Gonzales Weasels on How He Helped Bush Ditch Jury Duty
Something I’ve written about on this blog almost since its inception was an early scandal for then-governor of Texas Bush. As governor, he was called for jury duty, and made a big deal about how he was just an ordinary guy, and would of course serve on the jury. From CNN in ’96:
GOP Gov. George W. Bush, saying that it’s “a feeble excuse” to say he’s too busy or too important for the task, reported for jury duty today. He said he doubted he’d be called for a trial given his job. He has the power to commute sentences in criminal cases, and has strongly and publicly favored limiting damages awarded in civil trials. Reporters asked Bush if he thought he’d be elected jury foreman. “I had enough trouble getting elected governor in Travis County,” a traditionally Democratic area, he joked.
Right from the start, Bush had to squirm to avoid incriminating himself. Bush “overlooked” a section of the jury questionnaire (a legal document) which asked him about his criminal record; had he filled it out honestly, he would have revealed that he himself had been arrested for DUI. But he was doing his best to lie by omission on that one, and no one questioned the governor on how he filled out the form.
His smug confidence in having avoided that particular bullet, however, was soon shattered: he was selected to serve on a drunk driving case for an Austin, TX strip club dancer. Maybe he recognized the significance of that news, but I’ll bet that it was Alberto Gonzales that had to explain it to him: if he came to serve on that case, the lawyers involved would almost certainly ask Bush if he himself had ever been arrested on the same charges that he was now being called upon to consider as a juror. Oops.
Here comes Gonzales’ weasel. As Bush’s legal counsel in ’96, he had to get Bush out of hot water. Bush had already made big noises about how he was just an ordinary guy and would of course serve. But now he needed that “feeble excuse” like never before, and Gonzales provided it:
In separate interviews, [presiding judge] Crain—along with [defense attorney] Wahlberg and prosecutor John Lastovica—told NEWSWEEK that, before the case began, Gonzales asked to have an off-the-record conference in the judge’s chambers. Gonzales then asked Crain to “consider” striking Bush from the jury, making the novel “conflict of interest” argument that the Texas governor might one day be asked to pardon the defendant (who worked at an Austin nightclub called Sugar’s), the judge said. “He [Gonzales] raised the issue,” Crain said. Crain said he found Gonzales’s argument surprising, since it was “extremely unlikely” that a drunken-driving conviction would ever lead to a pardon petition to Bush. But “out of deference” to the governor, Crain said, the other lawyers went along. Wahlberg said he agreed to make the motion striking Bush because he didn’t want the hard-line governor on his jury anyway. But there was little doubt among the participants as to what was going on. “In public, they were making a big show of how he was prepared to serve,” said Crain. “In the back room, they were trying to get him off.”
But now, before Congress, being interviewed for consideration of his nomination to the highest legal position in the country, Gonzales tried to pretend that he didn’t really help Bush out in his attempt to evade jury duty and an admission to drunk driving. Specifically, he claims that he did not “request” that Bush be excused; instead, he “discussed” it. The wording suggests that he was not the instigator:
Gonzales last week refused to waver. “Judge Gonzales has no recollection of requesting a meeting in chambers,” a senior White House official said, adding that while Gonzales did recall that Bush’s potential conflict was “discussed,” he never “requested” that Bush be excused. “His answer to the Senate’s question is accurate,” the official said.
Of course, if he did not make the request, then who did? And is he now trying to claim that the defendant’s attorney, the prosecutor and the judge are all lying or completely mistaken in their separate but identical recountings of the event?
Get ready to have an all new weasel be our next Attorney General. At least Bush is being consistent.
Great Post. I was unaware of any of this. Of course I didn’t become engorged in politics until after the 2000 election and the early turning point was that as a candidate Bush’s Foriegn Policy advisor Condaleeza Rice was spouting some anti-Nato rhetoric. Thats what kind of woke me up and set me off, and everything since has only drawn a darker picture.
BTW – Nato and other such arrangements are power multipliers and made the U.S. appear more powerful than it actually was. In real respect, shorn of cohesive alliances, exhausted financially and militarily, the U.S. is at its weakest international profile since, perhaps, the 1930s.