We’ve known for quite a while that the political affairs office at the White House conducted partisan, political briefings, despite the Hatch Act’s prohibitions on politicking in government buildings with government employees.
In April, we learned there were at least 20 private briefings on GOP electoral prospects before last November’s elections, for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies — all of which are covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity. In July, the story got slightly worse when we learned the campaign briefings were also given to the Bush administration’s top diplomats, several ambassadors, and officials at the State Department and the Peace Corps.
With all of this in mind, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last week whether “the leadership of the Department of Justice” had participated in any of these political briefings.
“Not that I’m aware of…. I don’t believe so, sir,” Gonzales said.
Oops.
Justice Department officials attended at least a dozen political briefings at the White House since 2001, including some meetings led by Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political adviser, and others that were focused on election trends prior to the 2006 midterm contest, according to documents released yesterday.
If political norms still had any meaning, this might be the kind of revelation that would force an Attorney General to resign. After all, a) there’s no legitimate reason for Karl Rove to brief DoJ employees on individual congressional races; and b) Gonzales testified that he didn’t believe the briefings happened at all.
Of course, political norms lost their meaning a few years ago, so there will probably be no adverse consequences for this whatsoever.
Speaking of Gonzales, yesterday was Pat Leahy’s deadline for the AG to explain his other lies about disagreement over the administration’s surveillance programs. How’d that turn out?
Amazingly, Gonzales doesn’t think he misled Congress on National Security Letter slip-ups. Nor did he know anything about a briefing for the Peace Corps on GOP electoral priorities. In fact, Alberto Gonzales is a paragon of truth and candor, at least in his own eyes.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) just issued a curt reply to Gonzales’s clarification
“It is a deeply regrettable that it takes so much work and effort for this Attorney General to try to justify answers that appear to remain far short of the full truth the American people should expect from the Nation’s top law enforcement officer. Sadly, this is becoming a familiar exercise. Testifying with full candor under oath would be so much easier and better.”
Yesterday, Joe Biden said Gonzales has “stayed too long,” though “short of us finding a smoking gun, it looks to me like he’s there for a little while longer.”
I’m not sure how many more smoking guns it should realistically take.