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Alberto Gonzales Fast Facts

By CNN

(CNN) — Here is a look at the life of Alberto R. Gonzales, the first Latino US attorney general.

Personal

Birth date: August 4, 1955

Birth place: San Antonio, Texas

Birth name: Alberto R. Gonzales

Father: Pablo Gonzales, migrant worker and construction worker

Mother: Maria (Rodriguez) Gonzales

Marriages: Rebecca (Turner) Gonzales (August 31, 1991-present); Diane Clemens (1979-1985, divorced)

Children: with Rebecca (Turner) Gonzales: Gabriel, Graham and Jared

Education: Attended the US Air Force Academy, 1975-1977; Rice University, B.A., 1979; Harvard Law School, J.D., 1982

Military service: US Air Force, 1973-1975

Other Facts

He is the second of eight children.

On the Texas state Supreme Court, was considered a moderate. He voted that teenage girls did not have to get parental permission to get an abortion.

Timeline

1982-1995 – After graduating from law school, joins the firm of Vinson & Elkins.

1990-1991 – President of the Houston Hispanic Bar Association.

1991-1994 – Board director for the Texas State Bar Association.

1995-1997 – General counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush.

1996-1999 – Board trustee of the Texas Bar Foundation.

December 2, 1997-January 10, 1999 – Serves as Texas’ 100th Secretary of State.

1999 – Is named Latino Lawyer of the Year by the Hispanic National Bar Association and is elected to the American Law Institute.

1999-2001 – Serves on the Texas Supreme Court.

January 2001-February 2005 – Serves as White House counsel under Bush.

2003 – Is inducted into the Hispanic Scholarship Fund Alumni Hall of Fame.

November 10, 2004 – Is nominated by President Bush to be attorney general.

February 3, 2005 – Is confirmed by the US Senate, 60-36.

February 3, 2005-September 17, 2007 – Serves as the 80th attorney general of the United States.

February 6, 2006 – Defends the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

December 7, 2006 – Seven US attorneys are abruptly fired by the Bush administration. Questions about possible political motivations for the removals prompt an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general. Ultimately, the investigation reveals that nine US attorneys were removed in 2006. The inspector general concludes that the process of removal was “fundamentally flawed.”

January 23, 2007 – Is the designated survivor for President Bush’s State of the Union address, staying away from the US Capitol in an undisclosed location.

March 2007 – Gonzales says he accepts responsibility for the dismissals and adds that firing the US attorneys en masse was a mistake. However, he rejects calls for his resignation.

May 15, 2007 – During a Senate Judiciary hearing related to the removals of the US attorneys, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey describes a 2004 clash with Gonzales while then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was in the hospital. He says that Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card tried to get Ashcroft to reauthorize a warrantless wiretapping program while the attorney general was recovering from surgery in an intensive care unit.

July 24, 2007 – Gonzales testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee and disputes Comey’s account of the hospital meeting. He says that he went to the hospital to discuss other intelligence matters, not the domestic surveillance program.

August 27, 2007 – After months of controversy over the domestic surveillance program and the dismissals of US attorneys, Gonzales announces that he is stepping down, effective September 17. Bush says that Gonzales is a “talented and honorable” person whose “good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.”

August 1, 2009 – Begins working as a visiting professor at Texas Tech University, in the political science department. Gonzales will also help the university develop a leadership development program for minority students.

July 21, 2010 – It is announced that Gonzales will not face criminal charges for making inaccurate and misleading statements in regard to the firing of nine US attorneys.

January 2, 2012 – Begins teaching full time at Belmont University’s College of Law in Nashville, as the Doyle Rogers Distinguished Chair of Law. In 2014, Gonzales becomes the dean of the law school. On May 31, 2026, Gonzales steps down as dean.

September 6, 2016 – Gonzales’ memoir “True Faith and Allegiance: A Story of Service and Sacrifice in War and Peace” is published.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

Republican senators release Fauci’s text messages discussing safety of Covid vaccine and pregnancy

By CNN
(CNN) — Two Republican senators have released the first batch of text messages retrieved from Dr. Anthony Fauci’s former government phone as part of an investigation into his leadership and actions during the Covid-19 pandemic – including messages in which he discusses the possible risks and safety of the vaccine during pregnancy.Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky released the texts publicly online Monday, after the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided Fauci’s iPhone to a Senate subcommittee investigating him.The phone contained more than 34,000 messages and 522 voicemails, said the senators in a news release. They published screenshots showing a fraction of these – 11 texts sent during Fauci’s tenure as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).In one exchange on January 25, 2021, Dr. Vivek Murthy, then a member of President Joe Biden’s Covid advisory board, asked about any potential risk to those who are pregnant, or whether Fauci knew of any “data or theoretical reason why vaccinating early vs late in pregnancy would be preferred.”Fauci responded that there was “no data or theoretical reason to believe that vaccinating early versus later in pregnancy would be preferred.”Then he added: “Since many people have significant cytokines storm and fever after the 2nd dose, this theoretically could be associated with miscarriage in the 1st trimester.”Dr. Rochelle Walensky, then-director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), replied, “Definitely a good point, esp after dose two.”In another exchange a day later, according to the screenshots released, Fauci said that any vaccine with limited data on pregnancy should be carefully considered. “One must weigh the potential risks against the benefits,” he wrote, pointing out that a Covid infection could be “especially” serious in pregnancy.Though pregnant individuals were not included in vaccine trials, more than 10,000 had been vaccinated since the government issued an Emergency Use Authorization for the vaccine – and “no issues have arisen,” he wrote in a text.CNN has reached out to Fauci, Murthy and Walensky for comment.The CDC formally recommended on August 11, 2021, that pregnant people receive the vaccine after analyzing data and finding no increased risks of miscarriage or other safety concerns related to the shot.The CDC also warned during the pandemic that pregnant people were more likely to get severely ill compared to those who were not pregnant, according to an archived page from the agency’s website.Studies have since shown that the vaccines were safe during pregnancy, and that serious adverse reactions are rare. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists still recommends, as of this spring, that individuals who are pregnant or will be pregnant during the fall or winter should receive annual Covid-19 vaccines.In a news release, Johnson and Paul said their staff were reviewing the rest of the information on Fauci’s phone, and would publicly release them “as soon as possible.” The texts released on Monday “could have an immediate impact of public health and the principle of informed consent,” they said.The news release also listed several further public statements made by Fauci and other health officials in the months following the text exchange, recommending pregnant people receive Covid-19 vaccines.Battles on the HillPaul, who chairs the full Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has long clashed with Fauci, who he subpoenaed in June to appear before Congress.He and other prominent Republicans accuse Fauci of covering up the origins of the pandemic, and of lying and misrepresenting data during the Covid-19 response – though they’ve yet to present clear evidence of such an alleged cover-up.Republican members of the Senate subcommittee voted last week to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress after he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times in a hearing, refusing to answer questions over concerns his responses would be used in an attempt to bring charges against him.Democrats pointed to the hearing as the latest example of Republicans spending years trying to deflect pandemic criticisms away from President Donald Trump and toward Fauci.“The campaign to vilify you, Dr. Fauci, is just one part of this larger campaign against science and facts — a campaign that has made Americans less safe,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut.Ahead of that hearing, the committee also released more than 1,100 pages of Fauci’s personal diary from 2019 to 2022.Neither HHS nor Paul’s committee alerted Fauci ahead of time that they had obtained his diary and that they planned to publish it in full, according to a person familiar with the matter.The diary entries narrated Fauci’s growing concerns about Covid-19, frustrations with the government response and conflicting relationships with both Trump and Biden administration officials.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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