Looks like Gonzo still doesn't quite get it.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- under whose tenure the Justice Department often appeared to take its orders from the White House political office -- sat down with the Wall Street Journal in an effort to clear his name. But we're guessing he did himself more harm than good.

Gonzo appeared genuinely unable to grapple with why he might be unpopular. "What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he asked.

And he wasn't above wallowing in self-pity, making a comparison that would likely rankle families of 9/11 and Iraq war victims: "[F]or some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror."

What about that infamous hospital visit, in which Gonzales, at the time the White House counsel, along with White House chief of staff Andy Card, pressed then-AG John Ashcroft to sign off on a secret government program while Ashcroft was hospitalized -- and, by some accounts, going in and out of consciousness -- after gall bladder surgery? Gonzo has no regrets. "I found Ashcroft as lucid as I've seen him at meetings in the White House," he said.

He also took a shot at James Comey, the respected former DOJ official who revealed details of the hospital visit in Congressional testimony: "He didn't have the decency to notify anyone what he was about to testify," Gonzales said of Comey. "That was extremely disappointing."

And Gonzo put the blame for the memos authorizing torture squarely on John Yoo, the then-DOJ lawyer who wrote them -- even though even though there's no evidence that Gonzo, as White House counsel, raised any objection.

Reports the Journal:

John Yoo, the then-Justice official who had been assigned to draft the memos, had strong feelings and no one could have pressured him to write the memos a certain way, Mr. Gonzales said.

Gonzo also told the Journal he's at work on a book about his tenure at DOJ to set the record straight. He doesn't have a publisher, but is writing it "for my sons, so at least they know the story."

And he's not having much success in his post-government career. Says the paper:

The Harvard Law School graduate, onetime corporate lawyer and Texas judge also hasn't been able to land a job. He has delivered a few paid speeches, done some mediation work and plans to do some arbitration, but said law firms have been "skittish" about hiring him.

It's hard being a casualty of the war on terror.

Karl Rove may be relegated to Fox News appearances and hoping to avoid prosecution once President Bush leaves office -- but the political career of one of his proteges, Tim Griffin, may just be getting started.

The Associated Press reports that Griffin, a former White House and RNC staffer, is mulling a run for the US Senate from Arkansas against Democrat Blanche Lincoln in 2010.

"I am certainly thinking about it," Griffin told the AP. "I'm going to spend some time going around the state and talking to folks and getting an idea of the interest level. ... I'm going to try and hit all 75 counties as soon as possible and I know that's a tall order trying to hit all of those in the next few months."

A DOJ report released this fall found that the department improperly fired Bud Cummins as US Attorney for the eastern district of Arkansas in order to make room for Griffin, thanks in part to pressure from the White House political office. Wrote Kyle Sampson, the DOJ point man for the round of politically motivated firings of which Cummins' was a part: "Getting [Griffin] appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc."

Griffin served six months as interim US Attorney but was never confirmed by the Senate.

Griffin has a long trck record as a partisan political knife-fighter. He has been accused of participating in a scheme to cage black voters in Florida in 2004, and was paid by the RNC to dig up dirt on both John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama this year.

After leaving the interim U.S. Attorney job last year, a tearful Griffin said public service was "not worth it" and that he had no plans to return to politics.

He appears to have reconsidered. And as someone who, the evidence suggests, consistently puts partisan advantage over the public interest, Griffin should fit right in with his Senate GOP colleagues if he wins the seat.

It's looking more and more like prosecutor Nora Dannehy's investigation into the US Attorney firings has Alberto Gonzales in its crosshairs.

Earlier this week we reported that Dannehy had contacted the ex-AG in connection with the probe.

Now, we've been tipped to legal filings showing that Gonzales' lawyer, George Terwilliger Jr. of White & Case, is no longer representing Gonzo in a separate case, a civil suit alleging that law students were denied DOJ jobs thanks to illegal politicization at the department under Gonzales.

The filing, dated November 25, reads:

Please enter the withdrawal of George J. Terwilliger III as counsel in this case for Defendant Alberto R. Gonzales, pursuant to Local Civil Rule 83.6(b).

Beneath that, Gonzales has signed his name, giving his consent to the withdrawal.

The previous day, in a separate filing, Gonzales had officially introduced a new team of attorneys as replacements, it would appear, for Terwilliger.

Please enter the appearance of Vincent H. Cohen, Jr., Peter Taylor, Lisa Fishberg and the law firm of Schertler & Onorato, LLP, on behalf of Defendant Alberto R. Gonzales.

What does this have to do with the Dannehy investigation?

It would appear that the most obvious reason for Terwilliger to withdraw from the civil suit is to be able to devote additional time to Dannehy's more serious investigation into criminal wrong-doing.

That's certainly the opinion of the veteran Washington lawyer bringing the civil suit in question. Dan Metcalfe, a former DOJ official and now the executive director of the Collaboration on Government Secrecy at American University Washington College of Law, who brought the suit on behalf of the law students, told TPMmuckraker*: "I think it's quite fair to say that the most plausible explanation for what happened is that [Terwilliger] learned he was going to be otherwise occupied on Gonzales' behalf."

That would jibe with the news earlier this week that Dannehy has issued subpoenas through a grand jury -- it would be common practice at this point for targets in the investigation to receive letters from the prosecutor informing them that they are under investigation. And of course it would be in sync with our report that Dannehy appears to have contacted Gonzales or his lawyer in connection with the probe.

A call to Terwilliger was directed instead to Bob Bork Jr., a spokesman for Gonzales, who told TPMmuckraker: "I have no comment about anything to do with Mr. Gonzales' representation." Asked whether he could comment more broadly on the investigation, Bork repeated: "I have no comment about anything to do with Mr. Gonzales' representation."

Late Update: There's additional evidence that Terwilliger is feeling jumpy about the twin cases, and is anxious to draw a distinction between the civil suit and the possible criminal investigation. Within hours of a story being posted by the legal publication AM Law Daily incorrectly stating that DOJ was paying Gonzales' lawyers for their work on the Dannehy investigation, Terwilliger had posted the following comment on the site:

Please correct your story as it is plainly in error to report that the Justice Department is paying Judge Gonzales' legal fees in connection with the Inspector General inquiries. Those fees are a private responsibility. DOJ is reportedly paying fees at governement [sic] rates to another law firm in connection with a civil law suit in which Judge Gonzales has been sued in his individual capacity in connection with events in which he was involved, if at all, in his offical [sic] capacity.

The site quickly posted a correction.

* This sentence has been corrected from an earlier version.

Is the Department of Justice going back on its word about a report on its investigation into whether crimes were committed in the U.S. Attorney firings scandal?

When prosecutor Nora Dannehy was appointed to run the probe, in the wake of another investigation by the department's Inspector General, it was reported that Dannehy was expected to provide Attorney General Michael Mukasey with a status report on her findings within around 60 days.

That timeline was confirmed by DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine in testimony before Congress at the time:

REP. NADLER: Mr. Fine, it's been reported that Ms. Dannehy was appointed to special counsel, will make a preliminary report to the attorney general within the next two months. Do you know when this report will be made public?

MR. FINE: I think what it is is the status of the investigation at that point to the deputy attorney general or the attorney general to see where she is in the process.

...

I don't think it's sort of a formal report; I think it's more of a status report.

And it was reiterated a few weeks later in a letter from Mukasey to House Judiciary Chair John Conyers. Mukasey wrote:

As the Inspector General testified, Ms. Dannehy is expected to report on the status of the investigation to the Attorney General approximately 60 days after her appointment.

Now that 60-day deadline has come and gone. And DOJ won't confirm that any such report has been provided, instead referring us to a spokesman for Dannehy who wouldn't comment on the issue.

In other words, at first DOJ had been clear that it wanted a report submitted within 60 days. But now it won't even confirm that such a report has been submitted, or give any further information.

So is the department now going back on its requirement that Dannehy submit a report within 60 days? Is it exerting pressure to reduce the likelihood that details about Dannehy's progress -- like the fact that she's contacted Gonzales -- will slip out? What's going on?

A staffer for the House judiciary committee told TPMmuckraker that they haven't been able to get anythign out of DOJ either on whether Dannehy has submitted a report. A call to the Senate judiciary committee was not immediately returned.

We'll keep you posted as we learn more...

The Associated Press reports:

Former U.S. Attorney for Minnesota Rachel K. Paulose retaliated against a top prosecutor in her office who reported her for careless handling of classified homeland security reports, a watchdog agency said Wednesday.

In announcing a whistleblower settlement between Assistant U.S. Attorney John Marti and the Justice Department, the Office of Special Counsel said its investigation found that Paulose retaliated by taking steps to remove Marti as her first assistant. Marti accepted a demotion and returned to being an assistant U.S. attorney.

In a news release, OSC said: "Based on considerable evidence of intent, animus, and motive, OSC concluded that Ms. Paulose constructively demoted Mr. Marti."

Paulose had earlier been the subject of an Office of Special Counsel investigation into whether she'd discriminated against office employees, including allegedly using the words "fat," "black," "lazy" and "ass" in remarks to one employee.

Before that, Marti and three other top lawyers in Paulose's office had voluntarily demoted themselves to protest her Christian-influenced managerial style.

Since last year, Paulose has been an adviser to Attorney General Michael Mukasey at main DOJ.

This morning, as we noted, the Washington Post reported that the prosecutor Nora Dannehy has met with defense lawyers and issued subpoenas, through a grand jury, in her investigation into criminal wrongdoing in connection with the US Attorney firings.

And it looks like Alberto Gonzales, the former Attorney General on whose watch the firings occurred, is among the people she's contacted.

In an interview with TPMmuckraker, Bob Bork Jr., who serves as a spokesman for the ex-AG, initially said that although Gonzales' lawyer, George Terwilliger III, had reached out to Dannehy at the start of her investigation, he didn't believe that Dannehy had formally contacted Gonzales or Terwilliger in connection with the probe.

But Bork Jr. called back an hour later to say that he had been mistaken about that. "We won't be able to talk about any interactions with DOJ," he now said.

In other words, it would appear, Dannehy has contacted Gonzo and/or his lawyer.

Since DOJ released a report in July into politicized hiring at the department, there has been intense speculation that Gonzales could face perjury charges in connection to his 2007 testimony to Congress.

Tom Carson, a spokesman for Dannehy declined to comment on the progress of the investigation.

A report in the Washington Post suggests that Nora Dannehy, the prosecutor assigned by Attorney General Michael Mukasey to look into the U.S. attorney firings, is taking an aggressive approach to the job.

The Post says Dannehy "has been meeting with defense lawyers, dispatching subpoenas and seeking information about the events, according to legal sources familiar with the case."

It adds: "A grand jury in the District has issued subpoenas, the sources said."

And there's another interesting nugget:

D. Kyle Sampson, who served as the chief of staff to Gonzales until his March 2007 resignation, recently took a leave from his job as a partner at the law firm Hunton & Williams while the investigation proceeds. A spokeswoman for the law firm said he is on leave "pending admission to the D.C. bar."

DOJ's Inspector General report, released in late September, found that Sampson's testimony was "not credible" and "unpersuasive."

Dannehy was appointed September 29 to determine whether crimes had been committed in the affair. She was given 60 days to submit a preliminary report on her findings. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TPMmuckraker about the report's status.

More on this soon...

Earlier we noted that, in speaking this morning about Eric Holder, his pick for Attorney General, Barack Obama seemed to go out of his way to suggest that Holder would reverse the politicization of DOJ that we saw under President Bush and Alberto Gonzales.

Holder's own remarks backed up that notion. He said:

It is incumbent upon those of us who lead the Department to ensure not only that the nation is safe but also that our laws and traditions are respected. There is not a tension between those two. We can and we must ensure that the American people remain secure and that the great constitutional guarantees that define us as a nation are truly valued. For example, working with Republicans and Democrats in Congress, should I be confirmed, we look forward to actually structuring policies that are both protective and consistent with who we are as a nation.

And Holder included an interesting hint suggesting that he may be more aggressive than his predecessors under Bush in going after corporate malfeasance -- specifically, one would assume, in regard to the current financial crisis:

National security concerns are not defined only by the challenges created by terrorists abroad, but also by criminals in our midst, whether they be criminals located on the street or in a boardroom.

Holder's full remarks follow after the jump...

Read more »

Given our coverage of the unprecedented politicization of the Department of Justice under President Bush, we thought this passage from Barack Obama's prepared remarks this morning -- at which he announced Eric Holder as his pick for Attorney General, among other selections -- was worth noting:

Eric also has the combination of toughness and independence that we need at the Justice Department. Let me be clear: the Attorney General serves the American people. And I have every expectation that Eric will protect our people, uphold the public trust, and adhere to our Constitution.

In other words, Obama is sending a message that Holder won't see his role as being the president's personal lawyer -- which was how Alberto Gonzales, who had been Bush's lawyer both in the White House and in Texas, seemed to view the job.