When Kyle Sampson asked former Deputy Attorney General James Comey in late February of 2005 which U.S. attorneys he thought were “weak” and should be replaced, Comey replied with a list of names. But Comey testified today that his list was completely different from those who were ultimately fired — save one name. That was Kevin Ryan, the former U.S. Attorney for San Francisco, who was the only of the fired U.S. attorneys to have indisputably had real performance issues.
There were a couple of other telling details in Comey’s early remarks. Although Sampson told congressional investigators that he’d informed Comey that the idea to identify “weak” U.S. attorneys came from the White House, Comey testified today that he was “quite certain that [Sampson] didn’t mention the White House.”
Comey added that he didn’t even know that this was a process — he just thought that Sampson had made an offhand remark. And Comey was completely ignorant of Kyle Sampson’s list of U.S. attorneys to be removed that Sampson drafted at around the same time. On Sampson’s list, drafted in late February or very early March of that year, Kevin Ryan was rated as a “strong” U.S. attorney.
In other words, Sampson seems to have intentionally ignored all of Comey’s recommendations as to who were the weak U.S. attorneys — and kept Comey, the #2 at the DoJ, ignorant that Sampson and the White House were targeting certain U.S. attorneys with the goal of firing them.