Hullabaloo

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

 
You Know You've Landed On Planet Weird...

by tristero

when something's too illegal for John Ashcroft:

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey detailed the desperate late night efforts by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and White House chief of staff Andrew Card to get the Justice Department to approve a secret program -- the warrantless wiretapping program...

The program was reauthorized without the signature of the attorney general. Because of that, Comey said, he prepared a letter of resignation. "I believed that I couldn't stay if the administration was going to engage in conduct that Justice Department said had no legal basis."

At this point, according to Comey, a number of senior Justice Department officials, including Ashcroft, were prepared to resign...

Comey said that [FBI Director] Mueller brought word that the Justice Department was to do whatever was "necessary" to make the program into one that the Justice Department could sign off on.

Comey said that it took two to three weeks for the Justice Department to do the analysis necessary to have the program approved. During that time, the program went on without Justice Department approval...

Okay, folks with law training, help me out here. If the program "went on without Justice Department approval" of its legality for two to three weeks, isn't that tantamount to saying that high crimes and misdemeanors occurred? Or does it just mean that they were likely?

tristero 5/15/2007 09:47:00 AM |