Blast from Comey's past: stopping Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card from
exploiting an ill, hospitalized John Ashcroft (2007)
https://www.google.com/amp/s/thinkprogress.org/amp/p/66fb293ac29
"In March 2004, President Bush’s warrantless domestic spying efforts were temporarily suspended after then-acting Attorney General James Comey refused to sign on to an extension of the program “amid concerns about its legality and oversight.”
Today, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Comey detailed the extraordinary and potentially illegal efforts made by Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card — then White House counsel and chief of staff, respectively — to attempt to force John Ashcroft to overrule Comey, despite the fact that Ashcroft was debilitated in a hospital with pancreatitis.
In his testimony today, Comey spoke for the first time about:
— The high-speed pursuit that took place when Comey learned that Card and Gonzales were on their way to see Ashcroft at the hospital;
— The hospital meeting, in which the seriously ill Ashcroft “stunned” Comey by lifting “his head off the pillow and in very strong terms” rejecting Card and Gonzales’ effort to have him reauthorize the spying ......" (much more at link)