Bush’s Attorney General Faces Threat of Perjury Probe
WASHINGTON - A senior US senator is threatening to request a perjury inquiry into President George W. Bush’s attorney general amid accusations his sworn testimony before Congress contradicted an account from a top intelligence official.
The threat comes amid an escalating battle between Congress and the White House over the conduct of embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is accused of purging prosecutors for political reasons and of dodging queries by lawmakers. 
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy said on Wednesday he is giving Gonzales until late next week to amend his testimony or he will request the Justice Department’s inspector general to launch a perjury probe.
“I’ll ask the inspector general to determine who’s telling the truth,” said Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judicary Committee, US media reported.
The Democrat spoke a day after Gonzales faced a tough grilling before Leahy’s committee with lawmakers saying they did not trust him and accusing him of sidestepping questions.
After the hearing, lawmakers pointed to documents that seemed at odds with Gonzales’ version of a White House meeting in March 2004 with lawmakers.
According to a letter form the former director of US intelligence, John Negroponte, the White House meeting was a briefing on a controversial domestic spying program involving warrantless surveillance, the Washington Post and other papers reported.
But Gonzales has maintained the purpose of the meeting was to address “intelligence activities” that were under legal dispute and has denied the session focused on the warrantless wiretapping program.
A Justice Department spokesman said that Gonzales “stands by his testimony,” the Post reported.
As Gonzales came under fresh pressure over his remarks, a committee in the House of Representatives meanwhile voted on Wednesday to file rare contempt of Congress citations against senior White House staff over Gonzales’ firing of federal prosecutors.
The move raised the stakes in the feud between lawmakers and the US president over the sacking of at least eight federal prosecutors.
Members of the Democratic-led House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted 22-17 to pass to the full House contempt citations against White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten and former legal counsel Harriet Miers.
Bolten and Miers refused to comply with subpoenas filed by the committee to testify about the affair, after Bush invoked executive privilege.
If the full House, as expected, also endorses the citations, Bush’s right to apply this legal doctrine — under which the president can refuse to produce certain documents and testimony to Congress — could land the case in the courts.
Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse.
Good, throw Gonzo in jail. He is the only AG who could screw up a cup of coffee, and clearly is incompetent to do his job.
Somebody really ought to get the Justice Department to investigate the Department of…Justice. Oh, shit.
“It could land the case in the courts”.
Should we have a victory party now or two years from now?
Uhh, I’ll have to get back to you on this, I can’t recall at this time.
Faster! Faster! Burn out the vermin!
Who’s telling the truth between Negroponte and Gonzales? Sounds kinda scary.
Who’s telling the truth? That is a really funny question. Love your sense of humor.
But it is scary.
Follow Rove’s slime trail, its ozzed all over this. The “turd blossom” has been the lethal queen at the heart of this repig, super partisan nest of stinging, ugly insects.
He’s been issued a subpoena to appear in front of Congress.
Expect him to give them the big middle finger.
Fur will fly - good, lets keep bushcon from issuing the order to attack Iran, they wouldn’t dare wag that dog,,,, would they?
We need to get to the bottom of this.
I say we have “Death Squad” Negroponte and “Torture Boy” Gonzales have it out in a globally televized celebrity death match.
Negroponte has lots of practice murdering little brown latin people from the 1980’s, while Gonzo has never tortured a White Person, only Arabs… so I give Negroponte the edge at 2 to 1
Negroponte is a pathological liar.
Speedy Gonzales is a pathological liar.
“¡Al paredón!”
The correct word for Gonzo should be “impeachment”.
No “probe”, “surge”, “partial withdrawal” of testiimony or other sexually loaded phraseology.
Impeach the SOB and then put his sorry ass in jail (maybe the 6 or 7 guys and gals he fired could oversee the prosecution–how sweet would that be?
Poet, unfortunately, impeachment does not carry a jail sentence (it should) it just gets the criminal out of office, and carries with it the shame of congressional rejection as a “servant of the people”. Not that that label applies to any of these scum.
The real offense is the politilization of what should be an impartial Justice Dept. Right now, its run by the bush crime family, the worlds biggest group of mobsters.
impeachment doesn’t carry a jail sentence and it also doesn’t operate like a standard court hearing -which can drag on forever….
there is a statue of limitation, people can still be convicted of crimes long after the event.
Pushing this issue over the purging of prosecutors ties into allegations of attempts by the GOP/WH to win 2006 election cycle (see Wilson, NM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Wilson#Fired_US_attorneys
and Domenici, NM (R) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Domenici#Department_of_Justice_controversy)
and allegations of voter fraud and Bradley Schlozman’s untimely prosecutions of ACORN workers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Schlozman#Dismissal_of_U.S._Attorneys_controversy
The Bush Administration better watch out, or the Democratically controlled Congress will put them on Double Secret Probation.
I never saw anybody (Alberto) tell so many lies in such rapid succession, careless of credibility or contradictions. And I remember Nixon
LEAHY clearly doesn’t want anything bad to happen to fredo,but at this point everyone in the usa who has followed this sordid narrative knows that gonzo has lied under oath-so the committee is giving him another week to sanitize his crap so that it isn’t actionable for perjury.didn’t fitzgerald provide the same “would you like to change your bullshit story” option for mc rove? the sense of this conversation seems to be,at long last just what the hell is gonzalez atty gen OF? PERJURY IS A CATCHALL CHARGE FOR FOLKS YOU CAN’T DEAL WITH ANY OTHER WAY-FREDO IS RIPE FOR IMPEACHMENT.
I am wondering what the Republicans have to be thinking at this point. As Leahy pointed out, he said no President in his right mind would have such a bumbling, incompetent fool as Gonzales on his staff. The Bush Administration is trying to spin this to make the Democrats look like they are out for aggrandizement. But, anyone who has been watching Gonzales testify before Congress knows he is full of shit and lying to the committee because he is GUILTY! It is unfortunate that they are giving him an opportunity to review his testimony. However, everyone knows this guy is lying under oath. I get the sense that the Democrats want to let these incompetent people in the Bush Administration keep stepping on themselves. The evidence is overwhelming at the VERY LEAST for IMPEACHMENT! The walls are closing in on the Bush Administration and the damage is increasing. So I have to wonder at some point, when will the Republicans have to realize that they no longer can cover for these guys, but cut them loose because they no longer are assets to the Republican Party?
I feel like I’m watching a Shakespearean play unfold. Except the language is a whole lot different. A turdblossom by any other name! To Impeach or not to Impeach that is the question. How now! How now!
There is more damaging news coming from the media about Pat Tillman’s death. It appears that during an autopsy, one of the surgeons noted the very close proximity of the three bullets in Tillman’s head. When he sought answers from his supervisors and other higher-ups, he was denied and told to keep his mouth shut. As we know the Pentagon finally admitted he was killed by someone in his own platoon. Well, it gets even worse, not only was he shot by an M-16 assault rifle less than ten yards away, the army lawyers apparently high-fived each other and sent congratulatory emails that they stopped this surgeon from his investigation. Now it is to be broadcast all over the newsmedia and there will be a civil investigation about Tillman’s murder.
sad place is america….
I ALSO remember Nixon, and he was like icecream over chickenshit compared to Speedy Gonzales–whose bad dye-job hair gets darker with every appearance before congress.