Gonzales:'Mistakes Were Made'

Alberto Gonzalez is admitting that "mistakes were made" over the firing of eight US Attorney's last year but says that he will not resign and, indeed, that he stands by the decisions that were made and thinks that they were the right thing to do.

He said he did not know the details of the plan to fire the prosecutors, but he defended the dismissals: "I stand by the decision, and I think it was a right decision."

Let's be clear what we're talking about here:

The remarks came after the Justice Department released e-mails and other documents showing that, despite months of administration statements to the contrary, the White House more than two years ago initiated the process that led to the dismissals, and that the decisions were heavily influenced by assessments of the prosecutors' political loyalty. President Bush and senior White House adviser Karl Rove also separately passed along complaints to Gonzales that prosecutors were not aggressively pursuing voter-fraud cases, officials said.

Gonzales is saying that he does not regret the decisions to fire these prosecutors. Even though is now clear, despite the fact that he and others have been lying about this for months, that those decisions to fire were taken because the prosecutors in question were not politically motivated enough to obey the suggestions from Republican Senators that they should pursue cases of suspected Democratic vote rigging before the November Mid Term elections. Prosecutions that, were they to take place, could conceivably help the Republican party to hold on to seats in the mid terms.

If that's not a misuse of your office then I simply don't know what is. The office of the Attorney General is supposed to be concerned with upholding the law, he is not the President's private Attorney, nor is he there to aid his re-election.

Firing prosecutors because they will not charge Democrats to suit the political needs or timetable of the President or the Republican party is as gross a misuse of the office of Attorney General as I can imagine. I simply can't think of anything more inappropriate.

Even Republicans normally loyal to the administration are being scathing about the Attorney General.

Democrats yesterday renewed calls for testimony from Rove and Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel who first suggested in February 2005 that all 93 U.S. attorneys be removed and whose office was provided with evolving lists of at least a dozen prosecutors targeted for ouster. The White House signaled that it would resist the demands.

Of course, any White House that has engaged in this kind of activity whilst mouthing public platitudes about non-partisan government will resist any demand that these two testify. This White House is simply beyond redemption.

So the Democrats should start with Gonzales and then work their way up. Gonzales is mounting a defence of ignorance which either suggests he is lying or unfit for his office. Either way he has to go. Bush will try to hold on to him because, of course, Bush's fingerprints are all over this as are Rove's.

Gonzales said he accepted Sampson's resignation because, by withholding information from other Justice officials, he led them to provide "incomplete information" in testimony to Congress. Gonzales did not comment on his own testimony in January, when he assured senators that he would never fire a U.S. attorney for political reasons.

So now they are trying to infer that Congress was misled by mistake and that Gonzales would "never fire a U.S. attorney for political reasons". Despite the fact that yesterday he said he did not regret the decisions taken to fire these eight prosecutors, who were all fired for political reasons.

Gonzales has always been out of his depth, but he's now simply becoming an embarrassment. The documents released yesterday were sharply at odds with his ludicrous claim that the firings were not "for political reasons":

The Justice e-mails and internal documents, which were first reported yesterday by The Washington Post, show that political loyalty and positions on signature GOP policy issues loomed large in weighing whether a prosecutor should be dismissed. One e-mail from Sampson, for example, notes that the appointment of Griffin in Little Rock "was important to Harriet, Karl, etc."

The documents also illustrate that after nearly two years of debate, the dismissal of the seven prosecutors in December was carried out under a plan by Sampson that provided step-by-step guidance on how the prosecutors would be fired, who would be notified and how to deal with criticism. One section of the plan was titled "Preparing for Political Upheaval."

"I am concerned that to execute this plan properly we must all be on the same page and be steeled to withstand any political upheaval that might result," Sampson wrote to Miers and her deputy, William Kelley, on Nov. 15.

Well, the political upheaval is on the way. And what is clear is that this White House has systematically misled Congress, and done so - so repeatedly - that this can have been nothing other than an orchestrated campaign of deception.

Head will roll. The only question is "how many"?

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Tags: Gonzales, Meyers, Rove, Bush, misleading Congress, firing prosecutors, eight US Attorneys