What and When Gonzo Remembers
Posted on Tue Apr 17, 2007 at 09:27:59 AM EST
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A new revelation about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' propensity for untruths:
In October of last year, President Bush had a conversation with Gonzales about U.S. attorneys. According to the White House's public statements, the conversation was a broad one, about voter fraud in three districts. Gonzales has said publicly that he doesn't remember such a conversation taking place. But that's not what Kyle Sampson told congressional investigators this past weekend. According to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sampson said that in early March of this year, Gonzales told him about a conversation he'd had in October with Bush that was specifically about U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias. Remember that the White House was getting heavy pressure from Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and other New Mexico Republicans to can Iglesias.
The problem here for Gonzales is while he insists he did not remember the meeting, Sampson seems to think Gonzales did remember when he spoke to him in March:
[I]f Schumer's relation of Sampson's testimony is accurate, it seems clear that Sampson had not been under the impression that Gonzales himself didn't remember the conversation when they spoke about it in early March.
Gonzales simply has no credibility. None. He has told too many untruths. To me, the biggest whopper remains this:
[Pete] Williams: Can you answer some of the questions that have come up over the weekend? As you know, there was a — an email that came out Friday night that showed that ten days before the firings there was a meeting in your office which you attended to discuss the firings. And yet when you talked to us here at the Justice Department two weeks ago, you said you were not involved in any discussions about the firings. Can you — can you explain what seems like a contradiction? Gonzales: . . . Let me try to be more precise about my involvement. When I said on March 13th that I wasn't involved, what I meant was that I — I had not been involved, was not involved in the deliberations over whether or not United States attorneys should resign. . . .
Let's consider this for a second. Gonzales had a conversation with Sampson in EARLY March in which he told Sampson that he discussed "performance" issues of three USAs with the President and then on March 13, he told the public that he had had no discussions about the firings with ANYONE, much less the President. "Early March" would be sometime between March 1 and March 13 one presumes. Did Gonzales "forget" again, by March 13, that he had discussed the matter with the President in October?
And of course what a remarkable thing to have said in the first place. How could he NOT have had discussions with the President about the firings? Heck, that is the most damning statement about his competence. That he thought that was a reasonable thing to say.
The only defense I think can be offered for Gonzales now is that he has Alzheimer's disease. Truly, the man is and was a proven incompetent.
And it now seems hard for me to escape the conclusion that he is also a proven liar.
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