Thursday, April 19, 2007

Walking a tightrope

U.S. Attorney General Albert Gonzales will testify before Congress today about the prosecutor purge, after a two-day delay caused by the horrifying events at Virginia Tech.

Gonzales unquestionably would have preferred to testify on Tuesday rather than have proceedings delayed for the reason they were. Still, he may have needed the extra time, as accounts from last week indicated the pre-testimony practice sessions were not going well.

Gonzales has a difficult task. Virtually everything he has said previously about the affair has been shown to be false, or at least been challenged, by the testimony of others (most notably, his former Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson), or by emails and other documents which have since been submitted to the investigating committee.

Two of his top aides, Sampson and Monica Goodling, who served as the department's chief liaison with the White House, have resigned over the affair. Goodling has refused to testify before Congress, pleading her 5th Amendment rights.

Somehow, Gonzales will have to navigate between admitting to lying to Congress about his role in the matter without relying on a defense that would indicate he was so far out of the loop as to be incompetent, while at the same time presenting reasons for firing the prosecutors which are reasonable and sufficient to quiet the speculation they were let go purely for political reasons.

I'm very surprised things have come this far. I honestly thought Gonzales would have resigned before this, particularly with an increasing number of Republicans calling for him to step down. Unless Gonzales miraculously manages the difficult task before him (and, really, how has his handling of the affair done anything to inspire confidence that he is up to the challenge) I don't see how this can possibly end well for either himself or the White House. As a long time personal friend of our President, I expected Gonzales to fall on his sword before this.

It's a very fine line he has to walk ... should he navigate it safely, he might consider changing his name to Wallenda.

Update: The morning testimony, from what I have seen (not watching live, just picking up running commentary and a few clips of CSPAN coverage) has not been good for Gonzales. Fairly early in the proceedings Sen. Feinstein forced him to admit he made the decision to fire the prosecutors (a decision he originally denied making in his testimony last month), purportedly for "performance reasons", without first looking at their performance evaluations. Things haven't notably improved.

TPM Muckracker has running commentary with related video clips.

Update 2: Things haven't gone any better for Gonzales in the afternoon. Apparently CNN had a TV spot in which they mentioned some of the comments from White House staffers viewing the testimony. These included (via Atrios):

* "Going down in flames."
* "Not doing himself any favors."
* "Watching clubbing a baby seal." (watching testimony)
* "Very troubling."
* "Don't understand that tactic Gonzales used."


At least one other Republican Senator, Tom Coburn, openly called for Gonzales to resign during his allotted questioning time.

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