Posted on 09/16/2007 4:01:07 PM PDT by decimon
WASHINGTON - President Bush has settled on Michael B. Mukasey, a retired federal judge from New York, to replace Alberto Gonzales as attorney general and will announce his selection Monday, a person familiar with the president's decision said Sunday evening.
Mukasey, who has handled terrorist cases in the U.S. legal system for more than a decade, would become the nation's top law enforcement officer if confirmed by the Senate. Mukasey has the support of some key Democrats, and it appeared Bush was trying to avoid a bruising confirmation battle.
The 66-year-old New York native, who is a judicial adviser to GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani, would take charge of a Justice Department where morale is low following months of investigations into the firings of nine U.S. attorneys and Gonzales' sworn testimony on the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program.
Key lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans alike, had questioned Gonzales' credibility and competency after he repeatedly testified that he could not recall key events.
The White House refused to comment Sunday. The person familiar with Bush's decision refused to be identified by name because the nomination had not been officially announced.
Bush supporters say Mukasey, who was chief judge of the high-profile courthouse in Manhattan for six years, has impeccable credentials, is a strong, law-and-order jurist, especially on national security issues, and will restore confidence in the Justice Department.
Bush critics see the Mukasey nomination as evidence of Bush's weakened political clout as he heads into the final 15 months of his presidency. It's unclear how Senate Democrats will view Mukasey's credentials, but early indications are that he will face less opposition than a more hardline, partisan candidate like Ted Olson, who was believed to have been a finalist.
Mukasey has received past endorsements from Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, who is from Mukasey's home state. And in 2005, the liberal Alliance for Justice put Mukasey on a list of four judges who, if chosen for the Supreme Court, would show the president's commitment to nominating people who could be supported by both Democrats and Republicans.
Last week, some Senate Democrats threatened to block the confirmation of Olson, who represented Bush before the Supreme Court in the contested 2000 election. Democratic senators have theorized that Bush might nominate Mukasey, in part, because he wanted to avoid a bruising confirmation battle.
The possibility that Bush would pick Mukasey, however, angered some supporters on the GOP's right flank, who have given Mukasey less-than-enthusiastic reviews. Some legal conservatives and Republican activists have expressed reservations about Mukasey's legal record and past endorsements from liberals, and were drafting a strategy to oppose his confirmation even before it became known that Bush had chosen him.
Mukasey was nominated to the federal bench in 1987 by President Reagan. He was chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York before he rejoined the New York law firm of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler as a partner in September 2006.
He first joined Patterson Belknap in 1976 after serving as assistant U.S. attorney in the criminal division of the Southern District, where he rose to become chief of its official corruption unit. During his 18 years as a judge, Mukasey presided over thousands of cases, including the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was accused of plotting to destroy New York City landmarks.
In the 1996 sentencing of co-conspirators in the case, Mukasey accused the sheik of trying to spread death "in a scale unseen in this country since the Civil War." He then sentenced the blind sheik to life.
The Mukasey nomination could be Bush's last major Cabinet appointment.
Friday was the last day of Gonzales' 2-1/2 years at Justice. Solicitor General Paul Clement will serve as acting attorney general until the Senate confirms Gonzales' replacement. Gonzales' conflicting public statements about the firings of the U.S. prosecutors led Democrats and Republicans alike to question his honesty. Their charges were compounded by his later sworn testimony about the terrorist surveillance program, which was contradicted by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller and former senior Justice Department officials.
A congressional investigation into the firings recently shifted its focus onto whether the attorney general lied to Congress. The Justice Department also has opened an internal investigation into the matters.
At first, the president backed his embattled attorney general. At an Aug. 9 news conference, Bush said, "Why would I hold somebody accountable who has done nothing wrong?"
A little more than two weeks later, Bush announced that he had "reluctantly" accepted the resignation of Gonzales, who followed John Ashcroft's four-year stint as Bush's first attorney general. Bush said Gonzales, his loyal colleague from Texas who was his White House counsel before heading to Justice, had worked tirelessly to keep the nation safe.
Bush said opposition lawmakers treated Gonzales unfairly for political reasons. "It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeded from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud," Bush said.
From the article that you posted. So this is all what the fuss is about, this guy mishandled an abortion case in 1994! So what do we expect him to do in the next 15 months? Not overturn Roe Versus Wade which no AG will be ever able to do? Or may be he will order 10 million women to have abortions (extreme sarcasm).
Some on our side can be as bad as moveon.org and the left wing lunatics, but fortunately the Republican Party and this President is not a slave of the crazies on our side as the democrats are slaves for their left wing moonbats.
They have no idea how bad it can get.
Then put that aside. Why on earth would Bush pick Chuck Schumer’s guy?
Hmmm. Interesting interpretation. I have never posted ANYTHING about this person before lightly more than 1/2 hour ago. Where do you get thia "barking for a while" from?
Maybe that Schumer was just posturing for the cameras, thinking that in no way would Bush select him, but that it would give Schumer an opportunity to pretend to be concerned with fairness, middle-of-the-roadness, and bipartisanship, while everybody knows that Schumer is none of those...
Can you give me/them some idea?
I don’t know what he’ll do. I do know I didn’t work hard to get President Bush reelected, so he could cede his presidential authority to Charles Schumer. And I don’t think that it’s good for the GOP’s future that Schumer and Reid now run the executive branch.
Moreover, the 1994 case was about a lot more than abortion. Mukasey sent a person seeking political asylum back to the Chicoms.
Were you okay with Clinton and Reno sending Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba?
Bush was not going to get impached. If anything, by caving into them, he is much worse off.
Please name Schumer and Reid great victories since they took Congress, I am waiting.
So, you think the war on terror is best prosecuted by law enforcement and not the military? Because that’s what Mukasey’s record indicates.
No I was not OK with that. What is the background for the case of this Chinese refugee? Do you know why did he send him back?
I’m with you. I see alot of immaturity here lately, or fear, I can’t decide.
Here’s hoping one of those swimmers is Ted Kennedy.
There's a good chance that there was no legal basis for keeping him here.
"Thank God, the Republican party doesn't try to be all things/anything to some people any of the time!" -- me, [today]
Stop the crap and putting things in my mouth that I did not say. You are using liberal tactics here.
It is important for the AG to be strong on fighting the war on terror because he is head of the FBI and the Justice department. From the record Musakey fit this profile and that is good.
Yes, the man and his wife refused to have a MANDATED abortion. He feared he would be punished if sent back to China, Mukasey didn’t feel that this was political persecution.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1897115/posts
This is B.S. of the first magnitude, allowing the low-life slugs to dictate who can be nominated from THE OPPOSITE PARTY.
Shame on GWB on this one.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.