Here it is, the culmination of the hearing, where a very, very tired Kyle Sampson admits that if he had it to do all over again, well...

Here, Kyle Sampson claims that it didn't even cross his mind, nor was it an issue, that Carol Lam was in the middle of a sprawling public corruption investigation when she was fired.

Here it is, under questioning by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Kyle Sampson admits that Carol Lam was never told of the Justice Department's disaffection with her performance on immigration prosecutions, the supposed reason for her firing.

Under questioning from Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), Sampson testifies about his "bad idea" to circumvent Senate confirmation for the appointment of Tim Griffin as the U.S. Attorney in Eastern Arkansas.

"I did not think the White House would consider doing that in 92 districts," he said, meaning that he only intended to use it for Griffin. "In my discussions at the staff level with folks at the White House, I believe it was a consideration then... at the staff level, we discussed it." But he says it wasn't adopted by "the principals" (meaning Harriet Miers).

Upon further questioning by Specter, he admits that he spoke with Gonzales about the idea. "I don't think he liked the idea very much," Sampson says. He's then asked whether Gonzales specifically rejected it and says that he did after speaking with Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) about the appointment of Griffin. But it's unclear when that conversation was.

Sampson says it could have been in late December or early January. When Specter asks whether that was after Sampson wrote in a December 19, 2007 email that they should use the provision, Sampson says it was.

He says he has no recollection of Harriet Miers rejecting the idea.

Sen. Pat Leahy asks Kyle Sampson how David Iglesias ended up on the list of prosecutors to be purged, and Sampson replies,

"I don't remember hearing any complaints or anything about Mr. Iglesias' handling of corruption cases in New Mexico -- I do remember learning from, I believe, the attorney general, that he had received a complaint from Karl Rove about U.S. attorneys in 3 jurisdictions, including New Mexico. The substance of the complaint was that they were not pursuing voter fraud complaints aggressively enough."

The video:

Here's Kyle Sampson's testimony about suggesting to White House counsel Harriet Miers and deputy White House counsel Bill Kelley that they remove U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) asks if Fitzgerald was ever considered for removal?

Sampson says:

"On one occasion in 2006, in discussing the removal of U.S. attorneys... that I was speaking with Harriet Miers and Bill Kelley and I raised Pat Fitzgerald, and immediately after I did it, I regretted it. I thought, I knew it was the wrong thing to do, I knew it was inappropriate. And I remember at the time that Harriet Miers and Bill Kelley just looked at me.... I said, "Patrick Fitzgerald could be added to this list."... They just looked at me."

Durbin asks why he suggested that. And Sampson says he doesn't know why, that maybe it was just to "get a reaction out of them."

Watch Kyle Sampson thread the needle on Karl Rove's involvement in the appointment of his former aide Timothy Griffin to be the U.S. Attorney for Eastern Arkansas.

While Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was talking, Senate Judiciary Chairman suddenly interrupted him to say,

"we've just received word that the Republicans have objected under the Senate rules to this meeting continuing. I think that's unfortunate, but I will follow the rules of the Senate... The Republicans are the ones who don't want to have the hearings, the Republicans have the right under the rules to do that.... we will stand in recess until the Senate recesses."

Whatever the disruption, apparently it was immediately reversed. Republicans are saying that it was based on a misunderstanding. Now we're back on.

Obviously unimpressed with the qualifications of the people (Sampson, Monica Goodling) who seem to have driven the U.S. attorney purge, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) grills Sampson on what actual lawyering experience Sampson and his colleague has.

Here Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) questions Kyle Sampson about the preparation for Justice Department officials to testify before Congress. Counter to earlier remarks by Alberto Gonzales, Sampson says that "I was very open and collaborative in the process."

Here Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) questions Kyle Sampson about whether it ever occurred to him when he was making the list of U.S. attorneys whether there would be a "perception problem" with firing U.S. attorneys in the middle of important investigations. Sampson says no.

Two big things came out of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-CA) questioning of Kyle Sampson.

The first was a glowing letter about Lam that Feinstein presented from the Director of Field Operations for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. Lam was supposedly fired, remember, because she performed poorly on immigration prosecutions. You can read the letter here.

The second was the revelation that after the FBI bureau chief in San Diego complained to the press about Lam's firing, Samspon called FBI headquarters to complain.

Here it is. Kyle Sampson explains (away) what a "loyal Bushie" is.

Here Kyle Sampson says that he did have the idea to use the Patiot Act provision to avoid Senate confirmation for the administration's U.S. attorney picks, but that the Attorney General and White House counsel nixed it.

Here you go. Sen. Arlen Specter asks Sampson about why he wrote on May 11th that the "real problem" we have "now" is with Carol Lam. Sampson dodged at first, but then said that the "real problem" referred to her "office's prosecution of immigration cases." Nothing to do with Lam's search warrant of CIA Executive Director Dusty Foggo.

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing with Kyle Sampson is set to begin. I'll be providing running updates on the testimony to this post below the fold.

We'll also be providing clips of the testimony as it goes forward.

The hearing is being broadcast through the committee's website and also on C-Span3. Those watching at home are invited to weign in with a comment.

Read more »

So what, exactly, will Democrats be grilling Kyle Sampson about, starting in a couple minutes?

U.S. News has a general rundown which is a good start, but there a few key things to look for, a couple of which they touch on.

1) Sampson claims that the firings were the result of a broad, "consensus based" process. So let's hear the reasons, however subjective or unscientific they were. How was it, for example, that the Justice Department's second most senior official wrote two days before the firings that he was getting "a little skittish" about firing U.S. Attorney Daniel Bogden?

2) On May 11, 2006, Sampson emailed deputy White House counsel William Kelley: "The real problem we have right now with Carol Lam that leads me to conclude that we should have someone ready to be nominated on 11/18, the day her 4-year term expires." It was sent the day after Carol Lam had notifed the DoJ that she intended to serve search warrants to Foggo. It'll be interesting to hear Sampson explain that away.

3) Sampson repeatedly advocated for using the Patiot Act provision to circumvent Senate confirmation for Timothy Griffin, Karl Rove's former aide. Senators will want to hear about that, and why Alberto Gonzales and other DoJ officials told Congress that they did indeed plan to seek Senate confirmation.

4) How did Sampson know that Griffin's appointment was "important" to Karl Rove? And why did he tell Congress that Rove had no role in Griffin's appointment?

5) What was Rove's role in the firings in general? How often did he communicate with Rove, who is reportedly deeply involved in the appointment process, about the firings?

6) Why did he rate Patrick Fitzgerald as an "undistinguished" U.S. attorney?

7) Before he left, then Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who managed the U.S. attorneys, made up his own list of incompetent U.S. attorneys. It was completely different from Sampson's final list, save one -- the only one who indisputably had real performance issues. Why the difference?

There's more, to be sure. Are there other questions you're listening for answers to? Let us know in the comments.

Well, it's finally time to hear from Kyle Sampson. You can read his opening statement for this morning's hearing here (pdf).

Josh already gave a good introduction to the central aspect of Sampson's testimony, his assertion that there's nothing wrong with "political" motivations for the firings. It's an idea Sampson most succinctly formulates here:

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 important to effective leadership of the office, is unsuccessful.

The key question, of course, is how some of these U.S. attorneys managed to "alienate" Washington. Sampson denies that any of them were removed for "improper" reasons, which he defines in a lawyerly cadence as
to "interfere or influence the investigation or prosecution of a particular case for political or partisan advantage."

So why were these eight U.S. attorneys removed? How did the department establish which prosecutors were "unsuccessful?" The "process was not scientific," Sampson admits. "But neither was the process random or aribitrary." It was a "consensus-based process based on input from senior Justice Department officials." But how they arrived at that consensus, nobody knows.

For instance, here's what Sampson is expected to say about U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias, via The Washington Post:

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Sampson will describe the firing as the culmination of a series of complaints about Iglesias that hinged in part on three phone calls from [Sen. Pete] Domenici (R-NM) to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in 2005 and 2006 and another to Gonzales's deputy last October. Iglesias was not added to the list of prosecutors to be fired until fall.

How did those complaints lead to that consensus-based decision? And what precisely were the complaints about? It'll be interesting to hear Sampson tell the "benign story" that he says this is.

But there's more. Sampson will also give a rather unflattering portrait of his boss, Alberto Gonzales. Here's how this morning's New York Times paints that portion of his testimony:

... over time, friends and former colleagues say, Mr. Sampson noticed what three people who worked with the attorney general separately called a pattern of “imprecision” in Mr. Gonzales’s public statements.

...friends said Mr. Sampson could not defend the accuracy of all of Mr. Gonzales’s statements in the case like his insistence that he had no personal involvement in planning the removals or selecting prosecutors.

Justice Department records show that Mr. Gonzales discussed the removals at a meeting on Nov. 27, 2006.

Mr. Gonzales “is not a litigator, and he is not an accomplished public speaker,” said a friend of Mr. Sampson who also worked with Mr. Gonzales, known as Judge Gonzales because he was on the Texas Supreme Court. “When the judge says, ‘I wasn’t involved,’ he means something specific. If you teased it out, you would figure out what it was he meant. But in the political world where you only get one shot, it comes across as misleading.”

Your attorney general: a lawyer who even his closest advisors admit is imprecise with language.

Earlier, I flagged an email in today's document dump that showed Kyle Sampson preparing to run his letter to Congress by the White House.

The letter stated, "The Department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint [Karl Rove's former aide Timothy] Griffin" to serve as US Attorney. Sampson told fellow Justice Department officials that "because this letter mentions Rove and alludes to Harriet, I'd like to send it to the [White House Counsel's Office] for their review..."

That claim -- that Rove and Miers had no role -- is one Sampson's own earlier emails show to be false.*

In an email Sampson wrote in December to one Christopher Oprison, associate counsel to the President, Sampson told Oprison that Griffin's appointment was "important to Harriet, Karl, etc."

In other words, back in December, Sampson told Oprison of Karl Rove's and Harriet Miers' role in Griffin's hiring.*

So Sampson knew of Rove's and Miers's role in Griffin's hiring. He told a lawyer in the White House Counsel's Office of their role in December. And in February he wants the same White House Counsel's Office to sign off on a letter to Congress claiming Rove and Miers had no such role.

So did Sampson send the letter to the Counsel's Office for sign off?

Yes, he did.

And the new document dump shows that the response from the Counsel's Office came from none other than Chris Oprison. In this February 23rd email from Sampson to Oprison, Sampson explicitly acknowledges Oprison's signing off on Counsel's behalf on the false statements contained in the letter.

(ed.note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly referred to the February 23rd letter as being from Oprison to Sampson rather than vice versa. -- jmm)

*Update: Although the letter to Congress states that "the Department is not aware of anyone lobbying for Mr. Griffin's appointment," Justice Department aides had already told Democrats that Harriet Miers did have a role in recommending Griffin. The key statement in the February 23 letter, therefore, has to do with the denial of Rove's involvement.

From the AP:

Eight federal prosecutors were fired last year because they did not sufficiently support President Bush's priorities, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' former chief of staff says in remarks prepared for delivery Thursday to Congress.

"The distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a United States attorney is, in my view, largely artificial," said Kyle Sampson.

The aide, who quit because of the furor over the firings, is to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. A copy of his prepared remarks was obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press.

"A U.S. attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective ... is unsuccessful," Sampson said.

This is gonna be fun.

The Justice Department turned over yet more documents to Congress today -- documents which seem to show that Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson was responsible for misleading Congress about Karl Rove's role in replacing a U.S. attorney.

On February 23, acting Assistant Attorney General wrote Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other senators in response to questions about the appointment of Timothy Griffin, a former aide to Rove. In the letter, Hertling stated "The Department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin."

But emails subsequently released by the Justice Department showed that wasn't the case. Last December, for example, Sampson wrote in an email that Griffin's appointment was "important to Harriet, Karl, etc." Other emails showed that Rove's deputy had been intimately involved in the effort to get Griffin installed as the U.S. Attorney in Eastern Arkansas.

In a letter accompanying documents sent to Congress today, Hertling admits that the assertion in his letter isn't true, adding, "We sincerely regret any inaccuracy." And to answer questions about who was responsible for that inaccuracy, he accompanied his letter with 202 pages documents "reflecting the preparation and transmittal of the February 23 letter."

Among the documents is a February 8th email from Kyle Sampson providing what ultimately, with a few small revisions, comprised Hertling's letter. And in that email Sampson wrote that Hertling should say, "I am not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the Attorney General's decision to appoint Griffin."

Now, Hertling might not have known of Rove's role in Griffin's selection, but Sampson sure did.

You can bet that Sampson will be questioned about this during the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow morning.

Update: Those documents are now online.

The Washington Post has a mostly flattering profile of Kyle Sampson in the Style section today. And I just had to laugh at this section in particular:

A devout Mormon born and bred in Utah and educated at Brigham Young University, where he met his wife, Noelle, Sampson coveted the U.S. attorney's job in Salt Lake City and twice approached the man who still had the job, Paul Warner -- now a federal magistrate -- to ask him when he'd be stepping down. The first occurred in a conference room in Utah, Warner said, and the second took place during a lunch in Washington on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Though they shared the same home state, Warner and Sampson followed different public service narratives. A former JAG attorney, Warner had spent 17 years in various capacities in the U.S. attorney's office, saying it "was where I wanted to be, not where I wanted to be from."

In speaking to the eager Sampson, Warner asked him to slow his motor.

"I let him know he would be helped with practical experience as a prosecutor," Warner said. "I told him he should spend some time as an assistant U.S. attorney. If you're going to be chief surgeon, it's nice to do some surgery."

Yep, and Sampson's the guy who was in charge of replacing U.S. attorneys all over the country. Too bad Warner, that relic of a prior age, didn't understand what being a U.S. attorney is really about.

Kyle Sampson says that Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty misled Congress just because the topic of White House involvement didn't come up in the prep meetings. He's expected to say the same thing under oath tomorrow.

But McNulty apparently has a very different story. From The New York Observer:

...Mr. McNulty subsequently told [Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)] that he had been purposefully kept in the dark by senior staffers inside Mr. Gonzales’ inner circle. “McNulty told me he asked explicit questions: Did you do this, this, this? And he did not get affirmative answers from Sampson,” said Mr. Schumer.

No wonder Monica Goodling, who was also at those meetings, has taken the Fifth.

Don't worry, Senate Judiciary Committee. Monica Goodling's choice to take the Fifth notwithstanding, Kyle Sampson will keep that date on Thursday. Just out from his lawyer, Bradford Berenson:

"Kyle plans to testify fully, truthfully, and publicly. Hearings in a highly politicized environment like this can sometimes become a game of gotcha, but Kyle has decided to trust the Congress and the process."

Mike Allen at The Politico gets a general preview of Kyle Sampson's testimony on Thursday:

Sampson is not gunning for anybody, according to friends. He believes that the issue has blown up because the Justice Department had an inadequate system for preparing officials to testify before Congress, the friends say. The Justice Department officials testified that the firings were based on performance rather than politics, an assertion called into question by e-mails the department later delivered to Capitol Hill.

The friends say Sampson, 37, does not plan to deliver bombshells, and say that Democrats looking for plots and schemes will be disappointed. Like other Republicans, Sampson will contend there was no underlying sin, just a botched response.

“He is not personally of the opinion now, based on what he knows, that anybody at the Department of Justice did anything intentionally wrong,” said a friend familiar with Sampson’s thinking.

Sampson is testifying voluntarily, sparing the committee from having to decide whether to subpoena him. “He doesn’t feel that he has anything to hide,” the friend said. “He doesn’t feel that there’s any aspect of this story that he can’t explain publicly. He’s hoping to contribute what he knows in the hope that getting the truth out, as fully as it can be gotten out, will ultimately help calm the situation rather than aggravate it.”

Classic moments in euphemism: "inadequate system for preparing officials to testify before Congress."

Remember from Sampson's earlier statement that the White House involvement in the firings wasn't discussed in preparing for testimony because they didn't "deem it important at the time."

I'm looking forward to seeing him try that line on Pat Leahy.

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee extended an invitation for Alberto Gonzales' former chief of staff Kyle Sampson to testify. If he didn't want to come voluntarily, the committee said, he'd be subpoenaed.

Today, via a letter from his lawyer to the committee, he accepted -- no subpoena necessary.

"Mr. Sampson looks forward to answering the Committee's questions," the letter reads. "We trust that his decision to do so will satisfy the need of the Congress to obtain information from him concerning the requested resignations of the United States Attorneys."

The hearing will take place at 10 AM next Thursday.

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.

Read more »

The Hill had an interesting take on the looming legal battle between the White House and Congress this morning:

In an e-mail dated Nov. 15, 2006, Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, asked then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers and her deputy, William Kelley, whether he had the green light to go forward with the firing plan.

Miers responded that she was “not sure whether this will be determined to require the boss’s attention.” Her e-mail ended with the words: “We will see. Thanks.”

Sampson, who resigned last week, responded with a critical question: “Who will determine whether whether [sic] this requires the President’s attention?”...

The e-mail exchange is particularly relevant to Bush’s case because the Supreme Court has provided only limited protection for executive privilege. It acknowledges the need to protect communications between high-ranking government officials and those who advise and assist them, but it has also ruled that the public interest can outweigh that need in “non-military” and “non-diplomatic” discussions. Critics of the U.S. attorney firings argue that Bush’s case for executive privilege would be significantly weaker if his aides never discussed the plan for the firings with him.

In response to a barrage of questions from reporters yesterday, White House spokesman Tony Snow said only that Bush had “no recollection of [the firings] ever being raised with him.”

Here's The Washington Post this morning on what happens next:

If the White House refuses to comply, the judiciary committees will meet in coming weeks to decide whether to issue citations for contempt of Congress. If they do, the full Senate and House would have to follow suit.

That would set in motion the extraordinary spectacle of Congress enlisting the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to impanel a grand jury to seek the indictment of administration officials over their refusal to testify on the firings of eight of his colleagues.

Mark it on the calendar. The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to hear from Kyle Sampson (aka "the fall guy"), Alberto Gonzales' recently resigned chief of staff, at an open hearing next Thursday.

In a letter sent today to Sampson's lawyer signed by committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and ranking member Arlen Specter (R-PA), the committee requested Sampson's "assurance" that he "will appear voluntarily at that time and that a subpoena will not be necessary." The committee has already voted to authorize such a subpoena last week.

Sampson will be the sole witness at the hearing.

Here's the email frequently cited in today's press reports where Alberto Gonzales' right hand Kyle Sampson, responding to a question about whether U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins should testify before Congress, says, "I don't think he should."

It's clear why Sampson thought so. As Justice Department official Michael Elston wrote, relaying his conversation with Cummins, if he testified, Cummins “would tell the truth about his circumstances.” The truth, of course, was that Cummins had been forced out in order to install Karl Rove's former aide Timothy Griffin in his spot -- something that Cummins knew because he had been told as much. And Sampson didn't want that, as he clearly illustrated.

How would Cummins answer, Sampson wanted to know, several uncomfortable questions? But there's one question in particular that raised even my eyebrows: "Did Griffin ever talk about being AG appointed and avoiding Senate confirmation?"

Sounds to me like Griffin was in on the scheme to have him installed by bypasssing the Senate.

In his two appearances before Congress, Cummins wasn't asked that question. But I know what my next call will be...

Update: I reached Cummins just now, and he replied (ever the Southern gentleman) with "My answer is a polite 'I don't want to talk about it.'... I don't want to appear to be in any way trying to injure Mr. Griffin's prospects as to whether or not he can serve as a U.S. Attorney." He did add, however, that he would answer that question if subpoenaed and put under oath before Congress.

Ed. Note: Thanks to TPM Reader tekel for catching this in the comments.

From Newsweek:

...a pair of senior Justice officials gave accounts to lawmakers that were, at best, incomplete. At a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, William Moschella, a top aide to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, vigorously defended the firings of the U.S. attorneys as a purely managerial move that had originated within the Justice Department. He said nothing about any nudging from the White House. McNulty had earlier given similar testimony, saying the attorneys had been let go for "job performance" reasons, an assertion that infuriated the fired prosecutors. But the two Justice officials have told colleagues that when they saw the e-mail accounts showing the attorney-purge idea had originated in the White House, they were surprised and appalled. "I felt sick," Moschella told NEWSWEEK. "I basically saw my professional life flash before my eyes." Moschella and McNulty blamed [Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle] Sampson. The attorney general's chief of staff had sat in as they prepped for their testimony and "never said a word," according to a Justice Department official who wished to remain anonymous discussing a private meeting.

Sampson's lawyer, of course, released a statement late Friday that significantly dispersed the blame. According to him, "a number of other senior officials at the Department, including others who were involved in preparing the Department's testimony to Congress" knew about the White House involvement. They didn't bring it up, says Sampson, because "no one focused on it or deemed it important at the time."

But that certainly doesn't sound like McNulty and Moschella's view of things. Fortunately, all three men are scheduled to make appearances before the House and Senate judicial committees, so they'll have plenty of chances to lay blame.

Apparently Alberto Gonzales thought this whole thing would just blow over.

NPR has learned that the Attorney General’s chief of staff [Kyle Sampson] resigned from his position this week, the Justice Department took steps to establish him as an attorney elsewhere in the building....he only resigned from the department on Tuesday, when the scandal surrounding eight fired U.S. Attorneys continued to grow.

Boy, has Kyle Sampson learned his lesson, or what? He hasn't resigned because of his role in a scheme to fire prosecutors for political reasons, oh no: he resigned because he didn't succeed in organizing "a more effective political response" to the charges of impropriety. No wonder people thought he'd be the next Karl Rove.

His lawyer, Bradford Berenson put out the following statement last night:

"Kyle did not resign because he had misled anyone at the Justice Department or withheld information concerning the replacement of the U.S. Attorneys. He resigned because, as Chief of Staff, he felt he had let the Attorney General down in failing to appreciate the need for and organize a more effective political response to the unfounded accusations of impropriety in the replacement process. The fact that the White House and Justice Department had been discussing this subject for several years was well-known to a number of other senior officials at the Department, including others who were involved in preparing the Department's testimony to Congress. If this background was not called to Mr. McNulty or Mr. Moschella's attention, it was not because any of these individuals deliberately withheld it from them but rather because no one focused on it or deemed it important at the time. The focus of preparation efforts was on why the U.S. Attorneys had been replaced, not how."

Alberto Gonzales has publicly blamed Sampson for his "mistake" of not sharing "information that he had" with those testifying before Congress.

But according to Sampson, everybody knew. The officials who were about to testify just didn't ask around -- because, he says, they were focused on the "why," not the "how." I think I'd need another statement from Sampson, though, before I could understand how the White House's involvement isn't part of the answer to the question: "Why did the Justice Department fire eight U.S. attorneys?"

Or maybe it's more that they just didn't "deem it important" at the time.

Funny thing, though. They didn't deem it important when preparing for testimony, but that didn't stop Justice Department official William Moschella from telling the House Judiciary subcommittee under oath that the White House was not consulted on the firings until the end of the process. I guess he just assumed?

Looks like Sampson doesn't like playing the fall guy.

Update: A revised statement drops the idea that DoJ officials didn't "deem" the White House role "important," and whereas before Sampson was regretting his inability to concoct an "effective politcal response" to the charges of impropriety, the word "political" has disappeared. After all, it's politics that got the DoJ into this mess.

As TPM Reader HR puts it: "Did someone go over his original release with a sharp blue pencil?"

Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson was supposedly fired because he's not a good communicator -- namely, he failed to tell others at the Justice Department that he had been consulting the White House for nearly two years about the firing of U.S. attorneys before it happened. Because Sampson didn't spread the word, the story goes, Justice Department officials gave false information to Congress. But it's apparent that Sampson wasn't the only one with knowledge of his contacts with the White House.

As Gonzales put it yesterday, "the mistake that occurred here was that information that [Sampson] had was not shared with individuals within the department who was [sic] then going to be providing testimony and information to the Congress."

Setting aside for the moment the implication that Sampson lied to the officials who then gave false information to Congress, let's look at one of those instances of false information.

In late February, Richard Hertling, the acting Assistant Attorney General, wrote a letter to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in which he claimed that the "Department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint [Karl Rove's former aide Timothy] Griffin."

Sampson, meanwhile, wrote in an email in December that getting Tim Griffin appointed was "important to Harriet, Karl, etc." And emails from last summer show that Rove's deputy was intimately involved in getting Griffin installed as the U.S. attorney for Arkansas.

So maybe Hertling didn't ask Sampson (the man at the department supposedly in charge of the purge) or Sampson lied to him.

But there's somebody else who knew: Monica Goodling, the Justice Department's liaison to the White House.

Read more »

Some background on Kyle Sampson, the now former chief of staff to Alberto Gonzales whom you'd never heard of before today.

From Al Kamen's "In The Loop" column on October 31, 2005, when the Valerie Plame scandal was raging:

Waiting in the Wings

Speaking of Karl Rove , there had been much concern last week that he also might have to resign as a result of Fitzgerald's probe. The loss of Karl's familiar presence -- he's the last of the original "Iron Triangle" of Bush's Texas advisers still in the White House -- would have unsettled many younger aides.

Fortunately, there's a ready replacement: D. Kyle Sampson , chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and formerly in the White House counsel's office. Maybe not exactly the same as Karl but . . .

Ed. Note: Thanks to TPM Reader MV.

Update: A little more background on Sampson, who graduated from BYU in 1993 and went on to University of Chicago Law School, from the LA Times this morning:

Sampson, a former counsel to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) on the Senate Judiciary Committee, worked as deputy White House counsel for two years under Gonzales starting in 2001.

He joined the Justice Department in 2003 as a counselor to Ashcroft, and stayed on when Gonzales became attorney general. He became chief of staff in September 2005.

Later Update: As some have pointed out in comments, The New York Times ran a generally flattering profile of Sampson today.

Latest Update: We've just added the pictures to help a TPM Reader make her point: "just try to tell me that they weren't separated at birth."

We just watched Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' press conference here. The gist: Gonzales said that he accepts responsibility for the "mistakes" made at the Justice Department... but argued that he is not "aware" of "all decisions" at the Justice Department.

He said that his chief of staff Kyle Sampson, now resigned, headed up the process for replacing the U.S. attorneys, and that Gonzales himself was "not involved in seeing any memos" or "any discussion of what was going on."

He professed to be "dismayed" that Justice Department officials had given false information to Congress, but blamed the problem on information not being "adquately shared within the Justice Department."

But no worry --- he'll get to the bottom of it all. Like any CEO would, he said, he'll make every effort to "assess accountability."

We'll put up a clip from the conference soon.

Update: An earlier version of this post incorrectly read, "was 'involved in seeing any memos" or "any discussion of what was going on.'"

Update: Some video:

Update: And a full transcript is below.

Read more »

See it for yourself, the September 13, 2006 email from Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, to Justice Department liaison to White House counsel Harriet Miers.

Fifteen minutes earlier, Sampson had sent the same email to the Justice Department's liaison to the White House, Monica Goodling, asking "Any corrections?" before sending it over.

In the email, Sampson outlines the "USAs We Now Should Consider Pushing Out." They were: Arizona's Paul Charlton, San Diego's Carol Lam, Western Michigan's Margaret Chiara, Nevada's Daniel Bogden, and Seattle's John McKay. All five were eventually fired. Arkansas' Bud Cummins had his own heading, "USA in the Process of Being Pushed Out."

In the summary portion of the email, Sampson lays out his recommendation to use a legal loophole to install replacements without Senate confirmation.

"I am only in favor of executing on a plan to push some USAs out if we really are ready and willing to put in the time necessary to select candidates and get them appointed -- It will be counterproductive to DOJ operations if we push USAs out and then don't have replacements ready to roll immediately. In addition, I strongly recommend that as a matter of administration, we utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make USA appointments.... we can give far less deference to home state senators and thereby get 1.) our preferred person appointed and 2.) do it far faster and more efficiently at less political costs to the White House."

Sampson added, intrigiuingly, that he had "one follow up item I would want to do over the phone."

This morning, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) held a press conference to express their anger at the recent revelations from the Justice Department and White House.

In it, Schumer said that the resignation of Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson "does not take heat off the attorney general. In fact, it raises the temperature. Kyle Sampson will not become the next Scooter Libby, the next fall guy."

We've got the full transcript of the conference below...

Read more »