LAWFUEL – The Legal Newswire – Former Attorney General John Ashcroft w…

LAWFUEL – The Legal Newswire – Former Attorney General John Ashcroft was visited in hospital by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales on the White House’s demands for its national security program, according to FBI reports.

The White House demanded in 2004 that the Justice Department approve a secret national security program without fully briefing the attorney general, according to the FBI director’s personal notes.

The partially censored notes from Robert S. Mueller, dated March 12, 2004, describe a distraught and feeble Attorney General John Ashcroft in his hospital room just moments after being visited by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and former presidential chief of staff Andy Card.

Mueller’s account of the dramatic hospital visit backs up earlier descriptions of the dispute over whether to continue the national security program despite Justice Department concerns that it might not be legal.

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