What was Gonzalez going to do, anyway?

[elfs]

From War and Piece comes this revealing little bit of the Comey testimony today:

I handed the phone to the head of the security detail and Director Mueller instructed the FBI agents present not to allow me to be removed from the room under any circumstances. And I went back in the room.

Am I reading this right? The head of the FBI had to order his agents to protect the Attorney General of the United States because both of them assumed the White House counsel was prepared to assault the Attorney General?

I don't care if Gonzalez did it himself or had police come and do it; Comey had more right than Gonzalez did to be in that hospital room at that time.

Comments

[solarbird]

It's just unbelievably bad, isn't it? And yet, nothing continues to happen.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

It comes across as coup d'etat territory.

I'm not sure how far they expected things to go. As the testimony says, Ashcroft had been in intensive care for six days, so there must have been something to get Corney to rush for the hospital.

And the "keep him in the room" might have been aimed as much as the Doctors as at Gonzales.

But the biggie is that they knew something was going to happen. and what Gonzales tried seems to be illegal. I wouldn't like to bet on the date written on that piece of paper.

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

From what I've read, Comey knew about it because Mrs. Ashcroft had called him ... because, apparently, President Bush had called her and told her that Gonzales and Card were on their way. (Comey wasn't sure if it was Bush, but he thought that's what Mrs. Ashcroft had told him.)

So yeah, it's even worse than it looks. Gonzales wasn't just being an asshole on his own; he was being an asshole-by-proxy for George W. Bush.

It does show the lengths that Bush is willing to go to in order to get his own way.