In his testimony today, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey described an attempt by the White House in 2004 to go behind Comey’s back — even though he was the acting attorney general because Ashcroft was hospitalized — to get John Ashcroft’s signature on the reauthorization order for the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.
Ashcroft at the time was in the intensive care unit of George Washington University Hospital with pancreatitis and was recovering from gall bladder surgery. Comey testified that the late night effort by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and White House chief of staff Andrew Card to get Ashcroft to sign the order was a plan to “take advantage of a sick man.”
But Tony Snow doesn’t see what the big deal is: “Because he had an appendectomy, his brain didn’t work?” (Yes, he got the organ wrong.)
