Senate pressure builds for Gonzales’ ouster
WASHINGTON – Two leading Senate Democrats called for a vote of no confidence in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Thursday and political pressure for his resignation intensified in the wake of revelations about the plan to dismiss U.S. attorneys and Gonzales’s role in a 2004 government crisis.
Sources Thursday identified four additional prosecutors who were considered for termination, bringing to 30 the number of prosecutors who were placed on a Justice Department firing list between February 2005 and December 2006. That is about a third of the nation’s 93 U.S. attorney positions in the United States. Nine were ultimately fired.
Hoping to pounce on Gonzales’ sagging support among Senate Republicans, Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said they would offer the no-confidence resolution on the Senate floor as early as next week.
The resolution would have no force of law, but Democrats hope it would raise the political stakes for Gonzales and Republicans who vote to support him.
“Any faith that he can run or manage the department is gone,” Schumer said. “It’s going to be very surprising if we get fewer than 60 votes.”
Gonzales continued to lose backing Thursday among GOP lawmakers as Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., became the sixth Senate Republican to call for his resignation. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., predicted that Gonzales would resign once Congress completes an inquiry into the U.S. attorney firings because he is “unable to perform his duties.”
“I have a sense that when we finish our investigation, we may have a conclusion of the tenure of the attorney general,” Specter said.
Gonzales has been under siege for four months because of Justice’s shifting explanations for the prosecutor dismissals last year. Documents released by the department showed the effort was based in part on their loyalty to the Bush administration and its policies.
The attorney general was further damaged by testimony Tuesday from former deputy attorney general James Comey, who described how Gonzales, then the White House counsel, attempted to persuade former Attorney General John Ashcroft to reauthorize a terrorism surveillance program while Ashcroft was in intensive care recovering from surgery. The Justice Department had deemed the secret warrantless program illegal, and Comey, as acting attorney general, had refused to renew it. Comey, Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and others threatened to resign over the matter before Bush intervened, Comey testified.
Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said President Bush “should obviously seriously consider” firing Gonzales over the 2004 incident.
Bush, who has strongly supported Gonzales, declined to comment Thursday on whether he ordered Gonzales and Andrew H. Card Jr., then Bush’s chief of staff, to make the hospital visit.