The Bush administration’s purge-scandal strategy took an odd turn over the weekend, when White House officials pushed Senate Democrats to let Attorney General Alberto Gonzales move up his sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The White House scrambled Sunday to move up [tag]Attorney General[/tag] [tag]Alberto Gonzales[/tag]’ planned testimony to Congress about his involvement in firing eight federal prosecutors, only to get a cold shoulder from majority Democrats. […]
The committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, said Gonzales had been offered earlier dates but turned them down. It was Gonzales who chose April 17, said Leahy, D-Vt., and that date will not change now because “everybody has set their schedule according to that.”
“It’s the date that the attorney general originally picked. It’s the date the hearing will take place,” Leahy said.
And yet, the White House has entered full-whine mode. Yesterday, Presidential counselor Dan Bartlett said, “If they [Dems] wanted to get to the bottom of it, they would accept the proposal the president’s put forward. They would have the attorney general up there next week, having the testimony in open hearing, on the record, for everybody to see.”
It’s not the Dems’ fault that the White House can’t settle on a stonewalling strategy. Almost three weeks ago, Gonzales was supposed to start charming senators and explaining his innocence, so he pushed off his hearing. The outreach effort never happened, so now he’s stuck.
Complicating matters, Kyle Sampson testified under oath that Gonzales has been lying, repeatedly and publicly, about his role in the scandal. All of a sudden, the Bush gang has decided that Gonzales should testify now to try and put out the fire.
It’s a weak strategy.
Not only do Dems have no incentive to play the White House’s game on the Bush gang’s schedule, but the Senate is in recess this week. Bartlett expects senators to come back from their home states to give Gonzales a chance to clear his name? Please.
Besides, Judiciary Committee members are making the most of their spring break.
That’s because in the meantime, staffers for the House and Senate judiciary committees will be conducting private interviews with seven Justice Department officials involved in the purge. And when Gonzales appears before the committee, senators will be armed with transcripts from those interviews to check the AG’s story. Says Leahy: “We’re, in effect, interrogating a number of people leading up to it… The 17th is now the time…. It’s the date the hearing will take place.”
Given Gonzales’ penchant for memory lapses, it’ll be handy for the senators to know just what he’s forgetting.
The latest White House whining reeks of desperation. Haven’t these guys ever heard the phrase “never let ’em see you sweat”?
In other purge-related news:
* WaPo: “About one-third of the nearly four dozen U.S. attorney’s jobs that have changed hands since President Bush began his second term have been filled by the White House and the Justice Department with trusted administration insiders…. No other administration in contemporary times has had such a clear pattern of filling chief prosecutors’ jobs with its own staff members, said experts on U.S. attorney’s offices.” Who would have guessed it?
* It’s possible that Monica Goodling’s reasons for taking the 5th may be more complicated than previously believed. “[T]his profile in Legal Times shows that Goodling is far from just a mid-level aide who played a peripheral role in the purge. On the contrary, she’s very well-connected and apparently one of the main drivers behind the process of selecting U.S. attorneys.”
* Another Republican lawmaker has called on Gonzales to resign. Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.), citing the AG’s contradictory statements, said, “I trusted him before, but I can’t now.”
* Michael Elston, chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, spent almost six hours Friday being interrogated by the staffs of the House and Senate judiciary committees about the purge scandal. Amazingly, not a word about what happened has leaked.
* And yesterday, Fox News’ Chris Wallace actually put a Republican on the spot, confronting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.) with a 1996 quote in which he said Clinton White House officials should be under oath when they testify before Congress.
Wallace questioned why the same rules McConnell applied to the Clinton White House shouldn’t apply to the Bush White House. McConnell offered that he was merely a Senator in 1996 and that the President made the ultimate decision. Wallace said, “But you’re still a Senator so the question is: do you call on this President to do the same thing?” McConnell responded, “I’m calling on this President to do what he thinks is appropriate.”