Yet another update: “DOJ Investigates if Gonzales Tried to Influence Aide’s Testimony”
In a May 23 appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Goodling testified that Gonzales had laid out his general recollection of events surrounding the prosecutor dismissals during a meeting between the two in March, as Goodling was preparing to leave the department. Gonzales asked whether Goodling “had any reaction to his iteration,” and she said the conversation made her “a little uncomfortable” because of ongoing investigations into the issue, according to her testimony.
“I didn’t know that it was maybe appropriate for us to talk about that at that point, and so I just didn’t,” Goodling testified. “As far as I can remember, I just didn’t respond.”
This is getting really interesting. I wonder if we’re seeing the edges of some form of DOJ coup from out of the Inspector General’s office.
Probably way too much to hope for.
And yet more problems from the DOJ:
Hans von Spakovsky, President Bush’s nominee for the Federal Election Commission, tried to win the Senate’s sympathies Wednesday by presenting himself as a poster boy for American democracy. “I grew up listening to stories of what it’s like to live under a dictatorship,” said the nominee, the child of Nazi refugees, at a Senate hearing. “This nomination is not a reflection of me, but a reflection of what a great country this is.”
But Democratic members of the Rules and Administration Committee didn’t appear to be buying it. Spakovsky is a former Republican Party chairman and election supervisor from Fulton County, Ga., and a former lawyer from the Justice Department’s troubled Civil Rights Division. He is most well known for pushing a controversial voter photo identification law in Georgia, despite being told by civil rights groups and government attorneys that the law would suppress minority voters. He is also thought to have been strongly influential in the Justice Department’s decision to approve a 2003 redistricting plan in Texas that the Supreme Court later ruled was a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Six of von Spakovsky’s former colleagues at the Justice Department have penned a letter opposing his confirmation because of his “major role in the implementation of practices which injected partisan political factors into decision-making on enforcement matters and into the hiring process.” They also accused him of “repeated efforts to intimidate career staff.”…
…When pressed to explain his actions at the Justice Department, von Spakovsky was mostly nonresponsive. “That is privileged information,” he said in response to more than one question. When asked about conversations he had with colleagues that would indicate he supported a Republican agenda, von Spakovsky replied, “I do not recall.”
“Your memory has failed you,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. “We’ve seen that this is an affliction that many in the Department of Justice suffer from.”
Gee, after all the stuff that has gone down at DoJ, I think it might be possible to jog a few DoJ memories by enumerating a new legal principle: Any DoJ official who has signed off on a given procedure as legal (such as, say, waterboarding) should legally be subject to such procedures.
It only seems fair. In the long run, it might not only jog some memories, but might help promote a new, sharper awareness among our public officials of what’s torture, and what isn’t.
Gonzales’s testimony: I don’t recall, I don’t recall, I don’t recall.
And then we’ll continue to see more nothing.
Woohoo!
-Joe
jayjay
June 15, 2007, 12:13pm
465
ThinkProgress is reporting that immediately prior to the signing of the law that would revoke the Patriot Act provision to bypass Senate confirmation of USAs, Gonzalez confirmed the temporary USA who replaced Debra Wong Yang as the official interim USA .
Unfortunately, the story is only on Think Progress and Raw Story right now. Haven’t seen anything from any MSM outlets. Quelle surprise…
Merijeek:
Gonzales’s testimony: I don’t recall, I don’t recall, I don’t recall.
And then we’ll continue to see more nothing.
Holy Cow! His memory has come back!
Merijeek:
Gonzales’s testimony: I don’t recall, I don’t recall, I don’t recall.
And then we’ll continue to see more nothing.
Woohoo!
-Joe
A typical day at the Justice Department.
From Salon, another resignation:
The scandal over the firing of U.S. attorneys has just claimed another casualty. Mike Elston, the chief of staff to outgoing Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, is resigning effective next week.
Elston was deeply involved in the firing of federal prosecutors last year and – by all appearances – tried to hide the truth about what happened afterward by silencing the U.S. attorneys who were forced out. As the Associated Press reports, several of the ousted prosecutors said they received phone calls from Elston in which they believed he was offering them a threatening sort of quid pro quo: They don’t talk about the circumstances of their firings, and the Justice Department wouldn’t trash them in public. Elston has denied that he meant to threaten anyone.
Elston has also been implicated in the pursuit of trumped-up voter fraud cases and is the target of charges that he politicized the Department of Justice’s hiring of entry-level attorneys by striking from consideration candidates who had any evidence of liberal leanings on their resumes.
Elston becomes the fifth Justice Department official to leave under the cloud of the scandal. Kyle Sampson, who served as Gonzales’ chief of staff, and Mike Battle, who ran the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, resigned in March. Monica Goodling, who was Gonzales’ White House liaison, left in April. And McNulty, who will testify before Congress next week, resigned in May.
jayjay
June 15, 2007, 11:27pm
469
But there’s nothing improper going on! AGAG says so!
Exactly! He doesn’t remember WHAT was going on, but whatever it was, it wasn’t improper.
Not if he did it, no. See, how it works?
Perhaps we’ll get a new Amendment (#.5) that will finally codify IOKIYAR so you libruls will quit quibbling about legal technicalities.
-Joe