McNulty Testifies Again

Paul McNulty, Deputy Attorney General resigning this month, testified again for the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law today. This was after Monica Goodling called into question some of his previous testimony.

It opened with Rep John Conyers (D-MI), the chairman of the committee rebuking Rep Chris Cannon (R-UT, ranking subcommittee member) for saying "there is in fact nothing wrong with firing US Attorneys at any time for any reason" and for saying the Democrats are pursuing this for partisan political reasons. First Conyers said there are reasons that US Attorneys can't be fired and Cannon quickly agreed. Rep Linda Sanchez (D-CA), chairwoman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law pointed out that her opening statements were not partizan but brought up the facts that have been brought up in evidence, documents and testimony, "it warrants our time and our attention and investigation and it's not fabricated because it's supported by factual information". Nice.

In his opening statements McNulty said he's always tried to tell the truth to Congress though since his testimony it's been clear his knowledge of some of the events has been "incomplete". He says he has no knowledge of the plan to fire US Attorney's until October 2006 and wasn't consulted until the November 27th meeting. This in spite of the fact that Gonzales has said McNulty knows more than anyone about who was on the list and approved the firings. He says that he did approve the firings and assumed Gonzales thought Kyle Sampson would consult with McNulty but he apparently didn't.

Can't we get all of these guys in the room at the same time and ask them all questions. This process that drags on for months where congressmen get 5 mins to ask a question is maddening. All these players (except Goodling) seem to give very specific answers that sound more general than they are and then when asked about the discrepancies parse them very tightly to say "see I wasn't lying". It's like they all forgot the middle part of "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". The other technique, which McNulty used today was since there's an internal investigation going on, they've recused themselves from actions. We still don't know who made the list and no one can investigate because they're all recused.