Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

Things have gone from bad, to worse, to almost rock-bottom for America’s top prosecutor this week.

Today, Gonzales had another press conference in Boston about the DOJ’s educational outreach to kids about child predators. But it was at that conference that he dismissed the latest questions by reporters about calls Democrats and Republicans who’ve called for his resignation:  “I am fighting for the truth,” he responded.

The truth is that:

* A Nov. 2006 e-mail shows that the Attorney General meeting with top Justice Department aides to discuss the planned replacement and firing of U.S. Attorneys;

* On March 13th, he was caught lying to reporters about his knowledge and involvement in firing eight U.S. Attorneys, telling them: “I never saw documents. We never had a discussion about where things stood” about terminating U.S. Attorneys.

*  On March 26th, NBC correspondent Pete Williams (a former Pentagon spokesman) gave a ’softball interview’ with Gonzales, putting him on a soapbox to attempt to explain his denials of knowledge and inolvement what is now largely known as a series of politically motivated terminations of career federal prosecutors.

The Justice Department remains in a complete state of disarray.  It is utterly dysfunctional.  A competent CEO would never have conducted him or herself the way that Gonzales since this scandal broke.

Important questions remain:  How long will Gonzales remain in office?  Will Bush utlimately force his buddy ‘Fredo’ out? Will Gonzales conduct hurt the reputations of career prosecutors, through no fault of their own?

In what will be his sixth visit with U.S. Attorneys in a little more than a week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is likely to be holding another sit-down with U.S. Attorneys upset about the reasons behind firings of their fellow prosecutors.

Today Gonzales is in Boston attending another Project Safe Childhood event to highlight the Justice Department’s new ad campaign to alert children and parents to the dangers of sexual predators.

Gonzales is likely to face more tough questions from federal prosecutors about the Justice Department’s dysfunctional operational status this month following intensive scrutiny by Congress, journalists, and the American public over his contradictory statements about the apparently political firing of eight U.S. Attorneys.

Continuing his nearly week-long Red state meetings with U.S. attorneys to tout the DOJ’s new ad campaign focusing on the dangers of child predators, Gonzales is in Houston this morning meeting the U.S. Attorney Donald DeGabrielle, Jr. and others.

But some parts of Houston have already sent the U.S. Attorney General a loud and clear message, telling him to resign over the U.S. Attorney firings controversy.

That is the crux of a well-time column by the Houston Chronicle’s Cragg Hines this morning.  Titled “Why Gonzales should be shown the exit very soon,” Hines has a few hard-hitting observations for the AG when he reads his the Chron this morning:

Either Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is lying or his Justice Department was running amok on its own.

In either case, Gonzales should be sent on his way.

Hines says that Gonzales’ resignition is “overdue.”

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is avoiding heading back to Washington like a cat avoids the neighborhood dog.

He continues his cross-country travels to U.S. Attorneys offices, speaking about the DOJ’s new campaign against child predators, Project Safe Childhood.

The unspoken component of these visits, however, is likely to be his attempts to gauge support for his remaining in office, and do a litmus test of how the DOJ’s frontline U.S. Attorneys view the nation’s top federal prosecutor.  And as this blog suggested earlier this week, speaking about protecting America’s kids from child predators is not something that the public, or Congress, will be able to poke criticism at lightly.

Gonzales has visited, or will be visiting, the following U.S. Attorneys’ offices as part of his latest campaign:

• St. Loui, MO (U.S. Attorneys Catherine Hanaway - Eastern District, Bradley Schlozman - Western District)
• Denver, CO (U.S. Attorney Troy Eid)
• Chicago, IL (U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald)
• Cincinnati, OH (U.S. Attorney Gregory G. Lockhart)

Fitzgerald and Gonzales are likely to have had a ’sit-down’ to discuss the unkind mention of the U.S. Attorney / Special Prosecutor’s performance by higher ups in DOJ e-mails.