I wonder what would have happened…

May 16, 2007

At the risk of writing too much about the incident James Comey described yesterday, regarding events in John Ashcroft’s hospital room in 2004, there’s one angle to this that’s been bugging me all day.

Mr. Comey said that when a top aide to Mr. Ashcroft alerted him about the pending visit [from Card and Gonzales], he ordered his driver to rush him to George Washington University Hospital with emergency lights flashing and a siren blaring, to intercept the pair. They were seeking his signature because authority for the program was to expire the next day.

Mr. Comey said he phoned Mr. Mueller, who agreed to meet him at the hospital. Once there, Mr. Comey said he “literally ran up the stairs.” At his request, Mr. Mueller ordered the F.B.I. agents on Mr. Ashcroft’s security detail not to evict Mr. Comey from the room if Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card objected to his presence. (emphasis added)

I’m just trying to imagine the scene. The acting Attorney General needed to convince an ailing Attorney General to ignore the demands of the White House Chief of Staff and the White House Counsel. The likelihood of some kind of confrontation was such that the Director of the FBI ordered armed agents not to let the president’s top aides throw the acting Attorney General out of the room.

It didn’t come to this, but what if Card told one of those agents, “On behalf of the president of the United States, I’m ordering you to remove the acting Attorney General from the room”? Or, at the risk of being completely over-dramatic, what if Card ordered someone on his Secret Service detail to remove the acting Attorney General from the room, and then an FBI agent refused to let that happen?

I’ll gladly concede that much of this is just a fanciful thought experiment, and the bizarre confrontation in Ashcroft’s hospital room was odd enough, but when we’re dealing with a White House that doesn’t take the rule of law seriously, some fairly discomforting scenarios stop sounding like fiction and start sounding plausible.

As for the facts as they actually happened, consider this tale of the tape from Marty Lederman:

(i) [Comey], [the Office of Legal Counsel] and the [Attorney General] concluded that the NSA program was not legally defensible, i.e., that it violated FISA and that the Article II argument OLC had previously approved was not an adequate justification …

(ii) the White House nevertheless continued with the program anyway, despite DOJ’s judgment that it was unlawful;

(iii) Comey, Ashcroft, the head of the FBI (Robert Mueller) and several other DOJ officials therefore threatened to resign;

(iv) the White House accordingly — one day later — asked DOJ to figure out a way the program could be changed to bring it into compliance with the law (presumably on the AUMF authorizaton theory); and

(v) OLC thereafter did develop proposed amendments to the program over the subsequent two or three weeks, which were eventually implemented.

The program continued in the interim, even after DOJ concluded that it was unlawful.

Not to put too fine a point on this, but when top officials at the Justice Department, including the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, decide that a certain action is illegal, and then someone takes that action anyway, we’re talking about what can only be described as criminal behavior. It’s really that simple.

so why can’t we impeach them? It can be a bill of impeachment for Bush, Cheney and Gonzales all at once, since they are all acting in concert.

  • You’re right, CB. It’s that simple. And I’m not sure you can write too much about the incident. Your emphasized sentences are just plain scary. This is like the intrigue of Richelieu in the king’s court.

  • ***This is like the intrigue of Richelieu in the king’s court.***

    Indeed, Alibubba—but the Cardinal didn’t have a private, 20,000-man army named Blackwater hiding behind yon tapestry….

  • CBR

    You don’t have to imagine the scene. It’s already been filmed. If Card and Gonzalez were going to Ashcroft’s hospital room to wish him well, then Capt. McClusky was going to Vito Corleone’s hospital room for the same reason. The only thing missing here is Enzo, the baker’s son-in-law.

    In fact, I wonder if Card and Gonzales wouldn’t have just done to Ashcroft what Tony did to Christopher. Suddenly, there is no AG, and who knows what that would mean for Comey’s status and what abilities that would have given Bush.

    I imagine in my grandfather’s day it would have been offensive to think of the President as the head of an organized crime family. Not so hard to imagine today.

  • OK, I am getting really sick of this…

    SCHUMER: The story is a shocking one. It makes you almost gulp. And I just want to say, speaking for myself, I appreciate your integrity and fidelity to rule of law. And I also appreciate Attorney General Ashcroft’s fidelity to the rule of law as well, as well as the men and women who worked with you and stuck by you in this. When we have a situation where the laws of this country — the rules of law of this country are not respected because somebody thinks there’s a higher goal, we run askew of the very purpose of what democracy and rule of law are about. And this — again, this story makes me gulp.

    For Christ sake, Schumer, quit “gulping” and start calling for impeachment.

    WTF are you waiting for?

    WHAT?

  • This really is a gang. Not a party, not a movement. The only possible distinction between them and the mob is that the goal of the Bush Gang is power, not–primarily–limitless wealth. (It helps when you’re rich already.)

  • We need to find who signed of on continuing the program in that intervening period.

    The upside of impeaching Bush would be that Cheney would become president. If anything, that would be an even better basis for going into the 2008 election. If Bush is like a dead albatross hanging around the neck of the Republican party, Cheney leadership would be like necklacing the party with ten dead albatrosses, a dead elephant, three dead rhinos, and a dead blue whale, plus a couple of burning tires.

    However, it would have the disadvantage of making George Bush only the second worst president in American history, thereby inadvertently improving his legacy.

  • How about Hollywood heavyweights donate their considerable talents to rush-produce a movie (“Bushit”) that covers this slime? They should feel free to include the part about the pathetic Donkey Congress to timid to scream for impeachment.

  • If Comey hadn’t been around, this could have been the headline, March 12, 2004: AG DEAD, FINAL ACT OF PATRIOTISM. Then, of course, we would learn of the heroic last signature on the document in Gonzales envelope, and the posthumously awarded Medal of Freedom. What movie are we watching?

  • I have the same frustration as Racerx # 6.

    I think the Dems are hiding from impeachment because they know they don’t have the votes right now. Impeachment is going “nuclear” in politics, and Watergate was an earthquake for the whole country. (Clinton’s impeachment, by comparison, was more like a diversion.) Still, I think Bush may give Congress no choice.

    An impeachment would serve to formally remind Americans how our laws and system of government are supposed to work. And that a president is not above the law. Obviously, a reminder is sorely needed. Bush could learn it for the first time.

  • This is a tired rehash of very old news. The New York Times and various lefty blogs tried to make hay out of this nonstory last year. They got no traction with the American people, who very sensibly found no problem with the NSA eavesdropping on al-Qaeda and their minions within the US. Comey is obviously axe grinding based on some personal animus against Alberto Gonzales. It is clear to any unbiased observer that Comey’s story makes no sense and leads one to be thankful that our AG is the honest plain-spoken Gonzales and not a conniving schemer like Comey. Fortunately no one outside the liberal blogosphere and lefty rags in the Northeast and San Francisco are paying attention to these histrionics.

  • Shorter nabalzbbfr: “What?!? The emperor’s clothes are beautiful!”

  • How about Hollywood heavyweights donate their considerable talents to rush-produce a movie (”Bushit”) that covers this slime? They should feel free to include the part about the pathetic Donkey Congress to timid to scream for impeachment.

    Unfortunately, the people with the cojones to do this are not the people with the buckaroos to do this. Don’t even talk about the distributors. Sorry.

    And yeah, I’d love to write the screenplay, I’d even do it free – a case where life would be well ahead of art.

  • “They got no traction with the American people, who very sensibly found no problem with the NSA eavesdropping on al-Qaeda and their minions within the US. Comey is obviously axe grinding based on some personal animus against Alberto Gonzales. It is clear to any unbiased observer that Comey’s story makes no sense and leads one to be thankful that our AG is the honest plain-spoken Gonzales and not a conniving schemer like Comey. Fortunately no one outside the liberal blogosphere and lefty rags in the Northeast and San Francisco are paying attention to these histrionics.”
    What a load of crap. No one knew what the hell the story meant back them. They hadn’t caught up with the Gonzales we now know who is incompetent and certainly no AG but still works as a WH counsel. The “schemer” is self-evident by merely listening to Comey and then to Gonzales. It’s very easy to see. Their personalities give them away. You just want to sweep it all under the rug…nothing to see here. You also give yourself away by using the phrase ” al-Queda and their minions within the USA”, pathetic fear mongering. Far from “histronics”, we are all paying attention now that the corruption and lies are pouring out of this administration, who, like the ” honest and (ha-ha) plain spoken “I can’t remember, I can’t recall AG makes plain by ignoring a subpoena and forgetting to turn over pertinent withheld DoJ-WH documents and the conveniently lost emails of Rove, not to mention the hiring and firing practices of Goodling, ran an illegal operation for weeks because Comey wouldn’t sign off on it and neither would Ashcroft. But you say nothing to see here, just a bunch of liberal bloggers making something out of nothing. Better to keep one’s mouth shut and let people wonder if you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt as in Comment # 12. The only way to not know is to not want to know(Penn-Warren) and it’s for certain you don’t want to know. Look at what you have become.

  • I’m no Ashcroft fan, but from what I read I don’t think Comey went to convince Ashcroft of anything. I think he was afraid that, due to sickness, pain and/or medication he would be so out of it he might sign anything.

    Which I think was what Gonzales and Card where hoping for. Luckily, Ashcroft was coherent and stood up for the Law.

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