Andrew Cohen, who writes the Bench Conference online column for the WaPo, summed up the feelings a lot of us had yesterday, after watching Alberto Gonzales make a fool of himself before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
No reasonable person watching Gonzales’ tragically comedic performance Tuesday’s on Capitol Hill … can any longer defend his appalling lack of competence, courage and credibility…. I am running out of words to describe how inept this public servant is and how awful is the message our government sends to the nation and to the world by allowing him to continue to represent us.
Cohen was struck, for example, by an exchange between Gonzales and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) about the AG’s dissembling over the number of secret surveillance programs referenced in earlier testimony.
SCHUMER: You just said there was just one program — just one. So the letter, which was, sort of, intended to deceive, but doesn’t directly do so, because there are other intelligence activities, gets you off the hook, but you just put yourself right back on here.
GONZALES: I clarified my statement two days later with the reporter.
SCHUMER: What did you say to the reporter?
GONZALES: I did not speak directly to the reporter.
SCHUMER: Oh, wait a second — you did not. (LAUGHTER)
OK. What did your spokesperson say to the reporter?
GONZALES: I don’t know.
Indeed, Gonzales doesn’t know a lot of things. As Slate’s Emily Bazelon explained, “Even after all these months of tacking and backtracking, Gonzales’ lack of command of the details is something to behold. He doesn’t know the total number of U.S. attorneys who were fired. He doesn’t recall his participation in reversing former U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton’s decision about whether to seek the death penalty in a case where all the evidence was circumstantial. He doesn’t know why DoJ’s new guide to prosecuting voter fraud removed or watered down key directives against pursuing cases in a way that could interfere with the outcome of an election. He doesn’t know why the Justice Department’s guidelines restricting communications with the White House now suddenly include a blanket exception for contact between the attorney general and the vice president and his counsel. And, of course, he doesn’t know who put the names of the U.S. attorneys on the list he approved for firing.”
The key thing to remember at this point, however, is that for the first time, senators were openly discussing consequences for Gonzales’ transparent dishonesty.
In some instances, Gonzales didn’t remember the truth. In others, he’d make up his own version of the truth. In still others, he’d hide behind dubious claims of executive privilege to avoid telling the truth. And best of all, in still more instances, Gonzales would say he just didn’t feel like telling the truth.
And while the White House has made it abundantly clear that the truth no longer matters to the president or his team, most senators on the Judiciary Committee — Orrin Hatch inexplicably remains a big Gonzales booster — seem genuinely livid about the Attorney General’s mendacity. As of late yesterday afternoon, there was even some discussion about (gasp!) doing something about it.
Specifically, Gonzales was caught blatantly lying about disagreement at the Justice Department over warrantless domestic searches. He was also caught blatantly lying about the motivation behind the Ashcroft hospital visit.
In his testimony today, Alberto Gonzales blamed the Ashcroft hospital visit on Congress — particularly, the so-called Gang of Eight, the top congressional leadership and the leadership of the intelligence committees. As Spencer Ackerman noted late in the day, three members of the group — Democrats Daschle, Rockefeller and Pelosi — said Gonzales’ version of events isn’t true. In an interview with NPR, Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) said the same thing — though she was a little ambiguous, suggesting that her ability to discuss the conversations in question were limited because they were classified.
So all four Democrats say Gonzales’ story is bunk.
Roll Call reported that some senators are taking this seriously.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may have put himself in legal jeopardy with his testimony Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senators of both parties warned, as Members cast doubt on the truthfulness of his answers and suggested he may have improperly released classified information in his own defense.
Judiciary ranking member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) told Gonzales at one point, “I do not find your testimony credible.”
He suggested the committee would “review your testimony to see whether your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable,” an apparent threat to consider charges against the attorney general for lying to Congress. (emphasis added)
Josh Marshall concluded, “It’s a genuinely sad day when you have the chief law enforcement officer of country remaining in office after he’s been publicly and repeatedly shown to be a liar.” It is, indeed. Now it’s up to the Senate to do something about it.