Asks 'Who Created Purge List and Why?'
Wexler NAILS the Issue During Gonzo Hearings Today in House Judiciary...
By Brad Friedman on 5/10/2007, 6:19pm PT  

I spent most of the morning (and afternoon) watching the Gonzalez hearing in the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. (The extra $5 per month to add C-SPAN3 to my cable tier has already been well worth it.)

All of those hours are perhaps best summed up by the nugget of today's hearing found in Rep. Robert Wexler's extremely to-the-point questions, along with a follow up by Rep. Stephen Cohen (some guy named Rep. Tom Feeney went between the two of them, but it was not particular interesting or newsworthy).

So to save you the time of having to watch all 9 hours, or however long it was, here are the 9 minutes or so of video from those two sections. First Wexler's must view clip, followed by Cohen:

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The crux of Wexler's very heated questions: If it wasn't anyone at DoJ, and it wasn't Bush or Cheney (as Gonzales said today) then who created the firing list?

Chairman Conyers is wondering exactly that, and his office sent us this statement, following today's hearing:

"After hours of testimony, the first and most basic question remains: who created the list of US Attorneys to be fired and why? As I said in the hearing, the bread crumbs are steadily leading toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

"We learned from the media today that Todd Graves was the ninth fired US Attorney, and Thomas Heffelfenger of Minnesota may have been the 10th. That begs the question that my colleague, Rep. Sánchez asked earlier, are there any others?

"My request for more information was met with an untenable response: 'I'll take that back.' To whom will Mr. Gonzales take that back to if he, in fact, is the Attorney General, the one in charge?"

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