Alberto Gonzales hires defense attorney

October 11, 2007

Alberto Gonzales hires defense attorney

WASHINGTON - Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has hired a high-powered Washington lawyer to represent him in investigations of mismanagement of the Justice Department. George Terwilliger, a white-collar crime defense attorney and the second-ranking Justice official in the early 1990s, was on the White House's short list last month to replace Gonzales.

Investigators are look into allegations that Gonzales lied to lawmakers and illegally allowed politics to influence hiring and firing at the department.

Baltimore Sun: Congress Must Stop Bush

July 31, 2007
Baltimore Sun: Congress Must Stop Bush

A politically weakened, lame duck president may not be able to bring competing forces together to shape new policies or lasting achievements, but he can stubbornly protect a stooge of an attorney general almost indefinitely.

If consequences to his party are not a concern - nor the morale of a Justice Department widely viewed as dysfunctional - President Bush's refusal to fire the incompetent, prevaricating Alberto R. Gonzales serves Mr. Bush by drawing attention away from his own shortcomings.

Ideally, Senate Republicans, who have much to lose by this tawdry spectacle dragging out further, will prevail upon Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Bush or both to clear the way so the post of top law enforcement officer can be filled with someone who commands the nation's respect - instead of a political flunky concerned only with shielding his patron.

Should the GOP senators falter, the best of the remaining options appears to be naming a special prosecutor to investigate Mr. Gonzales to determine whether his many misstatements can be prosecuted for perjury.

The Gonzales Wiretapping Coverup

May 17, 2007
The Gonzales Wiretapping Coverup

If you were Mr. Gonzales, you'd certainly want to make sure they stayed quiet. Consider: Mr. Gonzales, as the president's lawyer, went to the hospital room of a man so ill he had temporarily relinquished his authority. There, Mr. Gonzales tried to persuade Mr. Ashcroft to override the views of the attorney general's own legal counsel. When the attorney general refused, Mr. Gonzales apparently took part in a plan to go forward with a program that the Justice Department had refused to certify as legal.

What was the administration doing, and what was it willing to continue to do, that its lawyers concluded was without a legal basis? Without an answer to that fundamental question, the coverup will have succeeded.

May 12, 2007
Hub judge scolds Gonzales for misconduct case pace

The chief federal judge in Boston sent a scathing letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales yesterday, accusing his office of dragging their feet by taking more than six months to provide records in the investigation of misconduct by a federal prosecutor.

Mark Wolf freed notorious Mafioso Vincent Ferrara in 2005 after he discovered federal prosecutor Jeffrey Auerhahn withheld a statement from a witness disputing Ferrara's role in a murder.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Wolf's decision, calling Auerhahn's actions "egregious," "outrageous," "feckless," and "painting a grim picture of blatant misconduct," Wolf wrote in his new letter to Gonzales, mailed yesterday.

White House insiders: Gonzales hurt himself

April 20, 2007
White House insiders: Gonzales hurt himself

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Several administration officials and the House Republican Conference chairman said Friday that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should step down, following the harsh response to his Senate testimony on last year's firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled Gonzales for hours Thursday about the dismissals.

The attorney general has been roundly criticized for his handling of the shakeup and for the shifting explanations Justice Department officials have given for the changes.

Gonzales said more than 60 times that he "couldn't recall" certain incidents. His former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, used that explanation 122 times during his testimony weeks ago.