Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee today for his make-or-break testimony, but the hearing was postponed until Thursday in light of the shootings at Virginia Tech.
With a couple of more days to prepare, Gonzales may want to come up with a coherent explanation for this.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ assertion that he was not involved in identifying the eight U.S. attorneys who were asked to resign last year is at odds with a recently released internal Department of Justice e-mail, ABC News has learned.
That e-mail said that Gonzales supported firing one federal prosecutor six months before she was asked to leave. […]
Gonzales has insisted he left those decisions to his staff, but ABC News has learned he was so concerned about U.S. attorney Carol Lam’s lackluster record on immigration enforcement in San Diego that he supported firing her months before she was dismissed, according to a newly released e-mail from his former chief of staff.
The e-mail, which came from Gonzales aide Kyle Sampson, appeared to contradict the prepared written testimony Gonzales submitted to Congress over the weekend in advance of his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday. In his prepared testimony, Gonzales said that during the months that his senior staff was evaluating U.S. attorneys, including Lam, “I did not make the decisions about who should or should not be asked to resign.”
If this isn’t a smoking gun, it’s close. As the email highlighted by ABC notes, Gonzales was actively involved in discussions about firing Lam as far back as June, telling his aides that “we should adopt a plan” that would lead to her removal if she “balks” at increased immigration prosecutions. Gonzales supported the idea of first having “a heart to heart with Lam about the urgent need to improve immigration enforcement” and of working with her “to develop a plan for addressing the problem.” Sampson said another alternative would be to “put her on a very short leash.”
There are, of course, two reasons this is a big problem for Gonzales. First, it flatly contradicts his already-released planned testimony. Second, Gonzales never actually did any of the things he said he’d do in June.
On the first point, Gonzales is stuck. In an effort to seize control of the story, his office published his prepared testimony over the weekend. In retrospect, that was dumb — it gave reporters a chance to check his planned remarks against already-released emails. Sure enough, ABC found a blatant contradiction.
And if Gonzales changes the remarks now, it’ll be pretty obvious that the AG was prepared to lie to the committee, but changed his comments because he got caught.
On the latter point, Josh Marshall explains why Gonzales’ story falls apart under scrutiny.
But here’s the problem, here’s what gets left unsaid. Should the AG have a ‘heart to heart’ or ‘put her on a short leash’ or what if she resists, etc. etc. etc. But do you remember that they never spoke to Lam? No leash or heart to heart. They never even mentioned any of it to her.
This is the part of the equation that just won’t add up no matter how hard they try to push the numbers together.
Consider the scene. May 2006. Lam has already sent one congressman to prison. News has just broken that her investigation now threatens to bring down the House Appropriations Committee Chairman. And she’d just brought her probe to the heart of the Bush CIA.
While this is going on top Justice Department officials are having an entirely separate conversation about how to deal with Lam’s record on immigration enforcement. Talk it out with her? Give her one last chance? Keep her on a short leash?
All these possibilities. But no one ever gets around to telling Lam anything about it.
Does that sound right to you?
Nope.
In other news from the prosecutor purge scandal:
* Kyle Sampson is still undercutting his former boss: “The former top aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has told Congressional investigators that Mr. Gonzales was ‘inaccurate,’ or ‘at least not complete’ in asserting that he had no role in the deliberations about individual United States attorneys who were later dismissed, a Democratic senator said Monday.”
* The House Judiciary Committee wants to have a chat with U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Rachel Paulose. Good idea.
* Last week, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed a number of Justice Department documents, including a list of U.S. Attorneys who were on the to-be-fired list before being removed. Yesterday, the DoJ refused to comply. Chairman John Conyers is not amused.
* Two-thirds of Americans, including a narrow majority of Republicans, see political motivations behind the prosecutor purge. As for Gonzales’ resignation, a plurality wants him gone, but the numbers are closer.
* And a surprising number of people believe Gonzales is a fool for even trying to testify right now. “‘It’s suicidal,’ said Stanley Brand, one of the top ethics defense lawyers in Washington, D.C. Given the conflicting stories from Gonzales, his aides and top Justice Department officials about why eight U.S. attorneys were fired, and to what extent Gonzales was involved in the process, the attorney general puts himself in criminal jeopardy by testifying under oath, Brand said.”
Stay tuned.
