Gonzales in in "hotter" water, but the WH is swimming in suspicion

[ProSense]

Who's "the Decider"?

Marty Lederman

The Attorney General is now in hot(ter) water because he assured the public two weeks ago that he had very little to do with choosing U.S. Attorneys to be dismissed, and now it turns out that just prior to the dismissals, he convened meetings devoted to that very subject.

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This is, of course, nonsense. As the President himself stated, "the Justice Department made recommendations, which the White House accepted, that eight of the 93 would no longer serve." By law, the decision was the President's, and he (appropriately) exercised it, undoubtedly with the advice of his close advisers (which is the best-case scenario for what he meant when he said "the White House accepted").

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The reason the Attorney General could be so hands-off about the entire mess was that the real decisionmakers -- the President's close aides, such as Karl Rove and Harriet Miers -- had already made their choices on who would be fired, and had "signed off" on DOJ's so-called "recommendations." The e-mail traffic I've seen shows that Sampson was taking his marching orders from Miers, her Deputy William Kelley, and Rove, who appear to have been orchestrating the affair from the outset. In a November 15 memo, for instance, Sampson urged Miers to reach out to Rove's office as a "pre-execution necessity I would recommend." The weeks went by, with Sampson waiting for the "green light" from the White House Counsel's office. On December 4, Kelley wrote to Sampson: "We're a go for the U.S. attorney plan. WHU leg (office of legislative affairs), political (office), and communications have signed off and acknowledged that we have to be committed to following through once the pressure comes."

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What does this mean? Well, for one thing, it means that the current focus on the Attorney General is something of a distraction, at least insofar as Congress's objective is to determine whether anything unlawful or unconstitutional was involved in the U.S. Attorney dismissals. The real action was in the White House, and one cannot determine whether the removals were made for improper reasons unless one knows what Rove and Miers advised the President, and why they did so. But that's precisely the subject matter that Fred Fielding would put off-limits in his offer to allow questioning of those officials. {There's a great deal of chatter online, and from the likes of Charles Krauthammer, suggesting that these removals could not have been impermissible because the U.S. Attorneys serve at the President's pleasure. I have explained here why I think this is wrong -- why it is at least possible that certain criminal laws were violated or that the President and others acted in derogation of his constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the law. See also Josh Marshall's latest. I'm not saying that the removals were or were not unlawful or unconstitutonal -- merely that it's possible, and that the evidence adduced so far (and the absence of any coherent story about permissible reasons for the removals), leaves the question open.}

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[EVDebs]

1. With Gonzo's asst Monica Goodling taking the 5th, they officially reach bottomofthebarrel

[Parche]

2. SPEEDY

Its time to throw Speedy under the bus!!!!! :rofl: :bounce:

[ProSense]

3. Can you spell "grant of immunity"?

Can you spell "grant of immunity"?

Sandy Levinson

The New York Times has just posted the following:

Justice Official Won’t Testify on Prosecutor Firings
By DAVID STOUT and JIM RUTENBERG

WASHINGTON, March 26 — A lawyer for a Justice Department official involved in the controversial firings of eight United States attorneys said today that his client would not testify on Capitol Hill because she is convinced she would not be treated fairly.

The official, Monica Goodling, the Justice Department’s liaison to the White House, is invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and so will decline to answer “any and all questions regarding the firings,” her lawyer, John M. Dowd, said....

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This seems the perfect opportunity for the Committee to award Ms. Goodling immunity from prosecution. Indeed, there seems to be no serious argument against such an immunity bath in her case, since there is almost no possibility that she could in fact be held liable for anything she did if her office was indeed simply to serve as a "liaison" to the White House from DOJ. If immunity was good enough for the first Monica, it should be good enough for the second. "Bring her on." Not, of course, that one should behave in any manner at all like the crazed Republican partisans of the Clinton era, all of whom no doubt have been criticized and repudiated by the modern Republican party and its notional leader in the White House (though I confess I can't the provide the hyperlink to any enunciations of that repudication).

As of today, I believe, there are 666 days remaining in the Bush tenure of office. Needless to say, I don't see anything special in this number, but I suspect that George Bush might. Perhaps he believes that Patrick Leahy is Satan incarnate.