Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (Dem. - Vt.) and Ranking Member Arlen Specter (Rep. - Penn.) asked Karl Rove’s lawyer Robert Luskin yesterday to voluntarily turnover his hard disk(s) and e-mails that were “sent or received using political Republican National Committee accounts.”

In its ongoing investigation of to what extent U.S. Attorney’s were pressured into being political tools of the White House for partisan purposes, the Committee appears to have been stonewalled when it comes to obtaining e-mails thought to have been sent or received by White House Chief of Staff Rove to evade compliance with the Presidential Records Act. That’s the federal law requiring sitting Presidents and their White House staff to keep personal communications and records separate from Presidential records.

Last week this blog reporterd that the Justice Department’s belated response to the Committee’s May 2, 2007 subpoena served upon Attorney General Gonzales seeking Rove’s e-mail communications with the DO turned up “nothing. Nada. Rien. Niente. Zilch. ничего. אפס .لا شي. Nichts. 何も.”

This week’s House Committee on the Judiciary hearing and testimony from former DOJ White House liaison Monica Goodling did not reveal any e-mail communication between Rove and Goodling on U.S. Attorney firings. In fact, Goodling went so far as to testify that she “never had a conversation with Karl Rove or Harriet Miers while I served at the Department of Justice. And I’m certain that I never spoke to either of them about the hiring or firing of any U.S. attorney.”

Speculation and rumor has been rampant on this issue.

What does that mean? Without the ‘teeth’ that a court order mandating Rove to turnover what is essentially electronic discovery with a forensic investigation of Rove’s hard disk, the Committee is simply making nice with opposing counsel. There’s no legal obligation whatsoever for Rove’s lawyer to comply with the Committee’s request. And the Senators know it.

It was a foolish move to make, since it lacks any clout.

The Committee had better hope that Rove, or others working for him, are not using electronic security tools like Evidence Eliminator to get rid of any potentially incriminating, damaging, or questionable material on his RNC-supplied hard drive(s).

Wall Street Journal editorial board member Kimberley Strassel has a column this morning attacking Sen. Charle’s Schumer’s criticism of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, calling the New York Democrat’s actions an effort to “ride the steady drip-drip of negative Bush headlines all the way to more Senate seats and the Oval Office.” She poo-poo’s Schumer’s introduction of the new Senate ‘no-confidence’ resolution on Gonzales.

Incredibly, she argues that former Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s testimony on how then White-House Counsel Gonzales and Andrew Card tried to override Attorney General John Ashcroft’s conclusion that a warrantless domestic surveillance program was unconstititonal, and get Ashcroft to do an about-face when he was seriously ill and hospitalized. Strassel says that Comey’s testimony was somehow “staged,” and that Schumer “cooked up this dramatic event…a week in advance.”

Strassel’s greatest fear? That Schumer’s efforts could ultimately “hamstring the president’s surveillance powers.” Wouldn’t that just be illegal and unconstitutional alleged “surveillance powers?”

She conveniently forgets to mention that Schumer originally supported the war in Iraq, and that he has been realist on continuing the war on terror, wherever it is in the world. Earlier this year, Schumer reiterated this set of beliefs, arguing that “if we beef up human intelligence, provide our military with stronger and more adept strike forces, and work in a more multi lateral way, we could focus on the small groups of terrorists without fighting large-scale wars like we are in Iraq.”