Gonzales’s Justice Department Obstructed Investigation of Republican Congressmen

By Scott Horton

The Wall Street Journal now confirms what we’ve known from the beginning: Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department put the brakes on criminal investigations targeting a number of Republican congressmen in an effort to insure that no indictments were returned before the November 2006 elections. How did that work? The U.S. attorneys need to get a go-ahead from Washington before seeking indictments of key figures such as members of Congress. As we learned previously in the case involving Randy “Duke” Cunningham and other California congressmen, Gonzales’s Justice Department held this process up inexplicably for many months—with an obvious intention of ensuring that the indictments did not adversely affect the Republicans’ election efforts. Now the Journal tracks what happened in the Rick Renzi case, and finds the same practice of obstruction.