Senate limits Gonzales' hiring authority

[mcpeepants]

Senate limits Gonzales' hiring authority

By PETE YOST and LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writers 29 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to end the Bush administration's ability to unilaterally fill U.S. attorney vacancies as a backlash to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' firing of eight federal prosecutors.
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Gonzales got a morale boost with an early-morning call from
President Bush, their first conversation since a week ago, when the president said he was unhappy with how the Justice Department handled the firings.

Also, the Senate by a 94-2 vote passed a bill that would cancel the attorney general's power to appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. Democrats say the Bush administration abused that authority when it fired the eight prosecutors and proposed replacing some with White House loyalists.

"If you politicize the prosecutors, you politicize everybody in the whole chain of law enforcement," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt.

The bill, which has yet to be considered in the House, would set a 120-day deadline for the administration to appoint an interim prosecutor. If the interim appointment is not confirmed by the Senate in that time, a permanent replacement would be named by a federal district judge.

Essentially, the Senate returned the law regarding the appointments of U.S. attorneys to where it was before Congress passed the Patriot Act, including the unilateral appointment authority the administration had sought in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks.

The vote came as Gonzales and the White House braced for more fallout from the firings. The White House also denied reports that it was looking for possible successors for Gonzales. "Those rumors are untrue," White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said.

Bush called Gonzales from the Oval Office at 7:15 a.m. EDT and they spoke for several minutes about the political uproar over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, an issue that has thrust the attorney general into controversy and raised questions about whether he can survive. The White House disclosed Bush's call to bolster Gonzales and attempt to rally Republicans to support him.

Meeting later with reporters, White House press secretary Tony Snow characterized Bush's call to the attorney general as "a very strong vote of confidence."

Snow said Bush believes the firings were justified.

"Let me put it this way: Nobody was removed for reasons of partisan recrimination; nor was anybody removed for the purposes of trying to influence the course of ongoing investigations," Snow said.

He called reports that Bush was seeking a replacement for Gonzales "just flat false, period."

But the day grew more difficult for Gonzales as another Republican, Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, called for his resignation.

"Alberto Gonzales has repeatedly shown that he is unwilling to enforce the law and unable to effectively manage the Department," said Tancredo, a longshot presidential candidate. "While I do not believe the dismissal of these eight political appointees warrants Mr. Gonzales removal, his total mishandling of the affair is simply the latest in a series of leadership failures at the Justice Department."

Former House Republican Leader
Tom DeLay had said earlier Tuesday that the scandal "is just a taste of what's going to be like for the next two years."

"And the Bush administration sort of showed their weakness when they got rid of Don Rumsfeld," the Texan said on NBC's "Today" show. "... This is a made up scandal. There is no evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever. ... They ought to be fighting back."

Bush's call came as congressional investigators sifted through 3,000-pages of e-mails and other material concerning the dismissal of the prosecutors. Some of the documents spelled out fears in the Bush administration that the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys might not stand up to scrutiny.

The documents were not the end of the inquiry. House and Senate panels later in the week expected to approve subpoenas to White House aides Karl Rove, former counsel Harriet Miers and others. Miers' successor, Fred Fielding, was to tell the Judiciary Committees later Tuesday whether and under what conditions Bush would allow the officials to testify.

But the documents told more of the story of the run-up to the firings and the administration's attempt to choreograph them to reduce the bloodletting. It didn't work out that way — the prosecutors were shocked and angered by the dismissals, the lack of explanation from the Justice Department and news reports that the administration fired the eight for performance reasons.

The documents that Congress will focus on in the coming days show that Gonzales was unhappy with how Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty explained the firings to the Senate Judiciary Committee in early February.

"The Attorney General is extremely upset with the stories on the US Attys this morning," Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse, who was traveling with Gonzales in South America at the time, wrote in a Feb. 7 e-mail. "He also thought some of the DAG's statements were inaccurate."

In a statement Monday night, Roehrkasse said he was referring to Gonzales' concerns over the firing of Bud Cummins in Little Rock, who he believed was dismissed because of performance issues. At the hearing, McNulty indicated Cummins was being replaced by a political ally.

Neither of the two most senior Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are stepping forward to endorse Gonzales, but likewise are not calling for his ouster. Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania said he will reserve judgment until he gets all the facts. Sen. Orrin Hatch (news, bio, voting record) of Utah has not given interviews on the subject, his spokesman said.

Speculation has abounded over who might succeed Gonzales if he doesn't survive the current political tumult. Possible candidates include White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend,
Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff, former Solicitor General Ted Olson, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein, federal appeals judge Laurence Silberman and PepsiCo attorney Larry Thompson, who was the government's highest ranking black law enforcement official when he was deputy attorney general during Bush's first term.

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On the Net:

House Judiciary Committee: http://judiciary.house.gov

[Logan13]

This is just further evidence that a witch hunt is going on, when Clinton took office, he canned ALL 93 US Attorneys that..........and no one cared! Not only that, but the US Attorney in the District of Columbia was the one investigating some shady deals that the Clintons and their Cronies had done. Still, no one cared.
How The NYT Covered Reno’s Firing Of All US Attorneys
ATTORNEY GENERAL SEEKS RESIGNATIONS FROM PROSECUTORS
By DAVID JOHNSTON,
TIME Magazine
Published: March 24, 1993

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/f...utors-nyt-1993

Attorney General Janet Reno today demanded the prompt resignation of all United States Attorneys, leading the Federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia to suggest that the order could be tied to his long-running investigation of Representative Dan Rostenkowski, a crucial ally of President Clinton.

Jay B. Stephens, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, who is a Bush Administration holdover, said he had advised the Justice Department that he was within 30 days of making a “critical decision” in the Rostenkowski case when Ms. Reno directed him and other United States Attorneys to submit their resignations, effective in a matter of days.

While prosecutors are routinely replaced after a change in Administration, Ms. Reno’s order accelerated what had been expected to be a leisurely changeover.

Says He Won’t Resist

At a news conference today only hours after one by Ms. Reno, Mr. Stephens said he would not resist the Attorney General’s move to force him from office, and he held back from directly accusing her of interfering with the Rostenkowski inquiry.

But Mr. Stephens left the strong impression that Ms. Reno’s actions might disrupt the investigation as he moved toward a decision on whether to seek charges against the Illinois Democrat, who is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

“This case has been conducted with integrity,” Mr. Stephens said, “and I trust the decisions in this case will not be made based on political considerations.”

Nonetheless, lawyers who have followed the investigation have said that Mr. Stephens has been concerned that the Democratic Administration might try to upset his investigation.

Has Denied Wrongdoing

Mr. Rostenkowski has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, and he has not been accused of any impropriety. But if he is indicted, he would be forced by House rules to relinquish his chairmanship, a development that some lawmakers have said could seriously jeopardize Mr. Clinton’s efforts to steer his economic and health-care proposals through Congress.

Mr. Stephens and his prosecutors began the investigation that led them to review Mr. Rostenkowski’s activities in mid-1991, focusing initially on low-level employees at the House post office who absconded with money. There have been several guilty pleas as prosecutors have worked their way up the ranks at the mailing operation.

Mr. Rostenkowski has been under scrutiny since last year, when his office records were subpoenaed in an inquiry into whether someone in his office used his expense account fraudulently to obtain cash from the post office. Since then, some of his aides have testified to a grand jury and investigators have examined his use of campaign funds. Denies Any Connection

In announcing her order at her first news conference as Attorney General, Ms. Reno denied there was any connection between her action and the Rostenkowski case and said Mr. Stephens had been treated like other United States Attorneys.”

Ms. Reno said United States Attorneys “are absolutely integral to the whole success of the Department of Justice,” and her aides said today that she did not intend to immediately remove any whose presence was required to complete an investigation.

One official suggested that even Mr. Stephens might be asked to stay on until a successor is named, saying Ms. Reno had made no decisions about who she may choose on an interim basis.

All 93 United States Attorneys knew they would be asked to step down, since all are Republican holdovers, and 16 have resigned so far. But the process generally takes much longer and had usually been carried out without the involvement of the Attorney General. Battles of the Past

Ms. Reno is under pressure to assert her control over appointments at the Justice Department. She was Mr. Clinton’s third choice for Attorney General and arrived after most of the department’s senior positions were already filled by the White House.

The comments of Ms. Reno and Mr. Stephens evoked the pitched battles of the past, when independent United States Attorneys resisted removal by new administrations.

In 1969, for instance Robert Morgenthau, now the Manhattan District Attorney, resisted efforts by the Nixon Administration to replace him as United States Attorney in New York until he was given what he called an “ultimatum” by President Richard M. Nixon to leave office.

In 1978, Attorney General Griffin B. Bell removed David W. Marston as United States Attorney in Philadelphia, provoking charges, never proved, that a lawmaker under scrutiny by Mr. Marston’s office had urged President Jimmy Carter to remove the prosecutor.

Four-Year Terms

United States Attorneys are appointed to serve four-year terms at the pleasure of the President. It was unclear whether Ms. Reno initiated the request for resignations or whether it was pressed on her by the White House. The Attorney General said it was a “joint decision.”

Ms. Reno said she wanted the resignations “so that the U.S. Attorneys presently in position will know where they stand and that we can begin to build a team.”

Some Administration officials dismissed Mr. Stephens’s veiled assertions about the Attorney General’s motives as “absurd,” as one put it, saying that what was surprising was that it had taken so long before the Justice Department could begin putting its own appointees in place. Abortion Clinic Violence

On other topics, Ms. Reno said she would work with Democrats in Congress to prepare legislation to give Federal agencies a larger role in protecting abortion clinics.

Her comments came after she had ordered a review of current law, which she said was inadequate “to prevent or to help prevent physical interference with access to abortion clinics.”

She also ruled out a Federal inquiry into the death of Dr. David Gunn, a physician who was shot to death as he entered an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Fla., apparently by a man who said he was an anti-abortion activist. “Florida law on this subject is more effective than Federal law,” said Ms. Reno, a former Florida prosecutor.

Ms. Reno also said she had not decided whether to replace William S. Sessions, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who has been found to have violated ethics rules.

Lest we forget.