In the shell game that has become his life, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has withheld e-mails from Congress that indicate the White House and the Justice Department worked together to conceal the role Karl Rove played in the growing controversy over fired U.S. attorneys.
A senior executive branch official, fed up with the administration's lies, turned the e-mails over to the National Journal's Murray Waas (a favorite of this blog). Waas quoted the official -- who is sure to be the subject of a nasty witch hunt -- as saying:
"If [Gonzales] didn't know everything that was going on when it went down, that is one thing," this official said. "But he knows and understands chapter and verse. If there was an effort within Justice and the White House to mislead Congress, it is his duty to disclose that to Congress. As the country's chief law enforcement official, he has a higher duty to disclose than to protect himself or the administration."
Oh, wait. There's more:
"Two senior administration officials told National Journal they were frustrated with decisions by Gonzales not to release some of the documents held by the Justice Department. One of the officials charged that 'Gonzales is doing this to save his own neck,' at the expense of the administration. The same official said that senior aides to Gonzales have been refusing to turn over many relevant documents to Congress, and that the attorney general's top aides have been selectively leaking portions of them to the media to portray themselves in a favorable light."
Put simply, this stinks. Earlier this months, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vermont) subpoenaed all e-mails between the Justice Department and the White House over the attorney firings. Yet our nation's top lawman refuses to obey the law of the land. And continues to be our nation's top lawman.
Ah, screw it. I'm going looting.
