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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Calm Gonzales fends off House Democrats


Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testifies on  Thursday. 
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Richard B. Schmitt Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON – Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales acknowledged for the first time Thursday that other U.S. attorneys may have resigned under pressure from the Justice Department, but said their departures were unrelated to the controversial mass firing of eight prosecutors last year.

In an often testy House Judiciary Committee hearing, Democrats sought to expand their inquiry beyond the eight prosecutors to broader questions about political interference in Justice Department cases. But Gonzales frustrated them by calmly deflecting most of their questions. And unlike the bipartisan grilling he endured in the Senate last month, several Republicans came to his defense, indicating that Gonzales may have passed the worst of the crisis that has put his job in jeopardy.

Democrats on the committee pressed him about recent revelations about an exodus of prosecutors in other offices, in some cases in battleground states that have been central to Republican political fortunes.

Gonzales confirmed the resignation last year of Todd P. Graves, the former U.S. attorney in Kansas City. But he denied charges by Democrats that Graves had been forced out for balking at a voter fraud suit being pushed by Justice headquarters.

Gonzales also said the department had “issues” with yet another U.S. attorney, Thomas Heffelfinger in Minneapolis, whose resignation last year has touched off an office coup of sorts aimed at his successor.

The daylong hearing produced some new revelations, including the fact that the Justice and White House aides behind the firings once considered targeting the U.S. attorney in Milwaukee, Steven Biskupic. The prosecutor was spared, according to documents released at the hearing, because of concern that his firing would alienate Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who was considered a Biskupic supporter.

Unable to obtain answers to many of their questions, Democrats at times expressed anger and attacked Gonzales’ competence.

When the attorney general could give no details on how his former top aide, D. Kyle Sampson, assembled the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired, Rep John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said: “Tell me, just tell me how the U.S. attorney termination list came to be and who suggested putting most of these U.S. attorneys on the list and why. Now, that should take about three sentences.”

Gonzales said that Sampson “presented to me what I understood to be the consensus recommendation” of the Justice Department’s “senior leadership.”

“OK, in other words, you don’t know,” Conyers replied.

Florida Democrat Robert Wexler voiced incredulity that Gonzales “won’t tell us who made the recommendation” to fire the prosecutors. “Are you the attorney general? Do you run the Department of Justice?” said Wexler, raising his voice in irritation.

Several Republicans came to the defense of Gonzales.

“The list of accusations has mushroomed, but the evidence of wrongdoing has not,” said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the committee’s senior Republican. “If there are no fish in this lake, we should reel in our lines of questions, dock our empty boat and turn to more pressing issues.”