Alberto Gonzales and Dick Cheney watch as Brett Kavanaugh is sworn in as an appellate judge in 2006.
Photo: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images
Do you remember Alberto Gonzales? It is all right if you don’t; it’s been a long time since he served as the White House counsel, then attorney general in the George W. Bush administration where he was an architect of some of the early war on terror’s worst legal offenses. You can thank him, in part, for the U.S. using military tribunals on terrorist suspects and the torture practices known as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” In 2007, he resigned amid calls for his ouster in the Senate for firing federal prosecutors for political reasons.
And now, the Republican once devoted to bending the law in his party’s favor has come out of retirement to call Donald Trump “the most serious threat to the rule of law in a generation” and announce his support for Kamala Harris in the November election.
“Power is intoxicating, and based on Trump’s rhetoric and conduct it appears unlikely that he would respect the power of the presidency in all instances,” Gonzales wrote in a letter in Politico on Thursday. “Rather, he would abuse it for personal and political gain, and not on behalf of the American people.” As for Harris, Gonzales wrote that she “appears” to be “the best suited, able, and committed to unite us in a manner consistent with the rule of law.”
Gonzales is the second Bush-era figure in a week to come out of retirement to announce their support for the Democratic candidate over Donald Trump. Last Friday, former vice-president Dick Cheney wrote in a statement that “there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump” and that he will be voting for Harris. Trump, in response, wrote on Truth Social that Cheney was “an irrelevant RINO.”
Cheney and Gonzales join the ranks of many former Trump officials who have announced their support for Harris — including Trump’s former press secretary and his former White House communications director. Many more — including Mike Pence, Bill Barr, James Mattis, Mark Esper — have said he is unfit for office. But for anyone who holds out hope that George W. Bush will speak out — as he did rather explicitly at Trump’s inauguration — his office insists that the former president is retired from presidential politics and is focused on his painting.
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