Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) also pulled no punches in his questioning.
He began by battering Gonzales with questions about how he could make false statements about his involvement in the process if he was properly prepared for the January Senate hearing and his March 13th press conference. Gonzales kept insisting that he’d been prepared, Specter demanded to know how he could have made such statements if he’d actually been properly prepared, and they went back and forth like that for a little bit.
And later in Specter’s questioning, he asked how Gonzales could say that he wasn’t involved in the process of eliminating certain U.S. attorneys if he’d sat in on a meeting last year when DoJ officials discussed the possible removal of Carol Lam. Gonzales responded by drawing an artful distinction between that meeting, which was in the course of his normal duties as attorney general, and the review process of U.S. attorneys. That conversation, Gonzales said, was “outside of the review process.”
