The joint Inspector General/Office of Professional Responsibility report looking into the December 6, 2006 decision to fire a group of U.S. Attorneys is set to be released on Monday morning, according to sources inside and close to the Justice Department. The credibility of public statements and Congressional testimony of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales figures at the heart of the report. No word yet on the conclusions that have been reached.
However, in two posts at The Atlantic, Murray Waas gives us a glimpse at the fruits of the probe and a suggestion that some parts of it have yet to wrap up. Gonzales is said to be drawing President Bush steadily deeper into the conflict. In one piece, Waas reports that the late-night hospital visit that Gonzales paid to former Attorney General John Ashcroft was, according to Gonzales’s statement to investigators, directed by Bush. In a second, Gonzales reportedly states that Bush directed him to write up a summary of Gonzales’s meeting with Congressional leaders—the famed “Gang of Eight.” Waas writes that investigators are focused on the serious inaccuracies in the notes that Gonzales prepared, and on the fact that the notes were written after the fact. Both of these reports suggest that Gonzales and his lawyers are bracing for more bad news next week.
