Alberto Gonzales Tries Senators' Patience

Posted on July 24, 2007

Embattled attorney general Alberto Gonzales was hauled back in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain his actions and conflicting statements in the Attorneygate scandal and relating to the growing scandal over warrantless wiretapping programs. Gonzales sputtered, he stonewalled and generally sounded incredibly untruthful, which infuriated the senators. In fact they're so angry at Gonzales' stonewalling that they suggested that a special prosecutor may need to be appointed. And that's after they flat out called him a liar.

Angry senators suggested a special prosecutor should investigate misconduct at the Justice Department, accusing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Tuesday of deceit on the prosecutor firings and President Bush's eavesdropping program. Democrats and Republicans alike hammered Gonzales in four hours of testimony as he denied trying, as White House counsel in 2004, to push a hospitalized attorney general into approving a counterterror program that the Justice Department then viewed as illegal.
Gonzales, alternately appearing wearied and seething, vowed anew to remain in his job even as senators told him outright they believe he is unqualified to stay. He would not answer numerous questions, including whether the Bush administration would bar its U.S. attorneys from pursuing contempt charges against current and former White House officials who have defied congressional subpoenas for their testimony.
"It's hard to see anything but a pattern of intentionally misleading Congress again and again," Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., told Gonzales during the often-bitter Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. "Shouldn't the attorney general of the United States meet a higher standard?" "Obviously, there have been instances where I have not met that standard, and I've tried to correct that," Gonzales answered. The hearing rekindled a political furor that began with last year's firings of nine U.S. attorneys and led to disclosure of a Justice Department hiring process that favored Republican loyalists. Gonzales has soldiered on with Bush's support, despite repeated calls for his resignation and questions about his role in a hospital room confrontation with then-Attorney General John Ashcroft over whether to renew a classified but potentially illegal national security program.
"Of course the president continues to have full confidence in the attorney general," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said after the hearing ended. In one withering exchange, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., noted a potential need for a special prosecutor to bring contempt citations against two White House officials who have refused to testify about the U.S. attorney firings. The House Judiciary Committee will vote Wednesday on the citations against Bush chief of staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers.

But that wasn't all. Gonzales inadvertently revealed the existence of other domestic surveillance programs that no one had ever heard of before. Gonzales' testimony is shocking; does he not realize that lying to congress gets you in big trouble? Even the Enron guys knew to take the 5th when the questioning strayed into areas that might put them in legal jeopardy. But Gonzales refuses to resign and his contradictory statements continue to pile up. Gonzales can look forward to rough times ahead, after this disastrous performance.