It looks like A.Gonzales may be getting a boot

[Ninong]

And Sharon Eubanks is killing them, too. Between her and David Iglesias, I don't see how Gonzales or Rove can survive.

Eubanks was the lead attorney at Justice in the racketeering case against the tobacco companies. When it became obvious that her case was won and the only question remaining was how high to set the settlement, her political appointee supervisors at Justice insisted that she drop the award request by 90%. In fact, they did even more than that. They actually wrote out her closing statement in an attempt to weaken the case as much as possible. They reduced the amount the government was asking for by 90%. They handed her the typed out closing statement and ordered her to deliver it verbatim without changing a single word.

She has been all over the talk shows the past week and she is devasting! Almost as devasting as David Iglesias.

P.S. -- Rumor has it that Leahy and Schumer are loaded for bear, which is why Leahy is taking his time. They have more than enough insider info passed to them by disgruntled career attorneys at Justice to fry the White House from top to bottom.

[Ninong]

Another reason for the White House to freak out is the fact that the recently released emails included hints that Jack Abramoff was instrumental in getting Frederick Black removed as the U.S. Attorney in Guam in May 2003. That's why Waxman has subpoenaed Susan Ralston, Abramoff's former aide who became Karl Rove's chief of staff before she was forced to resign for accepting gifts from Abramoff in exchange for "favors."

Everybody knows that Black was removed as U.S. Attorney in Guam because he was investigating Abramoff. The investigation was closed immediately after Black was removed. It was extremely obvious at the time but the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, do-nothing Republican Congress looked the other way. Emails that were released from Justice in the USA-8 document dumps indicate a connection between Ralston and Justice and the removal of Black.

So it will be interesting to get Susan under oath. That could be extremely damaging to Rove in more ways than one. She knows a lot, especially about the favors that were done for her former boss, Jack Abramoff. Isn't it strange that the White House employed so many of Jack Abramoff's former aides (David Safavian, the convicted White House chief procurement officer was another) and yet Bush "never heard of Abramoff and doesn't recall ever meeting him?" Yeah, right! And Bush reads at least 60 books a year, too! The White House said so! We know that Bush doesn't read newspapers, he said so himself, and he doesn't watch TV, he said that, too. Oh, and he exercises two hours a day and goes to bed by 10 p.m. If you add up the number of pages in just the 25 books on the "reading list" that the White House released (which is a complete farce!), it means that the prez is reading a couple hundred pages a day, every day, while supposedly running the country in his spare time.


_________________________________________________

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." -- Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here, 1935.

[Ninong]

Henry Waxman is going to be the Bush Administration's greatest nightmare! He has been sending Condoleezza Rice letters since 2003 demanding answers to questions about the forged Niger document that the Cheney-Bush Administration used as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq and she has ignored his letters because he was merely the ranking member and not the chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

Well, that's all about to change. He sent her another letter in early March giving her until March 23 to respond. She ignored that letter, too. So now he is requesting that she appear before his committee on April 18 to answer questions under oath before Congress. There is no doubt whatsoever that the administration knew all along the document was a forgery, which is why they held it for eight or nine months before finally turning it over to the IAEA just a couple of weeks before the invasion. Within days the IAEA declared that it was not only a fake, but a stunningly obvious fake at that. The letter was on the wrong letterhead and it was signed by a Nigerois minister who had been out of office for 12 years! And there were misspelled words in the French text of the letter.

The mystery of the forged Niger letter lies at the heart of the Cheney-Rumsfeld neo-con march to war. Sourcing that letter could prove not only that the intelligence was twisted and manipulated but that in some instances it was actually manufactured, in this case with the assistance of the Italians. I've lost track of how many different lies Rice has told related to this letter and the 16 words in the State of the Union Address. There is now sworn testimony from more than one person that contradicts her assertions. That's another one of the benefits of the Scooter Libby prosecution. We now know for instance that George Tenet did ask that the 16 words be removed from the State of the Union address but that he was "overruled by the White House!" Within literally hours after the address, Tenet took the fall and accepted responsibility for "not catching" it. In return, Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom.

Rice has told so many lies, it's hard to keep track of all of them. She contradicted George Tenet's testimony that he briefed her in an "emergency meeting" in July 2001 about the pending thread from al-Qaida. She doesn't recall the details of that meeting, even though Tenet and one of his top deputies remember it very well. Her memory is even worse than Gonzo's.

It's truly amazing how "truthful" people can be when they are told that they will not be a target of the special prosecutor's investigation provided they tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So much of the sworn testimony in that investigation directly contradicts statements made by Condoleezza Rice and other Bush Administration lackeys. In particular, Fitzgerald obtained the full cooperation of Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, the guy who first leaked Valerie Plame Wilson's name inadvertently -- supposedly. Armitage contradicted assertions Rice and others had made about the 16 words. You might remember that Rice was National Security Advisor then because that was before Colin Powell was forced out as Secretary of State. You might say that Condi Rice was a "loyal Bushie," which is how she got Powell's job. "We can't wait for the smoking gun that may come in the form of a mushroom cloud." -- Condoleezza Rice, repeated later by G.W.B.

[schrocat]

BTW...
Good thing Kerik wasn't appointed to HLS...

Gonzo's secretary pool would have orchestrated yet another purge; unbeknownst to Gonzo of course.


Poor Rove.
He never considered Gonzo out of the equation, and he certainly never considered a scenario where he'd have so little (like, ummm...no) control of Gonzo's replacement.

Gonzo kept the jail keys in his pocket...

*snicker*

Not much longer.

Take your time Rove. Take your time. Walk it off.
Burn the clock...

Ribbit.


P.S. Thank God they already burned the Harriet card!
I couldn't have taken a few weeks of the dying, gasping, rusting FoxNews "fun with facts" Dept churning out how ubber qualified she would be as a replacement.
Fox's "editorial\reporting staff get nastier with each rating ebb.

[Ninong]

Rudy Giuliani and Bernie Kerik have so much in common. They've both on their third wife and they both fooled around publicly while married. My favorite Kerik story by far is the one about somebody donating the use of a plush condo near the World Trade Center site shortly after 9/11 for use by exhausted NYC police and firefighters as a place to rest up. Kerik comandeered it for himself as a place to boink Judith Regan, the publisher of his memoir. You might remember Regan, she's the former National Enquirer Reporter who became rich and famous as a publisher of trash, which is why Rupert Murdoch hired her. Then she got so much bad publicity for doing what she does naturally (the O.J. Simpson book), that Murdoch fired her and cancelled the book just days before its release.

One has to wonder if Giuliani knew Kerik was on the take from the mob at the time he recommended him for Homeland Security Secretary, what other things did they know about each other? Kerik still came out of that smelling like a rose because in 2002 he was hired by Taser International as a consultant and paid $6.2 million in stock options for pumping up their stock by pushing their product to police departments around the country.

But I digress, there's more than enough sleaze to go around in the Bush Administration without having drag in the Rudy-Bernie connection. I think I'll save Bernie for the 2008 GOP candidates thread.

[Ninong]

Catherine Crier, a former Texas District Court judge, has some interesting observations. It's a brief video clip. Check it out here.

[Ninong]

It's hard to imagine any government agency being more incompetent than Heckuva-Job Brownie's FEMA, but Gone-zo's Justice Department is a close second if not an outright winner.

One of the reasons put forth by the DOJ to explain why they fired David Iglesias was that he was an 'absentee landlord.' Just one problem: Iglesias, a captain in the Navy Reserve, was off teaching classes as part of the war on terror.

From Newsweek: April 4, 2007 - When he wasn’t doing his day job as U.S. attorney in New Mexico, David Iglesias was a captain in the Navy Reserve, teaching foreign military officers about international terrorism.

But Iglesias’s military service in support of what the Pentagon likes to call the Global War on Terror (GWOT) apparently didn’t go down well with his superiors at the Justice Department. Recently released documents show that one reason aides to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales cited in justifying the decision to fire Iglesias as U.S attorney late last year was that he was an “absentee landlord” who was spending too much time away from the office.

That explanation may create new legal problems for Gonzales and Justice. Iglesias confirmed to NEWSWEEK that he was recently questioned by lawyers for the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal watchdog agency, to determine if his dismissal was a violation of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), a federal law that prohibits job discrimination against members of the U.S. military.

At the encouragement of Office of Special Counsel director Scott Bloch and his deputies, Iglesias said he is this week filing a formal legal complaint with OSC against the Justice Department over his dismissal on this and other grounds. (While the Justice Department normally prosecutes USERRA violations, the OSC, an independent federal agency that protects the rights of whistle-blowers, takes the case when the potential violator is the federal government itself.) “I want to make sure they didn’t fire me because of my military duty,” Iglesias said. “When I was away from the office, it wasn’t like I was going on vacation in Europe.” (A Justice Department spokesman did not respond for a request for comment on whether Iglesias’s firing might have been a violation of the law.)

[Ninong]

Poor Gone-zo! He's not used to all this congressional oversight stuff. Here he is giving up his planned family vacation just so he can rehearse the new and improved version of events that he will deliver before the Senate Judiciary Committee's next hearing on April 17 and now he receives a rude letter from Chairman Leahy scolding him for his repeated tardiness in responding to the committee's requests.

Excerpts from that letter:

"You have agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 17, 2007. As you will recall, my staff had suggested earlier dates, in March and earlier in April, but you had declined those offers and suggested the 17th. The Committee set the hearing for that date to accommodate you."

[...]

"At our last oversight hearing with you on January 18, 2007, you apologized for the tardiness with which you had provided written responses to questions that had been outstanding for six months. Regrettably, the Committee has yet to receive answers from the written questions sent to you in connection with that January 18th hearing. We are approaching three months since the last hearing, yet you and the Department seem to be repeating the practice of not responding in a timely manner. Instead, if you respond at all, you do so only as a hearing appearance approaches. Although the Committee was informed weeks ago to expect your answers to our questions on a rolling basis, we have yet to receive a single answer. Please ensure that the Committee receives your answers to the oversight questions from the January 18th hearing without further delay."

Adios, amigo!

[Ninong]

Monica Goodling has "resigned" from the Justice Department effective tomorrow. She was counsel to Gonzales and DOJ's liaison to the White House. She's the one who is trying to invoke the Fifth Amendment not because of something she may have done but because of something she is afraid that she might do if called to testify, namely perjure herself.

I don't think that's what the Fifth Amendment was designed to do. It was designed to allow you to refuse to bear witness against yourself. It doesn't say anything about protection against a crime that you haven't yet committed. She should be forced to appear and then forced to invoke the Fifth for each and every question she is asked that she thinks a truthful answer could be self-incriminating. You can't simply say I'm not showing up because I don't like your attitude and I think I would be forced to lie to protect Harriet Miers and Karl Rove.

[Ninong]

Gonzo is having a hard time learning his lines:

At a recent "prep" for a prospective Sunday talk-show interview, Gonzales's performance was so poor that top aides scrapped any live appearances.

During the March 23 session in the A.G.'s conference room, Gonzales was grilled by a team of top aides and advisers—including former Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie and former White House lawyer Tim Flanigan—about what he knew about the plan to fire seven U.S. attorneys last fall.

But Gonzales kept contradicting himself and "getting his timeline confused," said one participant who asked not to be identified talking about a private meeting. His advisers finally got "exasperated" with him, the source added. "He's not ready," Tasia Scolinos, Gonzales's public-affairs chief, told the A.G.'s top aides after the session was over, said the source.

[schrocat]

Yes.

Gonzo longs for the days when saying "I firmly believe nothing improper was done" would have simply ended the matter.

Oh Well.

[Ninong]

There is no truth to the rumor that Gonzo fathered Anna Nicole Smith's baby. That was just a diversionary tactic to improve his public image.

Larry Birkhead fathered Anna Nicole Smith's baby. So now the cable news networks will talk about this for the next 72 hours at least!

[Ninong]

WaPo (aka Pravda on the Potomac) published an Op-Ed by Gonzo today. In it Gonzo previews his new version of the truth that he will stick to next Tuesday when he appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"I know that I did not ask for the resignation of any US Attorney for an improper reason." Period. End of story. Nothing to see here folks, so let's stop all this congressional oversight garbage. Gonzo will tell the committee that he has been very busy protecting the nation from terrorist attacks and keeping our children safe from internet prawnography. Just say no to prawnography! Or is that pornography?

However, in his third version of events, Gonzo is prepared to admit that he just now remembered that he actually was involved in the process of firing the US Attorneys. He was so busy keep our children safe from prawnography that it slipped his mind that he may have been present during several meeting when the firings were discussed and maybe he really did order his chief of staff to provide him with lists of potential replacements in spite of his previous assertions that he did no such thing.

"While I have never sought to deceive Congress or the American people, I also know that I created confusion with some of my recent statements about my role in this matter," he wrote. "To be clear: I directed my then-deputy chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, to initiate this process; fully knew that it was occurring; and approved the final recommendations. Sampson periodically updated me on the review. As I recall, his updates were brief, relatively few in number and focused primarily on the review process."

That is a complete about face from his previous statements under oath before Congress and it directly contradicts his press conference last month when he told us that he has 110,000 employees working for him and he can't possibly know what they're up to, even his chief of staff! "I was not involved in any discussions about what was going on.” -- Alberto Gonzales, March 13, 2007.

Meanwhile, there is a very interesting article in today's Albuquerque Journal to the effect David Iglesias was fired on orders from President Bush. That's because Gonzales told Sen. Domenici that the only way he would fire Iglesias would be on direct orders from the president. Domenici had called Gonzo to demand that Iglesias be fired for not complying with Domenici's demand that indictments be brought against local Democrats to help Rep. Heather Wilson's reelection chances.

Excerpts from that article:

"At some point after the election last Nov. 6, Domenici called Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and told him he wanted Iglesias out and asked Rove to take his request directly to the president. Domenici and Bush subsequently had a telephone conversation about the issue.

"The conversation between Bush and Domenici occurred sometime after the election but before the firings of Iglesias and six other U.S. attorneys were announced on Dec. 7."


That's an interesting development. The president has the authority to fire any US Attorney but he does not have the authority to interfere with the administration of justice. Even a president is not above the law, as Richard Nixon learned the hard way.

This whole US Attorneys mess is just more proof of how far this administration has taken partisan politics into the judiciary. Carol Lam was fired because of her prosecution of Randy "Duke" Cunningham and his pals, like Dusty Foggo and Brent Wilkes. And because she was investigating Jerry Lewis and John Doolittle. David Iglesias was fired for not bringing indictments against some local Democrats in time to help Heather Wilson's reelection campaign. The US Attorney in Wisconsin was threatened with being fired but he promised to be a "loyal Bushie" and indict those evil Democrats. He actually got a conviction against one but his evidence was so thin that the appeals court threw out the conviction and ordered an acquital. They didn't simply send it back to the lower court, they overturned the conviction themselves and directed an acquital. The case is closed.

[Ninong]

...because of the tragedy at Virginia Tech. That has given the committee extra time to find contradictory statements in his written testimony that was released Sunday night.

Gonzo will have to retract his previous assertions that he had no idea what was going on because he can't keep track of all 110,000 Department of Justice employees without at the same time giving away too much of what was really going on. Could be a perjury trap there.

He will have to retract his assertion that he left everything up to Kyle Sampson, his chief of staff, without admitting that he actually lied when he said that he was not involved in the decision-making process. Sampson has already testified under oath that Gonzales was involved in the process and that he was working under the direction of the Attorney General. He has also testified that both Harriet Miers and Karl Rove had substantial input in the process.

Gonzo will now claim that, like Scooter Libby, he suffers from early-onset Alzheimer's. He didn't actually lie when he said that he wasn't involved, he just didn't remember. Sort of like Ronald Reagan admitting on national TV that he didn't remember being involved in Iran-Contra but that the evidence says he was. Aw shucks, I must have dozed off during that part of the briefing. It actually worked for Reagan. It's not likely to work for Gonzales.

Gonzo will now try to retract his previous defense that he was too stupid to know what was going on and that he delegated everything to his subordinates without accepting too much responsibility for the mistakes that were made. He will claim that the only problem here is that he failed to explain things properly the first time around. Nothing to see here, folks. Let's move on now.

All of that is predictable. What is unpredictable is whether he will decline to answer specific questions about the White House's involvement in the firing of the U.S. Attorneys and what he will say about Sen. Domenici's phone calls. I think that's what is bothering the Republican members of the committee more than anything. President Bush is the only Republican in the country right now who doesn't realize that it would have been better for the GOP if Gonzo had resigned in January.

After Thursday's appearance, I think we will have to start calling Gonzo piñata boy.

P.S. -- Here's another development Gonzo will be watching very carefully. John Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wants to grant immunity to Monica Goodling! Conyers is expected to take up the matter at a business meeting of his committee tomorrow morning. No doubt Gonzo will be very interested in how that turns out. A grant of immunity will require approval by two-thirds of the committee.

Goodling, the Pat Robertson Law School graduate who was the Dept. of Justice's White House Liaison, was forced to resign after informing the committee that she would be invoking her rights under the Fifth Amendment to refuse to answer any questions. In fact, her attorney went even further than that, he informed the committee that his client would refuse to even appear before the committee, which is hilarious because she would be found in contempt.

I remember watching the Kefauver hearings and the McCarthy hearings back in the early '50's. You have to sit there and repeat your assertion of your Fifth Amendment privilege after every question. You can't simply say in advance that it is your intention to refuse to answer any questions at all.

[Ninong]

Chairman Conyers announced this morning that he has delayed the vote on whether to grant limited immunity to Monica Goodling. Either he doesn't have enough Republican votes to give him the necessary two-thirds majority or the Republican members have asked him to hold off until after Gonzo's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow.

"At the request of our Ranking Minority Member, Lamar Smith, I have announced a one-week delay in the Committee vote to apply for immunity for Monica Goodling. It is my hope that a short delay, agreed to in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation, will enable the Minority to join us in taking this critical step in our efforts to uncover the truth about why the U.S. Attorneys were terminated and what it means for the integrity of federal law enforcement."

[Ninong]

Carol Lam was fired because of her prosecution of Randy "Duke" Cunningham and his pals, like Dusty Foggo and Brent Wilkes. And because she was investigating Jerry Lewis and John Doolittle.

We should be able to add Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) to the list of corrupt GOP politicians who moved from the House to the Big House very soon.

The FBI just raided his home in California! Virginia home! (P.S. -- I don't know why this event hasn't been picked up by the MSM or the wire services yet but at least it's finally showing up on The Hill. I suspect the feds have flipped one of his former aides.)



P.S. -- For those of you having a hard time keeping track of all the players, Doolittle is another of the Republican Congressmen who was being paid by Jack Abramoff to perform favors.

[Ninong]

Arlen Specter is grilling Gonzo right now and Gonzo is coming off as an idiot!

For example, when Specter tells him that Sampson testified to such-and-such, Gonzo replies, "I have no recollection of that but I presume that it is true!!!"

He refuses to contradict Sampson but his defense is that he's an incompetent, bumbling fool who had no clue what was going on in his department.

He doesn't remember anything. He's coming off as evasive and insincere. He's dancing around the questions. He's studdering and rambling and repeating the same talking points over and over.

Obviously the acting lessons didn't do any good!

:eek3:

P.S. -- I can't find coverage of this live anywhere on TV. CNN carried about six or seven minutes of it and then switched back to talking about school shooters and copy-cat false alarms shutting down schools around the country. I guess I lot of students who are not doing so well want to see the school year end a little early.

[zhenya]

I watch it on my PC on ABC news
Yahoo!=

[Ninong]

I watch it on my PC on ABC news
Yahoo!=

THANKS for the link, Gene!



P.S. -- Orin Hatch is trying to help Gonzo keep his job. Hatch has his work cut out for him.

[Ninong]

Here is one of the letters the House and Senate Judiciary Committees received from career attorneys at DOJ.

It's short, only two pages, and VERY revealing!