James Comey’s testimony this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee has caused all kinds of headaches for Attorney General [tag]Alberto Gonzales[/tag], but Peter Swire touched on one of the more notable problems yesterday — [tag]Comey[/tag] seems to have pointed to an instance in which Gonzales lied under oath.
In a 2006 hearing, Gonzales, during a Judiciary Committee hearing, denied there was any “serious disagreement about the [NSA domestic surveillance] program” among administration officials. This certainly appeared to be demonstrably ridiculous — the disagreements at the Justice Department were so “serious” that it led to a dramatic confrontation in John Ashcroft’s hospital room and nearly led to a mass resignation among senior DoJ officials.
Yesterday, several Senate Dems demanded an explanation. Gonzales responded by sticking to his story.
The Justice Department said yesterday that it will not retract a sworn statement in 2006 by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that the Terrorist Surveillance Program had aroused no controversy inside the Bush administration, despite congressional testimony Tuesday that senior departmental officials nearly resigned in 2004 to protest such a program.
The department’s affirmation of Gonzales’s remarks raised fresh questions about the nature of the classified dispute, which former U.S. officials say led then-Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey and as many as eight colleagues to discuss resigning.
It’s possible that Gonzales isn’t lying — but it only leaves one option.
During his 2006 testimony, Gonzales seemed to concede that some, including Comey, expressed reservations over the legality of the surveillance program, but the AG testified, “The point I want to make is that, to my knowledge, none of the reservations dealt with the program that we are talking about today.” (emphasis added)
As Swire explained:
Perhaps Comey’s objections applied to a different domestic spying program. That has a big advantage for Gonzales — he wasn’t lying under oath. But then we would have senior Justice officials confirming that other “programs” exist for domestic spying, something the Administration has never previously stated.
In fact, given yesterday’s refusal to retract the 2006 testimony, it seems Gonzales had to be referring to some other domestic-spying program. Otherwise, he lied under oath.
As for what lawmakers might do about all of this, the question of impeaching Gonzales seems to be more and more common among political observers. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), appearing on Hardball yesterday, responded to the subject.
MATTHEWS: Well, there’s no way you get it back if the president says he wants to keep it in the hands of his friend, Alberto Gonzales, is there? There’s no constitutional means to remove this man, I guess unless you impeach him.
WHITEHOUSE: That I think is the only legal means. But I think if we continue to put the pressure on, it may get to the point where even if the president’s highest purpose is to get his administration out of Washington without further indictment, it’s still not worth it to carry the weight of Attorney General Gonzales and his incompetent and very unprincipled administration of the Department of Justice.
MATTHEWS: You mention the weight. Do you have enough weight to impeach and convict him and remove him from office?
WHITEHOUSE: You know, after the run that the Republicans took at President Clinton, I think there’s a real bad odor in the public’s mind about that. It is the one device that is at our disposal. It’s been used in the past, for secretaries of war back in the Civil War. But I think right now, everybody’s focus is on really trying to get to the bottom of this and find out for once and for all what happened.
At a minimum, Whitehouse didn’t seem willing to rule impeachment out as a possibility.
Stay tuned.