The Alberto Gonzales self-rehabilitation tour continues?
The former Attorney General, who launched a mini media blitz in May, is back, this time trying his hand with New York Times magazine interviewer Deborah Solomon.
Among other tidbits, Gonzo says he hasn’t talked to George W. Bush since the president left office. And he confirms that no law firm has offered him a job in the years since he resigned. (Though his lawyer told TPMmuckraker in May he was engaged in unspecified “legal work.”)
Gonzo is clear-eyed about how his tenure as attorney general affected his reputation:
Would you agree that your reputation was damaged by your service as attorney general?It has had an effect, a negative effect, no question about it, and at times it makes me angry because it is undeserved. But I don’t want to sound like I am whining. At the end of the day, I’ve been the attorney general of the United States. It’s a remarkable privilege, and I stand behind my service.
The former AG’s legal bills have been “substantial” — “a burden,” he told Solomon. Those are likely to continue, as a prosecutor’s criminal investigation into the 2006 U.S. Attorney firings is ongoing.
Gonzales might be able to cover some of those bills with proceeds from his forthcoming memoir — a book, he told Solomon, that does not currently have a publisher.
Late Update: It’s also worth reading in full this classic bit of Gonzo obfuscation when asked about the U.S. Attorney firings:
Some 70 professors at Texas Tech have signed a petition that protests your appointment and cites your “ethical failings,” including misleading Congress abut the firing of nine federal prosecutors. What will you tell your students about that?All the inspector-general investigations, they’re now over with. They found that I had not engaged in any criminal wrongdoing.
Isn’t there still an ongoing investigation by a special prosecutor who was appointed last year to look into the removal of the attorneys?
I wish I could comment on that, but because it’s an ongoing investigation, I cannot.