Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

Nine months after his nasty departure from the Justice Department, sprinting like a Texas jackrabbit from Capitol Hill back to Texas, disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally found a job.

According to Bloomberg, Gonzales landed a job as a special master in a Texas patent case: DataTreasury Corp. v. Wells Fargo & Co., 05cv291, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas (Marshall).

Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales needs to pound the pavement a little more: he still doesn’t have a job.

“He has, through friends, put out inquiries,” the New York Times reports, but “has not found any takers. What makes Mr. Gonzales’s case extraordinary is that former attorneys general, the government’s chief lawyer, are typically highly sought.”

So what kind of professional help has he enlisted in his job search? Try saying “Bork, bork, bork!” as fast as you can, and you’ll have the answer.

Gonzales retained Capitol Hill spinmaster Robert H. Bork Jr. to deal with inquiries for the . “He is considering his opportunities in law and business,” Bork told the Wall Street Journal.

The American Bar Association bestowed Alberto Gonzales with one its biggest honors: it named him Lawyer of the Year for 2007.

What was the rationale of America’s most-respected organization for lawyers? Gonzales was “[t]he most talked-about attorney this past year by a mile…[he] rose from being the grandson of illegal immigrants to the first Hispan­ic attorney general of the United States.”

According to Edward Adams, the ABA’s Journal’s editor and publisher, choosing Gonzales wasn’t about a popularity contest. “It’s about who has had the most effect in the world of lawyers this year.”

Only in America! Gonzales’s convenient memory lapses of what led to his politically-charged firings of career U.S. Attorneys — telling Congress “I don’t recall” roughly 70 times in one hearing — is unlikely to ever be forgotten.

Nor will Gonzales’s role as White House Counsel in when he wrote a January 25, 2002 memo to Pres. Bush decrying the Geneva Convention as “quaint”, rendering “many of its provisions obsolete.”

Very strange, indeed.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has friends in high places raising money for the embattled lawyer’s trust fund set up for his legal defense.

Gonzales resigned from his position as the country’s top lawyer on September 17, 2007.

According to the Washington Post, Ford Motor Co.’s General Counsel David Leitch (inset) is spearheading the fundraising effort. He worked under Gonzales as White House Deputy Counsel when Gonzales served as White House Counsel.

Leitch’s Ford bio says that, while working for Gonzales and Bush, “he advised the President and his staff on a variety of legal issues, including issues involving the war on terror, judicial nominations, legislative proposals and ethics.”

Although he is not currently facing criminal charges of wrongdoing related to the politically-motivated firing of career federal prosecutors, Gonzales retained high-powered D.C. white collar criminal defense lawyer George J. Terwilliger, III at White & Case in all matters related to the Justice Department Inspector General’s ongoing investigation of the firings debacle.

According to an ABA book on the Patriot Act, Patriot Debates: Experts Debate the USA PATRIOT Act, Terwilliger, takes a hard line against illegal immigration — the very route that brought his Gonzales’ family to Texas from Mexico decades ago.

The book explains that:

George Terwilliger urges aggressive legal action to control illegal immigration. He supports a national identity card, an approach to applicants for entry that differentiates by likely threat, an end to the release of asylum claimants while their cases are pending, the exclusion of illegal immigrants, with jail terms for repeat offenders, and the fingerprinting of all foreign visitors and immigrants.

Terwilliger’s law firm bio also notes that he “was a leader of President George W. Bush’s legal team during the Florida election recount,” and ensuing Bush v. Gore litigation.