A former top Justice Department official has revealed that former Attorney General John Ashcroft had grave concerns over the Bush administration’s warrantless domestic wiretapping program and once threatened to resign over it. Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told Congress on Tuesday that Ashcroft refused to sign off on the spying campaign because he believed it was unconstitutional. Comey’s comments mark the first public acknowledgment that the Justice Department found the original surveillance program illegal. Comey also revealed new details about how then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card tried to coerce Ashcroft into re-authorizing the program as he lay in a hospital bed seriously ill with pancreatitis in March 2004. At the time, Comey was acting attorney general because of Ashcroft’s illness. Comey said that after he refused to sign off on the program, Gonzales and Card raced to the hospital in an attempt to get Ashcroft to sign off on it from his hospital bed. Once Comey learned of Gonzales’s plan, he too had to race to the hospital to support Ashcroft.