Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

A new report being released by the FBI on Monday confirms that violent crime increased every year since Alberto Gonzales became U.S. Attorney General.

The Washington Post’s Dan Eggen writes that “[t]he FBI’s Uniform Crime Report will show an increase of about 1.3 percent in violent offenses last year, including a 6 percent rise in robberies and a slight rise in homicides, according to law enforcement officials, who described key findings in advance of the report’s release. That follows an increase of 2.3 percent in 2005, which was the first significant increase in violent crime in 15 years.”

This shows that since Gonzales became Attorney General on February 3, 2005, his tenure in office has not stemmed violent crime, but rather increased it during his management at the Department of Justice. This suggests that Gonzales’ reply to Republican Senator Tom Coburn’s call for his resignation at the April 19 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing lacked credibility. At the time, Gonzales said that “the department under my leadership has done some great things.” The report being released on Monday June 4, 2007 should make clear that one of those things was not reducing violent crime

Given recent bipartisan calls for Gonzales’ resignation, he is sure to face even more bipartisan criticism from Congress about these sobering new crime statistics.