Trump impeachment: on Homeland Security

Dick Cheney: OpEd: Pressured DOJ to declare NSA domestic spying legal

COMEY: I was the #2 person at the Justice Department then, the deputy attorney general. And we were in a dispute with the White House about whether there was a lawful basis for surveillance activities that the president had authorized the NSA to engage in [domestically]. We had concluded--and I agreed--that there wasn't a lawful basis for a big part of these activities. Vice President Cheney presided at a meeting to pressure me to change my view. He looked me in the eye and said, "Thousands of people are going to die because of what you're doing." What he meant was, "Because you are making us stop this surveillance program." I responded, "I have to say what we find lawful. So I can't change my view." I felt like I was going to be crushed like a grape, frankly. But in a way, there was no other way I could act. The law was clear.

John Ashcroft: OpEd: refused to declare NSA domestic spying legal

COMEY: Yeah, I did. My boss, John Ashcroft, was in intensive care at George Washington Hospital. And although we had told the White House we can't certify [NSA domestic surveillance], the president was sending two of his top people to the hospital. I ran over, to make sure a desperately ill man wasn't asked to sign something when he wasn't competent to sign it and I was the acting attorney general.

Q: And in the end, he didn't sign it?

COMEY: The White House [officials] tried to get John Ashcroft to sign off on this program that we had said couldn't continue because it didn't have a lawful basis. And Ashcroft shocked me by pushing himself up on his elbows & blasting them. And telling them he had been misled. They had deprived him of the legal advice he needed. The [White House officials] walked out.