Alberto Gonzales, 10 days ago:
''I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers -- where were the districts around the country where we could do better for the people in that district, and that's what I knew,'' Gonzales said last week. ''But that is in essence what I knew about the process; was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That's basically what I knew as the attorney general.''
Later, he added: ''I accept responsibility for everything that happens here within this department. But when you have 110,000 people working in the department, obviously there are going to be decisions that I'm not aware of in real time. Many decisions are delegated.''
DoJ document dump, tonight:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales approved plans to fire several U.S. attorneys in a November meeting, according to documents released Friday that contradict earlier claims that he was not closely involved in the dismissals. The Nov. 27 meeting, in which the attorney general and at least five top Justice Department officials participated, focused on a five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors, Justice Department officials said late Friday.
There, Gonzales signed off on the plan, which was crafted by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. Sampson resigned last week amid a political firestorm surrounding the firings.The five-step plan involved notifying Republican home-state senators of the impending dismissals, preparing for potential political upheaval and naming replacements and submitting them to the Senate for confirmation.
The documents indicated that the hour-long morning discussion, held in the attorney general's conference room, was the only time Gonzales met with top aides who decided which prosecutors to fire and how to do it.
He held a press conference, addressed the American people, and lied. Brilliant.
UPDATE: Josh notices a key fact: these new emails are from that 18 day gap. Looks like I was right about this.
Issue the subpoenas. Get them under oath. There's literally no other way to get the truth out of these fools.
UPDATE II: Remembering that Josh has been right about this scandal from day one waaaaaaay back in 2006, here are his conclusions about tonight's revelations:
Now we know with crystal clear proof what we really already knew a week ago: that Alberto Gonzales was lying about his role in the US Attorney Purge. So add that to the list of all the other things he's lied about.
But don't get distracted by the lying or even the cover-up.Right-wing shills want to chalk the blundering administration response to US Attorney Purge scandal to incompetence. But just as we can infer the force of gravity from the descent of the falling apple, the panicked succession of lies and dodges out of the administration implies not incompetence but guilty knowledge of underlying bad acts.
This isn't about the AG's lies. It's not about the attempted cover-up. It's not about executive privilege and investigative process mumbojumbo.
This is about using US Attorneys to damage Democrats and protect Republicans, using the Department of Justice as a partisan cudgel in the war for national political dominance. All the secrecy and lies, the blundering and covering-up stems from this one central fact.
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