FEINGOLD V. GONZALES

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WIS) catches the Attorney General in a bald-faced lie during his confirmation hearings. The AG's got some explaining to do:

In a letter to the attorney general yesterday, Feingold demanded to know why Gonzales dismissed the senator's question about warrantless eavesdropping as a "hypothetical situation" during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2005. At the hearing, Feingold asked Gonzales where the president's authority ends and whether Gonzales believed the president could, for example, act in contravention of existing criminal laws and spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant.

Gonzales said that it was impossible to answer such a hypothetical question but that it was "not the policy or the agenda of this president" to authorize actions that conflict with existing law. He added that he would hope to alert Congress if the president ever chose to authorize warrantless surveillance, according to a transcript of the hearing.

Of course, we now know that Gonzales knew the president HAD engaged in such action, and the AG himself, who was White Counsel at the time the illegal wiretapping started, helped give Dubya legal cover.

Good catch by Feingold. I don't see how this could possibly be interpreted in any other way than as a deliberate attempt to mislead Congress.

Tags: Alberto Gonzales, warrantless wiretapping