D. Kyle Sampson, A.G. Gonzales's recently departed chief of staff, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Sen. Arlen Specter said that this will probably be the most interesting testimony since Anita Hill. I'm going to be watching it all day, and blogging on it here. I invite you to consider this an open thread for all those watching the testimony to comment.
UPDATE: Well, this is going nowhere. Nobody's offering full coverage of the hearings. I did catch Sampson's opening statement, though. He's claiming that because US Attorneys are political appointees, there’s no meaningful difference between canning a US Attorney for not being politically reliable, and canning him or her for poor performance. Fired US Atty David Iglesias, commenting on CNN, observed that Sampson has never been a prosecutor, so he doesn’t know what prosecutors do. Iglesias said he couldn’t disagree more with Sampson on this point, and that A.G. John Ashcroft told him to his face that when you’re a US Attorney, “politics stops at the door of your office.” Said Iglesias: “We are not rated on political effectiveness. We’re rated on performance.”
It would appear that for the Bush Administration and A.G. Gonzales, the pursuit of justice in the federal system is just waging politics by other means. That's corrupt. Gonzales should go.
It is telling that they initially tried hard to deny the role politics played in this US Atty affair – the NYT today talks about how DOJ first denied that Rove had anything at all to do with them, but subsequently released documents revealed that Rove was all over them. This pattern of lying tells me that the White House knew it was treading in dangerous waters. I presume that Sampson will get hammered on this point, but it’s hard for me to see how at the end of the day, the confidence of Congress or the public in Gonzales’s leadership will be strengthened by what we learn.
Sampson agonistes
Thursday March 29, 2007
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Herman, my intent was to comment on the fact that the timing makes the president vulnerable to the accusations, not that the accusations should necessarily seem more reasonable in any given situation. That is the distinction here: the Clinton firings could not possibly be based on (non-)compliance with his policies, because the attorneys in question never served under him. I regret not making that clear above.
Mr. Newtic, I agree that Congress has other issues that need to be addressed. Those things needed some attention when we were busy proving that Clinton lied under oath about getting a BJ in the White House, and they've been present since. If Congress doesn't look into allegations of wrongdoing, then who should do it? Are you suggesting that the President get a free pass? Question: Does anyone know if independent attorneys hired by the State DAs could subpoena all of the people involved in this and force the administration to turn over any documents relating to this? It seems to me that if the Justice Department is crooked, then the State DA's can't rely on anyone but Congress to investigate.
Herman, There's no need for a witch hunt to discredit this President. He did that, long ago, all by himself. As for Gonzales, he is a self-confessed lawbreaker. He was complicit with Bush in breaking the FISA laws requiring a court to review any proposed wiretaps of American citizens. Recently, Gonzales announced that the Bush administation would start obeying the law. He did that only because he fears the reinstatement of the rule of law in this country due to Democratic control of Congress. Gonzales called the Geneva Convention "quaint." Torture is fine with him. Perhaps it is with you, too.
And now every federal criminal defendant can (and probably should) charge that the prosecution is political and not based on the facts and the law, as required by law for all prosecutions. People get disbarred for that. And now we know that the DOJ has a secret and undocumented employee evaluation system. Not one of the filred USAs was ever counseled or rated on the things that they were fired for. Did the AG publish anything in the Federal Register about this exception to normal personnel policy?
There's no need for a witch hunt to discredit this President. He did that, long ago, all by himself. True.
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