Did Gonzales Help Bush Keep his DUI Quiet?
/Senate Democrats put off a vote
on White House counsel Alberto Gonzales's nomination to be attorney
general, complaining he had provided evasive answers to questions about
torture and the mistreatment of prisoners. But Gonzales's most
surprising answer may have come on a different subject: his role in
helping President Bush escape jury duty in a drunken-driving case
involving a dancer at an Austin strip club in 1996. The judge and other
lawyers in the case last week disputed a written account of the matter
provided by Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It's a
complete misrepresentation," said David Wahlberg, lawyer for the
dancer, about Gonzales's account. Bush's summons to serve as a juror in
the drunken-driving case was, in retrospect, a fateful moment in his
political career: by getting excused from jury duty he was able to
avoid questions that would have required him to disclose his own 1976
arrest and conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI)
in Kennebunkport, Maine. Asked by Sen. Patrick Leahy to describe "in
detail" the only court appearance he ever made on behalf of Bush,
Gonzales--who was then chief counsel to the Texas governor--wrote that
he had accompanied Bush the day he went to court "prepared to serve on
a jury." While there, Gonzales wrote, he "observed" the defense lawyer
make a motion to strike Bush from the jury panel "to which the
prosecutor did not object." Asked by the judge whether he had "any
views on this," Gonzales recalled, he said he did not. [more]
- News media barely covered Newsweek report on alleged Gonzales cover-up [more]
- CREW Files Bar Complaint Against Attorney General Nominee Alberto Gonzales [more]
