Alberto Gonzales declares he has done nothing wrong, and he has nothing to hide. All the while he is virtually silent on the specifics.
On the other hand he argues that the whole mess is Harriet Miers and Kyle Sampson's fault. As Jeffrey Tobbin explained on CNN's Late Edition
He said, basically, when President Bush started his second term, Harriet Miers called and said maybe we should replace all 93 US attorneys. Gonzales said no, but maybe we should review whether all of them should continue serving. She then -- and he delegated the issue to his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. At that point he says he got periodic updates but essentially knew nothing about who was going to be fired or why they were going to be fired, and that's his explanation. I think it's perplexing the Attorney General would seemingly have nothing to do with firing 10% of the US attorneys in the country, but certainly this will add to the Democrats' wanting to ask questions of the White House because they appear to be the people who were running the show.
The more things change the more they stay the sames.
Oh, Gonzales is right about one thing, he didn't fire David Iglesias. When Pete Domenici called him to complain about Iglesias and demanded his replacement, Gonzales told him no. Mike Gallagher of the Albuquerque Journal reports that after the election Domenici took his complaint directly to the President. The President then added Iglesias' name to the list. I wonder if President Bush even bothered to ask Gonzales why he told Domenici "no" in the first place. I wondered if Gonzales' volunteered. We will never know. The President says the firing decisions were made in the Justice Department. In any event the President remembers a general conversation with Senators, but doesn't even remember names being mentioned.
I will pass on arguing the legality of the President firing Iglesias because Domenici was upset, but what kind of President doesn't back up his own people? In this case, initially Gonzales was right. Iglesias had done nothing to merit firing. Bush's apparent cave to a very pissed off Domenici demonstrates a failure of Presidential leadership. That lack of leadership is supported by the President's refusal to admit he was bullied into the decision to fire Iglesias because Domenici is a powerful Senator and he didn't want to make him mad. Or maybe that is what happens when all decisions are made by the political advisor.
