The Vice President and his counsel can seek info on ongoing DOJ investigations

remember when senator sheldon whitehouse introduced this, the difference between white house/department of justice communication protocol under clinton vs. george bush, back at the senate judiciary committee hearing with gonzo on april 19...?



well, marcy - emptywheel - wheeler, posting in the next hurrah, highlights an even more disturbing part of gonzo's testimony today...

The exchange started with Whitehouse getting Gonzales to agree that the most likely avenue of improper influence in ongoing investigations was the White House...

[...]

Then he goes on to review a memo that Gonzales himself signed, actually extending the structure Ashcroft set in place. And while Ashcroft's memo made several attempts to tamp down this structure, in key ways he opened it up, explicitly for the Fourth Branch. Whitehouse describes how the memo describes that the lines of communication open to the White House will "apply in parallel fashion in communications with the OVP." And then he points specifically to a paragraph at the end of the memo reiterating the communications open to OVP. Gonzales, typically, claims to have no idea how those items got into a memo he signed personally.

[...]

Lovely. Cheney--whose own Chief of Staff was indicted and convicted for impeding an ongoing investigation--now has usurped access to ongoing investigations, for himself, his Chief of Staff, and his Counsel, courtesy of AGAG. David Addington, the architect of the Unitary Executive, now gets to know what DOJ is doing with ongoing investigations.

oh. my. freakin'. god... i didn't think it could get worse, but, as always, i am proven wrong - usually on a daily basis...

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