Alberto Gonzales: The Lawyers Behind the Hearing

By Jeralyn, Section Other Politics
Posted on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 01:28:00 PM EST
Tags: Alberto Gonzales (all tags)

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Legal Times has a profile of the Judiciary Committee lawyers who are framing Tuesday's hearing at which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will testify.

Preet Bahara is Sen. Schumer's chief counsel.

Bharara leads a small team of Senate lawyers that includes Jeremy Paris, a former Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld associate, and Jennifer Duck, the chief counsel to Judiciary Committee member Feinstein. On the House side, Republican Daniel Flores is handling duties for ranking Judiciary Committee member Lamar Smith, R-Texas, while Mincberg is leading the investigation for committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich. One of Mincberg's deputies, Robert Reed Jr., is also a former assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia.

In advance of Gonzales' April 17 hearing, Bharara, representing Senate Democrats, and three other lawyers -- representing Senate Republicans and House Democrats and Republicans -- spent two full days querying top Justice officials behind closed doors.

Bahara is a former AUSA from the Southern District of New York.

More....

Gonzales, of course, is secreted away with those who are prepping him for his testimony. But, the article says he has a very tough road to hoe.

Not only will Gonzales have to reconcile his own accounts of the firings, which have been publicly contradicted by Sampson and Justice Department e-mails, but he'll also have to navigate through a potential minefield of statements his aides have made behind closed doors. Some would call that a classic perjury trap.

"It's a set-up," says Stanley Brand, who was general counsel to the late Democratic House Speaker Thomas "Tip" O'Neill. If so, it's one that Bharara helped to frame.

I think it's about accountability and telling the truth, even if the truth turns out to be, as I suspect it will, that he either lied or was woefully inadequate in leading and knowing what was going on in his own justice department.

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Alberto Gonzales: The Lawyers Behind the Hearing | 5 comments (5 topical)

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Questions for Gonzo? (5.00 / 1) (#5)
by somethingsrotten on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 03:18:40 PM EST

Do you find it hard answering questions truthfully, without incriminating yourself?

How many hours have you practiced being asked questions, in preperation for this inquiry?

Thanks. Very interesting. Shades of (none / 0) (#1)
by oculus on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 01:29:49 PM EST

teh endlessly fasccinating Watergate hearings.

and meanwhile, the white house counsel agreed. . . (none / 0) (#2)
by the rainnn on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 02:23:52 PM EST

. . .to meet as early as monday with
senate judiciary committee lawyers
to work out the joint-framework for
retaining the forensic expert to go
recover those five million missing
e-mails. . .

when returned to the living,
they'll a mine-field, be -- for the
would-be prevaricators in the adminis-
tration. . .

that is so, because if gonzales is
busily tailoring his tuesday-testimony
to the now-disclosed documents, it is
highly likely that the returned-from-the
dead e-mails will not fit with his
presently-crafted "story".

great stuff -- popcorn now stowed in
large industrial size bins, here,
for tuesday deployment. . .

[ Parent ]

If his Tuesday testimony (none / 0) (#3)
by oculus on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 02:36:07 PM EST

is tailored to account for the info in the e mails, that says those e mails weren't "lost."

P.S. Will NPR do me a big favor and broadcast the hearings live on FM? Hope so, as I'll be driving.

[ Parent ]

: erh -- sorry i wasn't clearer. . . (5.00 / 1) (#4)
by the rainnn on Sat Apr 14, 2007 at 03:11:23 PM EST

my bad -- the point i am
not-so-clearly-making,
apparently, is that the
ones that are "down the
memory hole" at the moment
will undoubtedly paint a
different picture than the
ones he is ARGUABLY
tailoring his testimony to
fit, at the moment -- they
will recover the lost ones,
and that makes for a problem,
when one sets out to dissemble. . .
sorry i wasn't clearer. . .

[ Parent ]