasn't yet got around to requesting those documents. It smacks of obstruction. Indeed, the Obstruction of Congress statute, 18 U.S.C § 1505, specifically prohibits any attempts to obstruct "the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress." The penalty is up to 5 years in prison.