Former Top Justice Official to Contradict Gonzales Statements
Sampson's testimony is likely to provide more details of the attorney general's knowledge of the deliberations, which could prove embarrassing to Gonzales and lead to new calls for his dismissal both by Democrats leading the charge and by key Republican supporters of President Bush who believe Gonzales and his top aides have been less than candid about the whole affair. At a press conference last Tuesday, Gonzales acknowledged that "mistakes were made," but he said it was Sampson who was tasked with the whole process of determining "who were the weak performers." Gonzales said he was "not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on." But an E-mail released over the weekend shows that Gonzales took part in at least one meeting on November 27 in which one topic discussed was the prosecutor firings. Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos has said that the E-mail in no way contradicts Gonzales's statements about his peripheral role in the deliberations.
More than anything else, Sampson's testimony is sure to highlight how unprepared–or arrogant–the Bush administration was, despite Rove's stated political astuteness, about handling the new Demo-cratic-led Congress, and how officials essentially walked into the lion's den and handed their new subpoena-happy oversight masters their heads on a plate. Case in point: Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, and William Moschella testified on January 19, February 6, and March 6. But their testimony was largely based on recollections of those involved in the deliberations over the firings. The Justice Department did not begin searching for documents until March 5, one day before Moschella's testimony, when Congress sent an initial document request, and the broad search began on March 8, after a follow up and more expansive requests from Democrats leading the investigation, according to knowledgeable sources. Justice sources say because Sampson and the others involved were helping these senior officials prep for the testimony, they felt they were in good hands. "They had the right people at the table," says one official. "So who needed documents?"
By the time the document search began, McNulty had elevated the problem to a crisis level by testifying that seven of the eight firings were "performance related." Once the E-mails were unearthed, they told a more complicated story. So why did Sampson fail to inform McNulty and the others about the long E-mail exchanges with White House officials concerning the selection of U.S. attorneys to be fired? Because they didn't anticipate that the hearings would be about the process of the firings, Sampson's associate says. "They thought they knew what the questions were; they thought they knew what the answers were," says the source close to Sampson. "And they thought their answers would be believed."
The E-mails also seemingly raise doubts about Gonzales's testimony that he would never get rid of a federal prosecutor for political reasons. Given that the hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys is an inherently political process since the president has the core presidential power to do so, Gonzales most likely meant that he would never remove anybody to influence any criminal cases, as has been alleged here, for political reasons. But the attorney general could find himself tripped up by the sloppiness of his own words.
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