Thursday, November 15, 2007

If You’ve Done Nothing Wrong…

Friends of Alberto Gonzales are setting up a legal defense fund for the former attorney general.

David G. Leitch, a Gonzales friend and general counsel at the Ford Motor Co., wrote in an e-mail solicitation to potential contributors last month that Gonzales is “innocent of any wrongdoing” but does not have the means to pay for his legal defense after a career spent mostly in public service.

[…]

The Justice Department’s investigation of Gonzales is likely to be completed in the next several months, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation’s progress. The inspector general is looking at whether Gonzales misled Congress in sworn testimony and improperly sought to influence testimony of an aide, Monica M. Goodling, about last year’s firings of nine U.S. attorneys.

At least Mr. Gonzales will have the benefit of counsel, which is more than he was willing to afford the people at Gitmo, and I’m sure that Mr. Gonzales’s lawyer will demand a writ of habeas corpus, something else he was lukewarm to when he was in office.

As for the idea that he doesn’t have the means to afford good counsel, I hear there are a bunch of former U.S. attorneys whom he could approach to take on his case pro bono. But then, as our friends on the right are fond of telling us, if you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about, right?