AG Warned Bush on Miers Nomination
Jan. 21, 2006 — -- In her new book "Supreme Conflict," ABC News' legal correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg reveals for the first time how Attorney General Alberto Gonzales tried to block the nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers.
Jan Crawford Greenburg: When Gonzales found out that President Bush was serious about nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, he was shocked. His advisers told him he had to do something about it. He had to intervene. … Gonzales was reluctant to do it. He had been a potential nominee himself. He knew Harriet Miers from their days back in Texas, where they had been kind of both been first: she was the first woman to do all these great things, he was the first Hispanic. They both had come to Washington together.
But his advisers said, "You have to do it. Conservatives will revolt." So the Friday before Miers' nomination was announced, Gonzales went to the White House and met with President Bush to lay out his concerns about the Miers' nomination. The irony of this is that Gonzales, of all the administration officials, was the one most vilified by conservatives.
Conservatives were deeply suspicious of Alberto Gonzales. They were deeply opposed to the idea that Gonzales would go on to the Supreme Court. But at the end of the day, the most high-ranking administration official to oppose the Miers' nomination was Alberto Gonzales himself. And President Bush didn't listen.
Related Stories
ABC News Live