Tag: John Ashcroft
Posted on Fri Sep 26, 2008 at 01:12:38 PM EST
Tags: Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft (all tags)
Murray Waas has a new article in the Atlantic on the infamous Ashcroft hospital visit during which the ailing Ashcroft was pressured to sign off on Bush's warrantless electronic surveillance plan. Murray says:
"According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales is now saying that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit. "
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Posted on Sun Nov 25, 2007 at 11:46:52 AM EST
Tags: John Ashcroft (all tags)
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft's consulting firm is set to make $52 million in fees as a result of being picked by New Jersey U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie to monitor a civil settlement regarding alleged wrongdoing with hip and knee replacement firms. They were investigated for allegedly paying surgeons to use their products.
Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft was one of five private attorneys whom Christie hand-picked to monitor the implant makers. Now Ashcroft's D.C.-based firm is poised to collect more than $52 million in 18 months, among the biggest payouts reported for a federal monitor.
Disclosed in SEC filings, the arrangement calls for Zimmer Holdings of Indiana to pay Ashcroft Group Consulting Services an average monthly fee between $1.5 million and $2.9 million. The figure includes a flat payment of $750,000 to the firm's "senior leadership group," individual legal and consulting services billed at up to $895 an hour, and as much as $250,000 a month for expenses including private airfare, lodging and meals.
Mark Corallo, still doing press relations for Ashcroft defends the fee.
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Posted on Sun May 20, 2007 at 07:43:00 AM EST
Tags: Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft (all tags)
The Washington Post re-invents former Attorney General John Ashcroft, casting him as a protector of civil liberties in comparison to Alberto Gonzales.
Who are they kidding? John Ashcroft may have had a moment on his hospital sick bed in which he balked at re-authorizing the warrantless NSA surveillance program, and he may have expressed reservations about indefinite detentions at Guantanamo, but he was just as abominable as an Attorney General, and in my opinion, more so than Alberto Gonzales.
From his push on the Patriot Act, to his initiating warrantless monitoring of attorney-client conversations, to his many failed terrorism cases, his connection to Abu Ghraib, his insistence on prosecuting medical marijuana cases even in states that had legalized it, his attempt to keep tabs on federal judges, his belief that the undocumented could be held indefinitely and most spectacularly, his crusade to increase the use of the death penalty in federal cases, over the objections of his own prosectors and a federal judge, he should not be re-evaluated for his one moment of lucidity.
He was the worst Attorney General ever.
A blast from the past: The criticisms of Senators at his confirmation hearings.
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