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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Dos Equis on March 28, 2007, 06:48:25 PM
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They're spending my money. >:( If there is no criminal activity here I will not be a happy camper: "Conyers , meanwhile, has signed a contract with the law firm Arnold & Porter worth up to $225,000 through the end of the year to help with the investigation."
Former Gonzales Aide to Tell Senate Panel That Justice Department Firings Not Improper
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
WASHINGTON — The former top aide to embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will tell the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday that eight federal prosecutors were fired last year because they did not sufficiently support President George W. Bush's priorities — but, that the firings were not improper.
Separately, the Justice Department admitted Wednesday it gave senators inaccurate information about the firings and presidential political adviser Karl Rove's role in trying to secure a U.S. attorney's post for one of his former aides, Tim Griffin.
In a letter accompanying new documents sent to the House and Senate Judiciary committees, Justice officials acknowledged that a Feb. 23 letter to four Democratic senators erred in asserting that the department was not aware of any role Rove played in the decision to appoint Griffin to replace U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins in Little Rock, Ark.
Kyle Sampson, in remarks obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, spoke dismissively of Democrats' condemnation of what they call political pressure in the firings.
"The distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a United States attorney is, in my view, largely artificial," he said. "A U.S. attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective ... is unsuccessful."
Sampson, who resigned earlier this month because of the furor over the firings, is to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
In his prepared testimony, he maintained that adherence to the president's and attorney general's priorities was a legitimate standard. He strongly denied Democrats' allegations that some of the prosecutors were dismissed for pursuing Republicans too much and Democrats not enough in corruption cases.
"To my knowledge, nothing of the sort occurred here," he said.
The White House said it will withhold comment on Sampson's testimony until he actually testifies.
In a letter accompanying documents sent to lawmakers on Wednesday, Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling said that certain statements in last month's letter to Democratic lawmakers appeared to be "contradicted by department documents included in our production."
The Feb. 23 letter, which was written by Sampson but signed by Hertling, emphatically stated that "the department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin." It also said that "the Department of Justice is not aware of anyone lobbying, either inside or outside of the administration, for Mr. Griffin's appointment."
Those assertions are contradicted by e-mails from Sampson to White House aide Christopher G. Oprison on Dec. 19, 2006, about a strategy to deal with senators' opposition to Griffin's appointment. In the e-mail, Sampson says there is a risk that senators might balk and repeal the attorney general's newly won broader authority to appoint U.S. attorneys.
"I'm not 100 percent sure that Tim was the guy on which to test drive this authority, but know that getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc," Sampson wrote. Former White House Counsel Harriet Miers was among the first people to suggest Griffin as a replacement for Cummins.
In his written testimony to the Senate committee, Sampson also refers to the White House role in the firings, beginning with the quickly rejected idea of relacing all 93 U.S. attorneys after the 2004 election. He said he periodically provided to the White House over two years updated lists of U.S. attorneys whose dismissals were under consideration.
Sampson's testimony Thursday is voluntary, though committee chairman Patrick Leahy told reporters he has kept a signed subpoena in case Gonzales' chief of staff backed out.
There was no indication of that happening. In his remarks, Sampson said he was pleased to appear and pledged to stay as long as necessary.
Nothing will stop the investigation, Leahy said Wednesday — not even Gonzales' resignation.
"In case anybody's thinking of shortchanging it that way, I have a message for them: We'll finish this investigation before we'll have any confirmation hearings for a new attorney general," said Leahy, D-Vt. "I want to know what the facts were."
The developments reflect the fragile hold Gonzales has on his job and the escalating tensions between Democrats in Congress and Bush over any testimony by White House aides and documents related to the firings.
Leahy indicated Gonzales' credibility had suffered from repeated attempts to explain contradictions between his account of his involvement in the firings and e-mails released by his department that suggest he may have done more than sign off on them.
"You can only do, 'What I really meant to say,' three or four or five or six times," Leahy said, half-kidding. "Then people tend not to believe it."
Sampson said in his testimony that any inconsitencies were innocent mistakes.
"This is a benign rather than sinister story," he said.
Gonzales has refused to resign over the firings and the Justice Department's bungled response to questions about them from Congress. For now, he retains Bush's support — though the president has put the onus on Gonzales for resolving lawmakers' questions.
During a multistate tour, Gonzales has acknowledged his precarious position.
"I'm traveling a bumpy road these days," Gonzales said Wednesday during a brief lunch speech to about 1,000 members of the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.
Meanwhile, Democrats pressed their case for Rove, Miers and their aides to testify publicly about the firings. "We have not heard from you," Leahy and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding.
The White House has indicated no willingness to move beyond Bush's initial offer to let Rove, Miers and their deputies to speak to committee members in private, without being sworn.
Conyers , meanwhile, has signed a contract with the law firm Arnold & Porter worth up to $225,000 through the end of the year to help with the investigation.
Republicans said the contract, which was first reported by The Washington Times, was evidence that Democrats were willing to invest taxpayer money in efforts to conduct political investigations of the administration.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,262122,00.html
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If there is no criminal activity here I will not be a happy camper:
I wouldn't worry about that. :)
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Does this prove no one lied?
Does it prove there was no wrong doing here?
The AG, top cop, taking the 5th....... must be nothing.
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I wouldn't worry about that. :)
I know. It doesn't matter what they say. Someone had to have broken some law. ::) Meanwhile, we'll be paying Arnold and Porter $700 an hour to investigate this unknown crime.
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Someone had to have broken some law. ::)
Here's where Lucy's football comes into it again...
Given the past six years, any rational person would consider a top-level Bush appointee guilty of lying about their conduct in office until proven to have told the truth. It's not a question of partisanship. It's simply common sense. When someone is proven to have lied 20 times in a row, when someone says they're lying a 21st time, you'd have to be some kind of idiot to treat the claim with skepticism - let alone be flippant about the reliability of the accuser.
Take Clinton. When he wagged his finger and said he never boinked Lewinsky, only the most blindly partisan liberal hacks thought he was telling the truth. Even the people who voted for him twice and wanted to believe he was trying to do the right thing as President knew from past experience that he had zero credibility on that issue.
If you want to believe in the fundamental decency of the Republican party or its appointed head, you go girl. But if you're going to claim that people don't have every reason to assume Gonzales is lying through his teeth, don't expect to be taken seriously.
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I know. It doesn't matter what they say. Someone had to have broken some law. ::) Meanwhile, we'll be paying Arnold and Porter's $700 an hour to investigate this unknown crime.
Cry me a fucing river, Kenneth Starr spent a combined $40 million over four years on Clinton's bj.
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It's quickly coming out that the prosecutors who were let go were not bad performers and had excellent job reviews. I listened to each of their official performance reports read on air and they were all highly positive.
James Madison took this as an impeachable offense.
"The danger then consists merely in this, the president can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it. What will be the motives which the president can feel for such abuse of his power, and the restraints that operate to prevent it? In the first place, he will be impeachable by this house, before the senate, for such an act of mal-administration; for I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject him to impeachment and removal from his own high trust."--James Madison
Interestingly, Elbridge Gerry argued against Madison's notion that the president be impeached if he were to remove a meritorious officer saying that no president would do such a thing anyway :-\ LOLOLOL....
http://adh.sc.edu/fx/fc11904.xml
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Cry me a fucing river, Kenneth Starr spent a combined $40 million over four years on Clinton's bj.
Beach, was this 40 million warranted ::)
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It's quickly coming out that the prosecutors who were let go were not bad performers and had excellent job reviews.
That's the beauty part. :)
If Gonzales had had the balls to tell Congress at the beginning "We purged principled men to make room for flunkies who will do our bidding and the law says we can so go fuck yourselves", we could have howled day and night but no one could have touched him.
But now it's a big shit burrito and Alberto's going to have to eat it.
(http://www.editingarchive.com/imgs/239.jpg)
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Here's where Lucy's football comes into it again...
Given the past six years, any rational person would consider a top-level Bush appointee guilty of lying about their conduct in office until proven to have told the truth. It's not a question of partisanship. It's simply common sense. When someone is proven to have lied 20 times in a row, when someone says they're lying a 21st time, you'd have to be some kind of idiot to treat the claim with skepticism - let alone be flippant about the reliability of the accuser.
Take Clinton. When he wagged his finger and said he never boinked Lewinsky, only the most blindly partisan liberal hacks thought he was telling the truth. Even the people who voted for him twice and wanted to believe he was trying to do the right thing as President knew from past experience that he had zero credibility on that issue.
If you want to believe in the fundamental decency of the Republican party or its appointed head, you go girl. But if you're going to claim that people don't have every reason to assume Gonzales is lying through his teeth, don't expect to be taken seriously.
Do you ever try and make a point without exaggerating? Good grief. Experiment with it sometime. You're smart enough to do it. If you stop being such an extremist I might actually pay closer attention to what you say.
You, the constant comedian who believes in a 911 conspiracy, are talking about someone being taken seriously? ::)
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Cry me a fucing river, Kenneth Starr spent a combined $40 million over four years on Clinton's bj.
Spoken like a man with a very small tax bill. When Uncle Sam starts digging deeper into your pocket you might be a little more sensitive about how the federal government spends your money.
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Beach, was this 40 million warranted ::)
Berserker I must have said about 25 freakin times that I did not support the waste of my tax dollars on the Clinton investigations. All of them. (I'm not saying you have asked me 25 times.) I did not support the out-of-control Iran-Contra special prosecutor. I did not support Kenneth Starr and the Whitewater committees. I do not support stupid investigations into Bush "impeachment." I do not support a partisan witch hunt re these U.S. Attorney firings. If a crime was committed, then convene a grand jury.
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Berserker I must have said about 25 freakin times that I did not support the waste of my tax dollars on the Clinton investigations. All of them. (I'm not saying you have asked me 25 times.) I did not support the out-of-control Iran-Contra special prosecutor. I did not support Kenneth Starr and the Whitewater committees. I do not support stupid investigations into Bush "impeachment." I do not support a partisan witch hunt re these U.S. Attorney firings. If a crime was committed, then convene a grand jury.
But isn't it worth investigating something one of the founding fathers called an impeachable offense? Digging into a presidents sex life is beyond the dumbest thing ever done. But hey, what about legit checks huh? Don't you have to ask questions and get to the truth to be a legit check and balance? ah... yea.
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But isn't it worth investigating something one of the founding fathers called an impeachable offense? Digging into a presidents sex life is beyond the dumbest thing ever done. But hey, what about legit checks huh? Don't you have to ask questions and get to the truth to be a legit check and balance? ah... yea.
Yes law enforcement should investigate criminal activity. That's why I said convene a grand jury. I have said from day one that I don't support the firings of U.S. Attorneys to interfere with legitimate criminal investigations. I also don't support partisan investigations into activities that don't appear to be a crime. I smell partisan politics here. What I think they're doing is looking for evidence that someone may have "lied" or simply given inaccurate statements. If there is no underlying crime, then I see no difference between the Clinton impeachment and this "investigation."
This is what Sampson has to say, in part, so far:
Sampson maintained that adherence to the priorities of the president and attorney general was a legitimate standard.
"Presidential appointees are judged not only on their professional skills but also their management abilities, their relationships with law enforcement and other governmental leaders and their support for the priorities of the president and the attorney general," he said.
Sampson strongly denied Democrats' allegations that some of the prosecutors were dismissed for pursuing Republicans too much and Democrats not enough in corruption cases.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FIRED_PROSECUTORS?SITE=HIHAD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
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You, the constant comedian who believes in a 911 conspiracy, are talking about someone being taken seriously? ::)
Throw the holocaust at him next!! You don't need evidence or good debating skills!! You've got red herrings!
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Throw the holocaust at him next!! You don't need evidence or good debating skills!! You've got red herrings!
::)