U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey was rushed to a hospital after he collapsed during a speech he was giving in Washington.
(ABC)Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani also spoke to Mukasey this morning. "They had a good conversation and he sounded good," a Giuliani spokeswoman said.
The two men worked together in New York when Giuliani was an assistant U.S. attorney and Mukasey was a federal judge. Mukasey administered Giuliani's oaths of office in 1994 and 1998.
Thursday night's audience members described an impassioned attorney general who was ardently defending the Bush administration's anti-terror policies before he began slurring his words.
Cleveland State University law professor David Forte called it an "extraordinary speech" but said that near the end Mukasey "began to weaken and it was as if he was coming to a conclusion, and then it just faded away."
Robert George, a Princeton University professor who was in attendance, said, "Attorney General Mukasey was well into a speech. He was delivering it articulately, he seemed to be strong and forceful, it was a speech about the efforts of the administration in the war on terror. He gave an account of the administration's policies, defense of the administration's policies, and then perhaps a half-hour into the speech, he very suddenly began to lose balance, and his speech began to slur."
George said he was at a table near the front of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel's ballroom, and that he and others rushed to the stage after they witnessed the attorney general's fall. Security personnel had already begun to assist him, George said.
After he received emergency first aid from his security detail and a physician attending the event, paramedics transported the attorney general to George Washington University Medical Center, where doctors kept him overnight.
Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said Thursday evening that Mukasey was "conscious, conversant and alert" at the hospital, and that his vital statistics were "strong" and that he was "in good spirits" and appreciative of the well wishes and prayers he had received.
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