No Charges in Bush Justice Department Investigation of Itself?
September 29th, 2008Surprise, surprise, surprise…
by Glynn Wilson
Perhaps you are too young, blog fans, to remember the Gomer Pyle Show and the Marine private’s routine refrain to Sergeant Carter.
But that’s what’s ringing in my ears this Monday morning as we wait to find out if what is being reported by the TPMMuckraker and The New York Times is true.
After offering what the Times calls “a blistering critique” of the political motivations that led to the firings of a group of United States attorneys in late 2006, the report to be released later today supposedly stops short of recommending criminal charges against former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales or others in the affair, including former Bush political guru Karl Rove.
While the first reaction on the part of anyone who has been watching this case closely for the past year might be outrage, since yes, we all want Gonzales and Rove — who were forced out of their jobs in Washington last August — to be prosecuted too.
But did anyone really expect the Bush Justice Department to recommend prosecuting the former head of the Bush Justice Department? That would have been the real surprise.
And yes, while we all want the House Judiciary Committee to lock Karl Rove up for contempt and for defying a Congressional subpoena to testify under oath — apparently the first person in American history to get away with that dastardly deed — perhaps it would be better to wait until the financial crisis is solved and the election is over and Bush is gone from the White House in January. Otherwise, Bush will just pardon them.
Once Obama takes charge of the Justice Department as the new president, with an even larger majority of Democrats in both houses of Congress, then Rove and the others can be brought up on criminal charges and prosecuted.
Tags: Bush Justice Department
