damn! will this goverment beat Nixon's as the most evil goverment in US history???
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday "mistakes were made" regarding the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and he accepts responsibility for the ordeal.
"My pledge to the American people is to find out what went wrong here,"he said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference. "As we can all imagine, in an organization of 110,000 people, I am not aware of every bit of information that passes through the halls of justice, nor am I aware of all decisions."
"That is a sorry excuse," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, said minutes later on the Senate floor.
Schumer said Gonzales should resign.
"Did the attorney general not know that eight U.S. attorneys were to be fired?" Schumer said. "If he didn't know, he shouldn't be attorney general, plain and simple. ... The buck stops with the attorney general."
However, Gonzales said he was not stepping down.
"I am here not because I give up," he told reporters. "I am here because I've learned from my mistakes, because I accept responsibility and because I'm committed to doing my job -- and that is what I intend to do here on behalf of the American people."
Democrats are examining e-mails they say prove the White House was far more involved in the firings than it has acknowledged.
The e-mails between the Department of Justice and White House were handed Tuesday to congressional committees investigating whether the dismissals, which happened last year, were politically motivated.
White House spokesman Tony Snow confirmed it was former White House counsel Harriet Miers who came up with an idea to remove all the federal prosecutors and bring in "fresh blood" at the beginning of President Bush's second term. (Watch a congressman explain how e-mails suggest White House involvement in firings)
Meanwhile, the chief of staff to Gonzales has resigned, the Justice Department said Tuesday, as criticism grows over the firings.
D. Kyle Sampson, who also was a top lawyer under Gonzales' predecessor, John Ashcroft, has been at the center of the storm. His resignation was effective Monday.
An e-mail from Sampson to Miers dated January 1, 2006, read, "You have asked whether President Bush should remove and replace U.S. Attorneys whose four-year terms have expired. I recommend that the Department of Justice and the Office of the Counsel to the President work together to seek the replacement of a limited number of U.S. Attorneys."
On September 13, 2006, Sampson e-mailed Miers lists of federal attorneys "In the Process of Being Pushed Out" and those "We Now Should Consider Pushing Out."
"Just when we thought our faith could not be shaken any further, it has been," Schumer said earlier. "At the very beginning, it was clear that something didn't smell right. But I had no idea how high it went."
He added: "The latest revelations proved beyond any reasonable doubt that there has been an unprecedented breach of trust, abuse of power and misuse of the Justice Department. And that is very serious and very important."
Schumer also warned the White House against making Sampson "the next fall guy."
"Today's staff resignation does not take heat off the attorney general. In fact, it raises the temperature. Kyle Sampson will not become the next Scooter Libby," the senator added, referring to Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff who was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury last week in an investigation into the exposure of a CIA agent. (Watch Schumer call for Gonzales to step down)
Gonzales spoke highly of Sampson in a news release.
"Kyle Sampson has served as a key member of my team beginning at the White House and continuing here at the Department of Justice -- first as my deputy chief of staff and then as my chief of staff," Gonzales said in a statement.
"I am very appreciative for his service, counsel and friendship during the last six years, and I thank him for his service to the department."
The Bush administration has said the firings -- seven in December and one months earlier -- were routine personnel matters that were the result of poor performances.
However, Democrats accuse the administration of trying to dictate to the prosecutors, who are supposed to be nonpartisan.
Gonzales said the lawyers should have been told why they were being fired and admitted the explanations initially given to Congress about the matter were "incomplete."
Allegations of pressure
Snow told reporters traveling with the president in Mexico that Miers made the proposal to fire all 93 U.S. attorneys at the beginning of Bush's second term.
Several of the prosecutors who were fired have said they were being pressured to move more quickly on investigations into voter fraud.
Miers resigned in January. President Bush had nominated her as a Supreme Court justice in October 2005 but she withdrew after conservatives and others questioned her credentials.
"We continue to believe that the decision to remove and replace U.S. attorneys who serve at the pleasure of the president was perfectly appropriate and within our discretion," said White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino.
"And we stand by the Department of Justice's assertion that they identified the seven U.S. attorneys who were removed [in December] for performance and managerial reasons."
Snow said Miers' proposal was a suggestion, not a recommendation, to fire all the federal prosecutors. Bush made "no recommendations on specific individuals," he said.
"We don't have anything to indicate the president made any calls on specific U.S. attorneys."
These Repugs in this Exec have no shame, and they will be an eternal, shameful stain on American history.
This is exactly the Enron defense, and same we heard from Gen Kiley.
"I'm "responsible", but I don't know what the was going on, so I'm completely innocent and unaccountable."
But as long as no sex was involved, this Exec is totally acceptable to the clannies, the yonies, etc.
No right-winger sheeple/rabble gives a flying about the 30K+ US casualties wasted in Iraq. But a blowjob? IMPEACH!
Big Al is letting me down.
Big Al? More like El Poco Puto
I heard part of his press conference today. Basically he said he had no idea what was going on. Harriet Myers was more to blame than he was. His chief of staff was asked to resign.Nerer saw any type of paperwork.....oh and he took complete responsibility
Thank God that provision for replacing US Attorneys without congressional approval was put in the Patriot Act. That really saves us from terra.
Good Job Gonzo!
You mean heckuva job.
Insert Sergeant Schultz quote under the AG and it's all good.
I shudder to think how close this tool was to being nominated for the Supreme Court.
Hate to say I told ya so, but I told ya so...
And Hairbran Myers wanted to fall ALL the US Atty's.
Dubya is dumb dreck who collects dreck around him.
Now all the US Atty's that haven't been fired are slimed as doing the political bidding of the WH rather than upholding the Cons ution and enforcing the law.
Lawmakers Urge Investigation Into Administration's Prosecutor Purge In Abramoff Case
ThinkProgress.org
Tuesday 13 March 2007
In recent weeks, Congress has investigated the Bush administration's recent purge of qualified, well-respected U.S. attorneys. But one former prosecutor - Frederick A. Black - has received little attention. The administration fired Black shortly after he began investigating Jack Abramoff's dealings in Guam.
Today in a letter to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, Reps. George Miller (D-CA) and Nick Rahall (D-WV) urge Congress to investigate "the potential political manipulation by Jack Abramoff and his allies in Congress and the Administration" in the Black case:
At the time, we viewed the replacement of the Acting U.S. Attorney as an example of the overly zealous and improper, if not illegal, conduct by the now disgraced and convicted lobbyist, Jack Abramoff.
In light of more recent revelations about political interference with the work of other U.S. Attorneys, however, it is necessary now to re-examine the case as it may represent the beginning of a pattern of behavior by some members of Congress and officials in the Bush Administration to politicize the work of U.S. Attorneys and to quash their independence.
In 2002, Black launched an investigation into Jack Abramoff's "secret arrangement with Superior Court officials to lobby against a court reform bill then pending in Congress." On Nov. 18, 2002, Black issued a grand jury subpoena to the Guam Superior Court to turn over all records involving the lobbying contract with Abramoff. The administration swiftly punished Black:
A day later, the chief prosecutor, US Attorney Frederick A. Black, who had launched the investigation, was demoted. A White House news release announced that Bush was replacing Black.
The timing caught some by surprise. Despite his officially temporary status as the acting US attorney, Black had held the assignment for more than a decade.
An internal Justice Department investigation concluded that the White House did not improperly retaliate against Black for raising allegations against Abramoff. But the probe into Abramoff's activities in Guam died shortly after Black stepped down.
============
No man is above the law, but Jack Abramoff is, because he is protected by the WH/Repugs.
ahh clinton can fire all 93 US attorneys without you going nuts..... sheesh
Upon taking office, in an unexplained departure from the practice of recent Administrations, Miss Reno suddenly fired all 93 U.S. attorneys. She said the decision had been made in conjunction with the White House. Translation: The President ordered it.
dam history is a if your a liberal.... lol..
The Hubbell Standard
Hillary Clinton knows all about sacking U.S. Attorneys.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT
Congressional Democrats are in full cry over the news this week that the Administration's decision to fire eight U.S. Attorneys originated from--gasp--the White House. Senator Hillary Clinton joined the fun yesterday, blaming President Bush for "the politicization of our prosecutorial system." Oh, my.
As it happens, Mrs. Clinton is just the Senator to walk point on this issue of dismissing U.S. attorneys because she has direct personal experience. In any Congressional probe of the matter, we'd suggest she call herself as the first witness--and bring along Webster Hubbell as her chief counsel.
As everyone once knew but has tried to forget, Mr. Hubbell was a former partner of Mrs. Clinton at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock who later went to jail for mail fraud and tax evasion. He was also Bill and Hillary Clinton's choice as Associate Attorney General in the Justice Department when Janet Reno, his nominal superior, simultaneously fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys in March 1993. Ms. Reno--or Mr. Hubbell--gave them 10 days to move out of their offices.
At the time, President Clinton presented the move as something perfectly ordinary: "All those people are routinely replaced," he told reporters, "and I have not done anything differently." In fact, the dismissals were unprecedented: Previous Presidents, including Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, had both retained holdovers from the previous Administration and only replaced them gradually as their tenures expired. This allowed continuity of leadership within the U.S. Attorney offices during the transition.
I'd like to see where you told us in the first place.
Why is Bush firing Republicans? I know why Clinton did.
What is the problem. He fired some blasted lawyers.
Clinton was a lawyer and fired all of them. As well as the
Travel Office and a host of other people. An old "GI" saying.
"RHIP" Rank Has It Privileges" and the Prez has that Privilege.
So There!
ahh political appointees always turnover when a new President takes over. Usually the appointees just resign en masse like the US Attorneys did when Bush took office. Acting like it's some kind of shocking revelation is predictably disingenuous.
In the period of 1981 to January 2006, the Congressional Research Service can only find two previous examples of US Attorneys being dismissed from their duties outside of the usual change-of-president turnover. Are you seriously trying to tell us that Bush's firing eight US Attorneys that he appointed himself in the middle of a presidential term is normal?
Why were they fired?What is the problem. He fired some blasted lawyers.
Who really cares, except a few dimm-o-craps. Why did
Clinton fire the whole bunch? Who knows, you can only
speculate. You have idea. If you do, that would be a new
thing.
Maybe they refused to resign like they are expected to when the office changes hands -- like the Clinton appointees resigned when Bush took office.Why did Clinton fire the whole bunch?
If it was politically motivated retaliation, you bet I care. Carter did this once and it was just as wrong then.Who really cares
Gee, it is only retaliation when a Republican does it. ,
it is whatever, politics is politics. Always has been always
will be. My goodness, we have just seen a special
prosecutor file charges, get a conviction on someone on a
crime that wasn't committed. H E L L O. We are now
living in a never, never land. Cant we all just get along?
Oh and by the way, the spin on the conviction was it was
someone else's fault, but the person who did the deed
hasn't even been charged. Want to explain that to me?
every new administration appoints his own set of US attorneys, who serve usually for all 4 or 8 years.
Carter would have fired/replacd Nixon's.
dubya replaced Clinton's.
dubya firing his own US Atty's, which are recommended by Repug Senators, is what wa weird.
we know dubya's US Atty's have opened many times more cases against Dems, than Repugs. They one that went after Repugs got fired (eg, in San Diego), or if they didnt indict Dem candidates before 2006 election (eg, NM).
You didn't just read that I said Carter did it and was wrong? Your bot response proves you can't or won't read, xray.Gee, it is only retaliation when a Republican does itOf course a crime was committed.My goodness, we have just seen a special prosecutor file charges, get a conviction on someone on a crime that wasn't committed.
Why are you trying to change the subject, x?
We're talking about the firing of US Attorneys in the middle of a presidential term -- something that is highly unusual since it has only happened twice in the preceeding 25 years and especially since the Justice Department itself said at least 6 of the 8 fired attorneys had positive job performance reviews. If you really don't care about it, why are you even in this thread?
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