New DoJ documents do not answer Dems’ questions

The Department of Justice (DoJ) on Friday released thousands of pages of new documents to Democratic lawmakers and aides investigating the planned ouster of eight U.S. attorneys, raising the stakes for next Tuesday’s Senate appearance by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and adding new names to the mix.

The document release comes a day after the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a new round of subpoenas for documents and testimony from DoJ and White House officials. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the subcommittee chairman spearheading the prosecutor firings probe, told reporters that the documents hardly resolve Democrats’ lingering questions.

 {mosads}“Adding these documents to the others, we’ve received 6,000 pages of documents,” Schumer said. “There is still no clear reason why these U.S. attorneys were fired.” Portions of the documents are still heavily redacted, Schumer noted, at times obscuring information Democrats have requested specifically.

Among the redacted items at issue are the names of three U.S. attorneys initially singled out for firing by Sampson but eventually dropped from the purge plan. On Jan. 9, 2006, Sampson sent then-White House counsel Harriet Miers and her deputy a list of seven suggested targets for removal: four attorneys who are tied to the scandal and three who are redacted from all released documents.

Yet another e-mail released Friday may shed light on two of those unknown prosecutors. On April 14, 2006, Sampson told associate White House counsel Dabney Friedrich, “I would note that two others on my original list already have left office.”

The names below are redacted, but a search of public records and media reports shows only two U.S. attorneys who left office between January and April 2006. Missouri’s Todd Graves left office March 10, 2006, facing criticism from the state Democrats after his family members accepted more than $3 million in no-bid contracts from Gov. Matt Blunt (R). Minnesota’s Tom Heffelfinger resigned Feb. 15, 2006, and was replaced two days later by Rachel Paulose.

Four senior aides to Paulose, a 33-year-old former special assistant to Gonzales, asked to be demoted out of her office last week, citing her “highly dictatorial style” to local media.
Schumer told reporters that Justice has yet to directly inform him of the three attorneys on the initial target list.

The newly released documents also reveal that DoJ officials were considering several replacement prosecutors in the early days of the purge planning. Those replacements, including two lawyers who now serve as U.S. attorneys in other districts, appear to run counter to Sampson’s Senate testimony last month.

“I asked Sampson about it, and he gave a lawyerly-type response but left the clear impression that they did not have people in mind for replacements,” Schumer said. Sampson told senators March 29 that he “personally did not” have any pre-selected replacements in mind.

Sampson’s lawyer, Bradford Berenson of Sidley Austin, responded in a statement that Sampson’s testimony presented no contradiction.

“In December 2006, when the seven U.S. attorneys were asked to step down, no specific candidate had been selected to replace any of them, and Kyle had none in mind,” Sampson said. “Some names had been tentatively suggested for discussion much earlier in the process, but by the time the decision to ask for the resignations was made, none had been chosen to serve as a replacement. Most, if not all, had long since ceased even to be possibilities.”