{"id":11648,"date":"2007-07-31T09:45:34","date_gmt":"2007-07-31T13:45:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11648.html"},"modified":"2007-07-31T09:45:34","modified_gmt":"2007-07-31T13:45:34","slug":"specter-gives-gonzales-18-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/specter-gives-gonzales-18-hours\/","title":{"rendered":"Specter gives Gonzales 18 hours"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) said he expects Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to “revise” his deceptive testimony this week, or the matter would escalate. Yesterday, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he’s not even willing to wait<\/a> the full week.<\/p>\n

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, Arlen Specter (Pa.), emerged from a crucial Monday briefing and gave the Bush administration 18 hours to resolve the controversy over apparent contradictions in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s congressional testimony.<\/p>\n

Gonzales took issue last week with former Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s description of internal dissent in 2004 over the legal authority for the National Security Agency’s (NSA) warrantless eavesdropping program. Frustrated Democrats called for a special prosecutor to investigate Gonzales for perjury, noting that several officials have publicly echoed Comey’s account. Those calls prompted Specter to request a classified briefing to clear up the dispute.<\/p>\n

Specter aides released a statement late Monday that suggested a bombshell to come on Tuesday afternoon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It must have been quite an informative meeting (given by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell). Specter appears to be even more convinced — and last week, he seemed pretty sure — that Gonzales intentionally misled him and his colleagues in sworn testimony.<\/p>\n

“Given the difficulty of discussing classified matters in public, I think it is preferable to have a letter addressing that question [of Gonzales’ veracity] from the administration \u2026 by noon tomorrow, which will be made available to the news media,” Specter wrote in a statement on the AG’s new deadline. “The administration has committed to producing such a letter.”<\/p>\n

We’ll see what they come up with later today.
\n
\nIn other Gonzales related news:<\/p>\n

* House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers’ (D-Mich) noticed the news over the weekend about the classified data-mining program that purportedly exonerates Gonzales from perjury charges (it doesn’t, but that was its apparent purpose). Conyers is now curious<\/a> a) why this information was leaked to the media at such a convenient time; and b) when lawmakers can expect to learn more about these new revelations.<\/p>\n

* In light of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s recent testimony, which further cemented Gonzales’ reputation as someone unwilling to tell the truth, there are apparently some new hostilities in the Department of Justice. The New York Daily News reported<\/a> that a “distinctly cold air has settled between FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Ave. and the main Justice building directly across the street.” Mueller aide said, “You could open an ice rink between the buildings.”<\/p>\n

* Two new op-eds ran today, defending Gonzales against perjury charges. The first<\/a> was in the WSJ, written by GOP lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey, the other<\/a> by the WaPo’s Ruth Marcus. Anonymous Liberal “delved once again into the weeds of the perjury case” to explain why they’re wrong<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) said he expects Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to “revise” his deceptive testimony this week, or the matter would escalate. Yesterday, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said he’s not even willing to wait the full week. The Senate Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, Arlen Specter (Pa.), emerged from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}