Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Gonzales and Purgegate Updates

Today Gonzales missed the deadline from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) subpoena to turn over all email to or from Karl Rove.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), Jr., Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA), Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) wrote Gonzales today asking about information about the firing of the ninth US Attorney Todd Graves of Missouri. They also expressed "concerns" about Gonzales testimony on the matter. "There are disturbing indications that the decision to fire Mr. Graves was related to his disagreement with a voter fraud lawsuit pushed by Mr. Schlozman, the very person eventually named by you to succeed Mr. Graves as an interim U.S. Attorney. Notwithstanding your assertions, our review indicates that the district court decision dismissing that lawsuit focused on much more than the procedural defect of naming the wrong defendant."

Here's a crazy story. In March 2004, when Gonzales was White House counsel, he tried to get an extension of the warrantless domestic spying program. He needed the Attorney General to sign off on it. Then AG John Ashcroft was in intensive care for a week and had transfered his powers to to Deputy Attorney General James Comey. Comey had said no so Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card went to Ashcroft in his hospital bed to reauthorize the program. This might have been illegal because Ashcroft didn't have power. Ashcroft apparently choose not to reauthorize the program. Then after this, Gonzales blocked Ashcroft and Comey from testifying on the program to the Senate Judiciary Committee for over a year.

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty Resigned. There's a lot of speculation about how he's annoyed about his involvement in Purgegate and that Gonzales was mad at him for his Feb 7 statements saying "that at least one of the fired prosecutors was ordered to make way for a protege of Karl Rove". Think Progress has a number of updates on this.

I guess the next big thing will be Monica Goodling's testimony.

Honestly, at this point I don't want Gonzales to resign; I want him impeached for lying to Congress, obstruction of justice, and violating his oath to uphold the Constitution.

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