IBC
03-30-2007, 11:31 AM
Ex-aide: Gonzales signed off on attorney firings
Democratic panel chair Leahy says Justice Department motivation improper
WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was briefed regularly over two years on the firings of federal prosecutors, his former top aide said Thursday, disputing Gonzales' claims he was aware of the dismissals from afar and newly undercutting his already shaky credibility.
Gonzales and former White House counsel Harriet Miers made the final decision on whether to fire the U.S. attorneys last year, said Kyle Sampson, the attorney general's former chief of staff.
"I don't think the attorney general's statement that he was not involved in any discussions of U.S. attorney removals was accurate," Sampson told a Senate Judiciary Committee inquiry into whether the dismissals were politically motivated.
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"I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain U.S. attorneys to resign," Sampson said.
Sampson's testimony, for the first time, put Gonzales at the heart of the firings amid ever-changing Justice Department accounts of how they were planned.
Gonzales has said, repeatedly, that he was not closely involved in the firings and largely depended on Sampson to orchestrate them.
Sampson resigned March 12. A day later, Gonzales said he "never saw documents. We never had a discussion about where things stood" in the firings.
White House steps back
The White House stepped back from defending Gonzales even before Sampson finished testifying.
"I'm going to have to let the attorney general speak for himself," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said as Sampson entered his third hour in front of senators. Perino made it clear that Gonzales needs to explain himself to Congress - and quickly.
The attorney general is not scheduled to appear publicly on Capitol Hill until April 17. "I agree three weeks is a long time," Perino said.
The Justice Department did not have an immediate comment about Sampson's testimony.
A growing number of Democrats and Republicans has called for Gonzales to step down. Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Thursday the attorney general has no plans to resign.
The Senate committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., stopped short of calling for Gonzales' ouster. But Leahy reminded a reporter Thursday, "I voted against him," when the Senate confirmed the Gonzales as the nation's top law enforcer in 2005.
"If the president feels Mr. Gonzales is upholding the highest level of professionalism that he wants in his administration and that the president wants to be remembered for, then he'll stay on," Leahy said.
Reasons for dismissals
The stony-faced Sampson, a longtime and loyal aide to Gonzales, said other senior Justice Department officials helped to plan the firings, which the White House first suggested shortly after President Bush won a second term in 2004.
Sampson said he was never aware of any case where prosecutors were told to step down because they refused to help Republicans in local election or corruption investigations. He also said he saw little difference between dismissing prosecutors for political reasons versus performance-related ones.
"A U.S. attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective, either because he or she has alienated the leadership of the department in Washington or cannot work constructively with law enforcement or other governmental constituencies in the district, is unsuccessful," Sampson said.
MSNBC
But Sampson admitted he should have been more careful to prevent Paul McNulty, the deputy attorney general, and William Moschella, the principal associate deputy attorney general, from giving incomplete or misleading information to Congress in describing the dismissals.
Sampson himself was unable to answer many of the senators' specific questions, claiming a fuzzy memory.
Justice 'disrepair' and dysfunction
Furor over the purge has outraged lawmakers and current U.S. attorneys. With televisions throughout the Justice Department tuned to Sampson's testimony, Gonzales spent two hours trying to soothe a group of seven prosecutors he met with in Washington.
He has held similar meetings across the country and planned to attend one Friday in Boston.
Whether they have done any good is unclear, said Sen. Arlen Specter, the committee's top Republican.
"Right now it is generally acknowledged that the Department of Justice is in a state of disrepair, perhaps even dysfunctional, because of what has happened, with morale low, with U.S. attorneys across the country do not know when another shoe may drop," said Specter, R-Pa.
Sampson also confirmed a large White House role in planning the firings. That undercut the department's long-cherished image of acting independently in pursuing crime.
He said that White House political staffers working for presidential aide Karl Rove were involved closely in the plans to replace prosecutors - as evidenced by thousands of department e-mails released to Congress.
Timing of the firings
It was Miers, he said, who initially floated the idea of firing all 93 federal prosecutors and ultimately joined Gonzales in approving them.
excerpts Sampson questioning
Excerpts from the Kyle Sampson hearing on the firing of eight U.S. attorneys:
"The decision makers in this case were the attorney general (Alberto Gonzales) and the counsel to the president (then Harriet Miers). I and others made staff recommendations but they were approved and signed off on by the principles." - Kyle Sampson
"The dismissed U.S. attorneys have testified under oath and said in public that they believe political influence was applied. ... If they are right - and that's why we're having these hearings, to determine if they are right, the mixing of partisan political goals into federal law enforcement - then we have a situation that is highly improper. And it corrodes the public's trust in our system of justice. It's wrong." - Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
"(Attorney General Alberto Gonzales') situation is grave. Whether he was intimately involved in this debacle or just presided over a department that allowed it to happen and didn't know a thing, that's a pretty severe indictment." - Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
"Right now it is generally acknowledged that the Department of Justice is in a state of disrepair, perhaps even dysfunction, because of what has happened." - Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.
"We will give you a fair shake. I think the attorney general deserves a fair shake." - Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.
"This process was not scientific, nor was it extensively documented. That is the nature of presidential personnel decisions. But neither was the process random or arbitrary." - Kyle Sampson
"Presidential appointees are judged not only on their professional skills but also their management abilities, their relationships with law enforcement and other governmental leaders, and their support for the priorities of the president and the attorney general." - Kyle Sampson
"The distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a United States Attorney is, in my view, largely artificial." - Kyle Sampson
"By and large, the process operated by consensus: when any official whom I consulted felt that an individual name should be removed form the list, it generally was." - Kyle Sampson
"With the exception of Bud Cummins, none of the U.S. attorneys was asked to resign in favor of a particular individual who had already been identified to take the vacant spot. Nor, to my knowledge, was any U.S. attorney asked to resign for an improper reason. ... To my knowledge, nothing of the sort occurred here." - Kyle Sampson
Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., asked Sampson whether he saw a "perception problem" with the timing of the firings; several of the prosecutors were investigating cases that could poorly portray Republicans.
"At the time, I personally did not take adequate account of the perception problem that would result," Sampson said.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, offered Sampson some support. Cornyn said he had seen no evidence the dismissals were "designed to impede or actually did impede a criminal investigation or prosecution."
Congress and the White House are wrangling over whether Rove, Miers and other administration officials will testify in public about their roles in the firings.
Bush has offered to make them available in private meetings; lawmakers from both parties have rejected that idea.
Specter urged White House officials to testify. But he said he was willing to compromise on some of the terms. "Let's work it out," Specter said. "Let's try to come to terms here to get the information this committee needs so we can make a judgment."
Noting questions about Rove's role in particular, Specter added: "I think we ought to hear from him candidly, sooner rather than later."
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive
Democratic panel chair Leahy says Justice Department motivation improper
WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was briefed regularly over two years on the firings of federal prosecutors, his former top aide said Thursday, disputing Gonzales' claims he was aware of the dismissals from afar and newly undercutting his already shaky credibility.
Gonzales and former White House counsel Harriet Miers made the final decision on whether to fire the U.S. attorneys last year, said Kyle Sampson, the attorney general's former chief of staff.
"I don't think the attorney general's statement that he was not involved in any discussions of U.S. attorney removals was accurate," Sampson told a Senate Judiciary Committee inquiry into whether the dismissals were politically motivated.
Story continues below ↓advertisement
"I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain U.S. attorneys to resign," Sampson said.
Sampson's testimony, for the first time, put Gonzales at the heart of the firings amid ever-changing Justice Department accounts of how they were planned.
Gonzales has said, repeatedly, that he was not closely involved in the firings and largely depended on Sampson to orchestrate them.
Sampson resigned March 12. A day later, Gonzales said he "never saw documents. We never had a discussion about where things stood" in the firings.
White House steps back
The White House stepped back from defending Gonzales even before Sampson finished testifying.
"I'm going to have to let the attorney general speak for himself," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said as Sampson entered his third hour in front of senators. Perino made it clear that Gonzales needs to explain himself to Congress - and quickly.
The attorney general is not scheduled to appear publicly on Capitol Hill until April 17. "I agree three weeks is a long time," Perino said.
The Justice Department did not have an immediate comment about Sampson's testimony.
A growing number of Democrats and Republicans has called for Gonzales to step down. Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Thursday the attorney general has no plans to resign.
The Senate committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., stopped short of calling for Gonzales' ouster. But Leahy reminded a reporter Thursday, "I voted against him," when the Senate confirmed the Gonzales as the nation's top law enforcer in 2005.
"If the president feels Mr. Gonzales is upholding the highest level of professionalism that he wants in his administration and that the president wants to be remembered for, then he'll stay on," Leahy said.
Reasons for dismissals
The stony-faced Sampson, a longtime and loyal aide to Gonzales, said other senior Justice Department officials helped to plan the firings, which the White House first suggested shortly after President Bush won a second term in 2004.
Sampson said he was never aware of any case where prosecutors were told to step down because they refused to help Republicans in local election or corruption investigations. He also said he saw little difference between dismissing prosecutors for political reasons versus performance-related ones.
"A U.S. attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective, either because he or she has alienated the leadership of the department in Washington or cannot work constructively with law enforcement or other governmental constituencies in the district, is unsuccessful," Sampson said.
MSNBC
But Sampson admitted he should have been more careful to prevent Paul McNulty, the deputy attorney general, and William Moschella, the principal associate deputy attorney general, from giving incomplete or misleading information to Congress in describing the dismissals.
Sampson himself was unable to answer many of the senators' specific questions, claiming a fuzzy memory.
Justice 'disrepair' and dysfunction
Furor over the purge has outraged lawmakers and current U.S. attorneys. With televisions throughout the Justice Department tuned to Sampson's testimony, Gonzales spent two hours trying to soothe a group of seven prosecutors he met with in Washington.
He has held similar meetings across the country and planned to attend one Friday in Boston.
Whether they have done any good is unclear, said Sen. Arlen Specter, the committee's top Republican.
"Right now it is generally acknowledged that the Department of Justice is in a state of disrepair, perhaps even dysfunctional, because of what has happened, with morale low, with U.S. attorneys across the country do not know when another shoe may drop," said Specter, R-Pa.
Sampson also confirmed a large White House role in planning the firings. That undercut the department's long-cherished image of acting independently in pursuing crime.
He said that White House political staffers working for presidential aide Karl Rove were involved closely in the plans to replace prosecutors - as evidenced by thousands of department e-mails released to Congress.
Timing of the firings
It was Miers, he said, who initially floated the idea of firing all 93 federal prosecutors and ultimately joined Gonzales in approving them.
excerpts Sampson questioning
Excerpts from the Kyle Sampson hearing on the firing of eight U.S. attorneys:
"The decision makers in this case were the attorney general (Alberto Gonzales) and the counsel to the president (then Harriet Miers). I and others made staff recommendations but they were approved and signed off on by the principles." - Kyle Sampson
"The dismissed U.S. attorneys have testified under oath and said in public that they believe political influence was applied. ... If they are right - and that's why we're having these hearings, to determine if they are right, the mixing of partisan political goals into federal law enforcement - then we have a situation that is highly improper. And it corrodes the public's trust in our system of justice. It's wrong." - Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
"(Attorney General Alberto Gonzales') situation is grave. Whether he was intimately involved in this debacle or just presided over a department that allowed it to happen and didn't know a thing, that's a pretty severe indictment." - Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.
"Right now it is generally acknowledged that the Department of Justice is in a state of disrepair, perhaps even dysfunction, because of what has happened." - Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.
"We will give you a fair shake. I think the attorney general deserves a fair shake." - Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.
"This process was not scientific, nor was it extensively documented. That is the nature of presidential personnel decisions. But neither was the process random or arbitrary." - Kyle Sampson
"Presidential appointees are judged not only on their professional skills but also their management abilities, their relationships with law enforcement and other governmental leaders, and their support for the priorities of the president and the attorney general." - Kyle Sampson
"The distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a United States Attorney is, in my view, largely artificial." - Kyle Sampson
"By and large, the process operated by consensus: when any official whom I consulted felt that an individual name should be removed form the list, it generally was." - Kyle Sampson
"With the exception of Bud Cummins, none of the U.S. attorneys was asked to resign in favor of a particular individual who had already been identified to take the vacant spot. Nor, to my knowledge, was any U.S. attorney asked to resign for an improper reason. ... To my knowledge, nothing of the sort occurred here." - Kyle Sampson
Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., asked Sampson whether he saw a "perception problem" with the timing of the firings; several of the prosecutors were investigating cases that could poorly portray Republicans.
"At the time, I personally did not take adequate account of the perception problem that would result," Sampson said.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, offered Sampson some support. Cornyn said he had seen no evidence the dismissals were "designed to impede or actually did impede a criminal investigation or prosecution."
Congress and the White House are wrangling over whether Rove, Miers and other administration officials will testify in public about their roles in the firings.
Bush has offered to make them available in private meetings; lawmakers from both parties have rejected that idea.
Specter urged White House officials to testify. But he said he was willing to compromise on some of the terms. "Let's work it out," Specter said. "Let's try to come to terms here to get the information this committee needs so we can make a judgment."
Noting questions about Rove's role in particular, Specter added: "I think we ought to hear from him candidly, sooner rather than later."
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive