What was wrong with the hospital visit
Firedoglake sets it out nicely.
The President sent his men to Ashcroft’s hospital room to make an illegal end run around the Justice Department and its acting Attorney General. Acting AG Comey and the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — whose interpretations were binding throughout the Executive Branch — had determined and told the White House that the President’s warrantless surveillance program was unlawful. The President and his men knew that continuing the program was unlawful, but instead of obeying the law, they tried to end run the DoJ’s findings.
Having designated Comey as acting AG, the seriously ill Ashcroft had no legal authority to reverse the DoJ’s determination and approve the illegal spying program. The President and his men undoubtedly knew this, but they ignored that legality, too.
Unwilling to obey the law, the President’s apparently ordered Card and Gonzales to extract an illegal signoff on a program DoJ had declared unlawful. If they failed to compel that signoff, they were prepared to continue their unlawful program without it — as they had already done.
They also quote a Washington Post editorial:
IT DOESN'T much matter whether President Bush was the one who phoned Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's hospital room before the Wednesday Night Ambush in 2004. It matters enormously, however, whether the president was willing to have his White House aides try to strong-arm the gravely ill attorney general into overruling the Justice Department's legal views. It matters enormously whether the president, once that mission failed, was willing nonetheless to proceed with a program whose legality had been called into question by the Justice Department.
11 comments:
Bush didn't need AG's sign-off. Period. Once you understand that, this whole nonsense falls apart.
You're going to have to explain what you mean by that.
What were Gonzales and Card doing there? What exactly "falls apart"?
Did you listen to Comey's testimony?
If the law said he needed the signoff, he either needed the signoff or needed to challenge the law in the Supreme Court.
Not in the middle of the night in a sedated man's hotel room.
The law doesn't say he needs sign-off. Refer to my post in the related thread on this.
My thoughts on this is that he wanted to strengthen the decision by having the Justice Department in agreement with him to bulletproof the strategy.
I think it scandalous to bother a very sick man in his hospital bed, yes. Then again, if Ashcroft had passed away you folks would have been dancing and high-fiving so don't pretend you're insulted by the impropriety.
There was no "strengthening" going on here. How can you frame it that way when Bush had just LOST support from the DOJ?
This was beyond impropriety, this is the crossing of ethical and moral boundaries and a disregard of due process.
I'm not as sure as you, buddy. My gut says this is being made bigger than it is.
I will say this, though. If actionable offenses are found I stand with you on prosecuting to the fullest. OTOH, I expect you guys to admit over-zealousness in return if this peters out.
Gonz, you say they didn't need the AG's sign-off (which I do not believe is true). But if you take that as truth, why, then, would they go to all that trouble to try to get Ashcroft to sign?
Here's an interesting short story on this whole thing:
Did Card and Gonzales break the law? by Tim Grieve, Salon
The little visit Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales paid to John Ashcroft in his hospital room was brazen and breathtaking. It turns out it also may have been illegal.
Neil Katyal, the Georgetown law professor who served as a national security advisor in Bill Clinton's Justice Department, tells Time that "executive branch rules require sensitive classified information to be discussed in specialized facilities that are designed to guard against the possibility that officials are being targeted for surveillance outside of the workplace." Is a hospital room at George Washington such a "specialized facility"? Not exactly, Katyal says. "The hospital room of a cabinet official is exactly the type of target ripe for surveillance by a foreign power," he explains.
As we noted the other day, no one involved -- not Card, not Gonzales, not Ashcroft, not George W. Bush, not the White House -- has denied James Comey's account of the hospital visit. And in refusing to do so Thursday, the president inadvertently conceded one of the elements of potential unlawfulness here: He said he wasn't going to address Comey's allegations because they involved a "highly sensitive" and "highly classified" subject matter.
How is the administration responding to word that Card and Gonzales -- and, presumably, whoever sent them to Ashcroft's hospital room -- may have been breaking the rules? Well, you can probably guess. "I am not going to speculate on discussions that may or may not have taken place, much less attempt to render a legal judgment on any such discussions," Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department's National Security Division, tells Time.
I stand by what I said. If there is truly wrongdoing here the Dems will go after it like sharks on bloody sunfish. If not, the insinuations and investigations will continue but nothing will come of it.
Let's just see what happens.
Estimate -as many as 30 top DOJ officials would have resigned
The group includes the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum and the chief of the Criminal Division, Chris Wray.
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Good thing the Dems are investigating everything! Not just fishing.
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