So here’s Sen. Arlen Specter’s (R-PA) verdict on Alberto Gonzales’ testimony, delivered during this morning’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Karl Rove’s aide Scott Jennings.
Gonzales, he says, sought to mislead the committee, but should not be investigated for perjury, because his testimony, while misleading, doesn’t rise to that standard.
Reading from a Supreme Court opinion on the statute of perjury, which said that a witness cannot be convicted of perjury simply because he is a “wily witness” who “shrewdly” evades the questioner by speaking “the literal truth,” Specter said that that’s what we have here. Gonzales is certainly “wily” and sought to mislead — but he spoke, in Specter’s judgment, “the literal truth.” (Here’s how that might be.)
But “just because it’s not perjury,” Specter said, “doesn’t mean it’s the way that the highest ranking legal officer in the United States ought to respond to a Senate inquiry.” Specter went on to say that he thought that the conclusion of the committee’s investigation of the U.S. attorney firings would be to “end the tenure of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.” When that conclusion will come, however, no one knows.
