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Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told a congressional panel Thursday that he felt there were no performance-related concerns with regard to six of the eight fired U.S. attorneys. Comey testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, in February 2005 asked him who were the weakest U.S. attorneys. Comey said he provided some names, only one of which turned up on the list of the fired attorneys. The former Department of Justice (DoJ) official, who left the department in August 2005, told the committee that he “was not aware that there was any kind of process going on or that my very brief conversation with Mr. Sampson was part of some process to figure out a group of U.S. attorneys to fire. So I was not aware of a list [of U.S. attorneys who were candidates for firing].” Comey spoke favorably of ousted U.S. Attorneys David Iglesias, Carol Lam, John McKay, Paul Charlton, Daniel Bogden and H.E. “Bud” Cummins. However, Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), the subcommittee’s ranking member, noted that there was a time gap between Comey’s departure from DoJ and the firing of the attorneys and accused Democrats of “grasping for straws” in their investigation of the issue. At the outset of the hearing, subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) criticized the White House for stonewalling the investigation of the firings. “Although the president has publicly pledged to get to the truth of the matter, the White House continues to be an obstacle in concluding this investigation,” Sanchez said. “Such tactics do not inspire public confidence in the administration but serve only to increase public doubt in the administration’s integrity and commitment to equal justice under the law.” |
