Gonzales said: "First I believe the independence of our US attorneys. They are the face of the department. They are my representatives in the community. I acknowledge their sacrifice. I acknowledge their courage to step into the arena on behalf of the American people.
Second, the AG, all political appointees such as US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president of the US.
Third, I believe fundamentally in the constiutional role in the Senate in advice and concent with respect to us attorneys and would in no way support an effort to circumvent that constiutional role.
I believe in accountability. Like every CEO of a major organization, I am responsible for what happens at the Department of Justice. I acknowledge that mistakes were made here. I accept that responsibility and my pledge to the American people is to find out what went wrong here, to assess accountability and to make improvements so that mistakes that occurred in this instance do not occur in the future."
He went on to say that Kyle Sampson, his chief of staff, was responsible to evaluate which attorneys were strong and which were weak and to make improvements.
"I just described for Pete the extent of my...of the knowledge that I had about the process. I never saw documents. We never had a discussion about where things stood. What I knew was that there was an ongoing effort, that was led by Mr. Sampson, vetted through the Department of Justice to assertain where we could make improvements in US Attorneys performances around the country."
I'm amazed that no reporter there asked this question. "Are you such a hands off manager that when you had your chief of staff replace 9% of 'your representatives in the community' you weren't involved at all. That you didn't look at the criteria he used to make his decisions?
At least Sen Charles Schumer (D-NY) just said on the floor: "Mr. President, did the Attorney General not know that 8 US Attorneys were to be fired. If he didn't know he shouldn't be Attorney General, plain and simple. That is not a minor personel decision. That is a major act that has now shaken the intgrity of the US Attorneys offices, not only those in question, but all of them to the core. To simply say decisions were delegated, that is a sorry excuse. Then of course if the AG knew, that one doesn't work either.
Oh and that third point of Gonzales is just a lie. That he would in no way support a way to circumvent the Senate's constitutional role of advice and consent of US Attorneys. Section 502 of the 2005 renewal of the Patriot Act is called "Interim appointment of United States Attorneys" and says "Section 546 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by
striking subsections (c) and (d) and inserting the following new subsection: ''(c) A person appointed as United States attorney under this section may serve until the qualification of a United States Attorney for such district appointed by the President under section 541 of this title.''. " Now that's vague unless you lookup the original law that's being modified. What strikes me as interesting is that this section was not in the original Patriot Act. It was (I assume consciously, how could it be otherwise) added in 2005 and Gonzales pushed hard for Congress to pass it. Here's his op-ed saying so. I'm sick of this administration's officials constant lies.
No comments:
Post a Comment