Calls for a perjury investigation into Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have grown dimmer, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, has found another front on which to question the forthrightness of the Justice Department's leader.
Feinstein took aim at recent changes to the U.S. Attorney's Manual that appear to weaken the department's long-standing policy of holding off on prosecuting election crime close to a voting date. In a letter yesterday to Gonzales, she claims the department's explanations to date do not clear up the discrepancy.
"Taken together, the changes suggest that the department has revised the manual to allow prosecutions that it knows will be used for partisan political advantage during the election process," Feinstein said in a statement. For its part, the department said in a letter that there are no substantive policy changes and that the rules still urge prosecutors to minimize the impact of investigations before an election.
--Emma Schwartz
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