So, did Gonzales not tell the whole truth?

[Judah]

Is this something the Dems should push or not? (Apologize if it's already been posted here...)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6857224/site/newsweek/

Gonzales: Did He Help Bush Keep His DUI Quiet?

By Michael Isikoff

NewsweekJan. 31 issue - Senate Democrats put off a vote on White House counsel Alberto Gonzales's nomination to be attorney general, complaining he had provided evasive answers to questions about torture and the mistreatment of prisoners. But Gonzales's most surprising answer may have come on a different subject: his role in helping President Bush escape jury duty in a drunken-driving case involving a dancer at an Austin strip club in 1996. The judge and other lawyers in the case last week disputed a written account of the matter provided by Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It's a complete misrepresentation," said David Wahlberg, lawyer for the dancer, about Gonzales's account.

Bush's summons to serve as a juror in the drunken-driving case was, in retrospect, a fateful moment in his political career: by getting excused from jury duty he was able to avoid questions that would have required him to disclose his own 1976 arrest and conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) in Kennebunkport, Maine—an incident that didn't become public until the closing days of the 2000 campaign. (Bush, who had publicly declared his willingness to serve, had left blank on his jury questionnaire whether he had ever been "accused" in a criminal case.) Asked by Sen. Patrick Leahy to describe "in detail" the only court appearance he ever made on behalf of Bush, Gonzales—who was then chief counsel to the Texas governor—wrote that he had accompanied Bush the day he went to court "prepared to serve on a jury." While there, Gonzales wrote, he "observed" the defense lawyer make a motion to strike Bush from the jury panel "to which the prosecutor did not object." Asked by the judge whether he had "any views on this," Gonzales recalled, he said he did not.

While Gonzales's account tracks with the official court transcript, it leaves out a key part of what happened that day, according to Travis County Judge David Crain. In separate interviews, Crain—along with Wahlberg and prosecutor John Lastovica—told NEWSWEEK that, before the case began, Gonzales asked to have an off-the-record conference in the judge's chambers. Gonzales then asked Crain to "consider" striking Bush from the jury, making the novel "conflict of interest" argument that the Texas governor might one day be asked to pardon the defendant (who worked at an Austin nightclub called Sugar's), the judge said. "He [Gonzales] raised the issue," Crain said. Crain said he found Gonzales's argument surprising, since it was "extremely unlikely" that a drunken-driving conviction would ever lead to a pardon petition to Bush. But "out of deference" to the governor, Crain said, the other lawyers went along. Wahlberg said he agreed to make the motion striking Bush because he didn't want the hard-line governor on his jury anyway. But there was little doubt among the participants as to what was going on. "In public, they were making a big show of how he was prepared to serve," said Crain. "In the back room, they were trying to get him off."

Gonzales last week refused to waver. "Judge Gonzales has no recollection of requesting a meeting in chambers," a senior White House official said, adding that while Gonzales did recall that Bush's potential conflict was "discussed," he never "requested" that Bush be excused. "His answer to the Senate's question is accurate," the official said.

 

[deep]

The President's Yes Man

By Alan Berlow

Sunday, November 21, 2004; Page B07

In nominating Alberto Gonzales to be the next attorney general, President Bush has selected a man with a long record of giving him the kind of legal advice he wants. Unfortunately, that advice has not always been of the highest professional or ethical caliber.

Gonzales is perhaps best known for a controversial January 2002 memorandum to the president in which he argued that Geneva Convention proscriptions on torture did not apply to Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners, and that the conventions are, in fact, "obsolete."

This interpretation of international law, which many have linked to the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison, will no doubt be a focus of confirmation hearings. Senators might also want to quiz Gonzales about a less well-known June 1997 memo involving another treaty, the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Written when Gonzales was counsel to then-Gov. George W. Bush, the memo puts forward the novel view that because the state of Texas was not a signatory to the Vienna Convention, it need not abide by the treaty. Or, put another way, Texas is not bound by Article VI of the Constitution, which states that U.S. treaties are "the supreme Law of the Land."

That memo was written to dismiss State Department concerns about the impending execution of a Mexican national whose rights under the convention had clearly been violated by Texas police. And it is on the subject of executions that Gonzales's most questionable legal writings may be found.

Bush approved 152 executions during his six years as governor. For each of the first 57, he made his judgment based on a three- to seven-page "execution summary" prepared by Gonzales and on an oral briefing that typically lasted no more than 30 minutes that the chief counsel usually presented on the day of the execution. In nearly all these cases, Gonzales was the only person standing between the executioner and a governor who made it abundantly clear he had little or no interest in granting clemency.

Where some might view this as a terrifying and formidable responsibility, Gonzales's "confidential" memos suggest that he saw his role as more of an expediter of his boss's preordained conclusion. Far from presenting an evenhanded or nuanced discussion of the case for and against clemency, Gonzales's execution summaries display a consistent prosecutorial bias. Not once does he attach a clemency petition in which the condemned put forward his or her best case for a reprieve. And Gonzales's summaries repeatedly play down or fail to report the most important issues at hand: claims of ineffective counsel, conflicts of interest, mitigating evidence, evidence never presented to a jury, even evidence of innocence. Not surprisingly, a disinterested observer relying solely on Gonzales's memos would probably do exactly what Bush did: deny clemency in every single case.

Consider the case of Terry Washington. Gonzales's three-page summary misleadingly suggests that there was doubt about the central issue in Washington's plea for life: the fact that he was brain-damaged and mentally retarded. But the state of Texas did not dispute the fact that Washington was retarded. Gonzales doesn't inform Bush that Washington's incompetent attorney never called a mental health expert to testify, never advised the jury that his client was retarded, or that he had an IQ between 58 and 69 and had been beaten with whips, water hoses, extension cords, fan belts and wire hangers as a child. Nine hours after Gonzales's briefing, Washington was executed. The Supreme Court has since found executions of the mentally retarded to be cruel and unusual punishment.

In the case of David Wayne Stoker, there were enough red flags for a May Day parade, yet Gonzales spotted none of them. For starters, a federal appellate judge had concluded that the state's star witness was just as likely the murderer as Stoker. Gonzales's 18-sentence summary also failed to note that a key witness recanted after Stoker's conviction (explaining that he'd been pressured by the prosecution to present perjured testimony) and that the state's star witness received a financial reward for fingering Stoker, had felony drug and weapons charges dropped and therefore had an obvious motive for accusing Stoker. Gonzales also didn't tell Bush that this witness and two police witnesses lied under oath at trial, that the state's expert medical witness pleaded guilty to seven felonies involving falsified evidence and that the state's psychiatric witness, whose testimony was essential to securing a death sentence, never even interviewed Stoker. The psychiatrist had since been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association for repeatedly providing unethical testimony in murder cases.

Senators might want to know how none of this public information made it into Gonzales's report. And they might ask how Gonzales's office could be prescient enough, a full week before Gonzales wrote his summary and briefed the governor, to inform Stoker's attorney that there would be no grant of clemency.

One could, of course, argue that the client calls the shots, and that Gonzales delivered exactly what Bush wanted. But the 57 cases Gonzales summarized were all matters of life or death. They included people such as Stoker, who may have been innocent, and others such as Washington who had something less than a fair trial. Given the stakes, one must ask whether a fair-minded or ethical lawyer would simply do as he'd been told.

 

[deep]

Bush, who had publicly declared his willingness to serve, had left blank on his jury questionnaire whether he had ever been "accused" in a criminal case

Is this perjury?

 

[BVS]

Is anyone suprised?

 

[Scarletwine]

The question should be did Gonzales tell any of the truth. He seemed to answer very litlle questions. "I'll get back to you"

 

[Sheltie]

Its all dirty politics and it will keep getting worse over the next 4 years.
I don't think anyone in the white house has been telling the whole truth and I am sure a lot has been covered up. I don't trust Bush or anyone on his staff or in his cabinet.

 

[joyfulgirl]

Its all dirty politics and it will keep getting worse over the next 4 years.
I don't think anyone in the white house has been telling the whole truth and I am sure a lot has been covered up. I don't trust Bush or anyone on his staff or in his cabinet.

I agree. And yet, of all the issues I have with Bush, a DUI in 1976 is not one of them. It's just....everything else.

 

[Macfistowannabe]

The question should be did Gonzales tell any of the truth. He seemed to answer very litlle questions. "I'll get back to you"

Due to the fact that I dislike Gonzales, I don't know if I could answer that fairly. Instead, I'm tempted to refer to him as a torture-supporting waste of sperm.

 

[Scarletwine]

OMG,

I totally agree

 

[diamond]

Is this perjury?

The House Judiciary Committee made public today President Clinton's videotaped testimony to the grand jury investigating the Monica S. Lewinsky matter. The president's Aug. 17 appearance before independent counsel Kenneth Starr was transmitted via closed-circuit video from the White House to the federal district courthouse. It lasted approximately four hours.

 

[sharky]

At least Clinton admitted his guilt. As a governor, you are no better than the citizens you represent. I'm sure there are alot of people that have to fill out job applications and disclose crimes they have found guilty of. As for Bush, there are alot of crimes he has not fessed up to -- can we try the fact that records were hidden or destroyed to cover the fact he went AWOL? or the fact that one of the reasons he pulled out of the international court was so he would not be persecuted for war crimes in Iraq? Or the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction?

 

[Dreadsox]

My goodness.....I was wise to not come into this thread. Such non-partisan factual discussion......

PM me if it happens in this thread.....until then.....

There were three shooters on the grassy knoll.

 

[diamond]