In the runup to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in January, Gonzales’ chief of staff Kyle Sampson lied to committee staff in order to convince them that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) “was wrong” to raise questions about the U.S. attorney firings.
The email was produced yesterday by Sen. Feinstein and demonstrates that the Justice Department did not turn over all documents relevant to the firings to Congress earlier this week, since the email was not among the 3000 pages.
In the email, which is an exchange between Sampson and committee staff, Sampson provided a series of bullet points of “the inaccuracies that Sen. Feinstein continues to put out there.” They were:
- USAs were encouraged to resign “before their terms expired” — not true;- USAs were encouraged to resign “without cause” - no comment (but not true);
- USAs were pushed out so as to interfere with ongoing public corruption cases — absolutely not true;
- Administration intends to go around the Senate and avoid confirmation of new USAs — not true/facts conclusively establish as much
“None of these assertions is in any way accurate,” Sampson wrote.
In fact, the U.S. attorneys were not told the reason for their firing when they were forced to resign. And although it’s extremely debatable what the true cause of the firings was, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testified under oath that U.S. Attorney for Little Rock Bud Cummins had been forced to resign without cause, and the Justice Department has still not produced any reason for Cummins’ firing other than to install Karl Rove’s former aide, Timothy Griffin in his place.
And there’s clear evidence that the administration planned to “go around the Senate and avoid confirmation” of Griffin. Less than a month before writing this email, Sampson wrote to a lawyer in the White House counsel’s office that the administration should respond to objections to Griffin’s appointment by stalling for the remainder of Bush’s term.
“[W]e should gum this to death,” he wrote, following with a variety of ways that they could “run out the clock.” He added, “all of this should be done in ‘good faith,’ of course.”
Griffin specifically suggested using the Patriot Act Reauthorization provision, which gave the attorney general the authority to appoint interim U.S.A.s indefinitely without Senate confirmation. “If we don’t ever exercise [the authority], what’s the point of having it?” he wrote.
There’s also evidence that Griffin understood that he would never have to face Senate confirmation, and even spoke about that understanding with his predecessor, Bud Cummins.