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Leahy: Have any other DoJ officials left? |
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By Susan Crabtree
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Posted: 03/27/07 07:23 PM [ET] |
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) wants to know if any other Department of Justice (DoJ) officials have left or have plans to leave their jobs and which officials have hired attorneys to represent them in the controversy surrounding the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year.
Leahy sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales yesterday asking for a reply to these questions before tomorrow’s Judiciary Committee hearing, which will feature testimony from Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’s former chief of staff who recently resigned over his role in the attorneys’ dismissals.
Leahy sent the letter one day after Monica Goodling, another DoJ official, told the Judiciary Committee through counsel that she will invoke the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination at the hearing. Goodling has taken a personal leave of absence from the DoJ and Leahy wants to know whether she, as well as several other officials involved in the firings, are still employed there.
“What is the employment status of Michael Battle, Michael Elston and William Mercer with the Department of Justice?” he asks in the letter.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the ranking member of the Judiciary panel, defended Goodling’s right to invoke the Fifth Amendment in a statement on the Senate floor. He said innocent people as well as those who have something to hide invoke the clause and reminded senators that Goodling has claimed she is innocent.
Specter went on to take Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to task for drawing conclusions about the matter, specifically for saying “no less than five times” that DoJ’s prior testimony contained “false” or “misleading” statements before all the evidence has come out about the firings.
“I can understand the sense of a potential witness not wanting to be ensnared in that kind of proceeding where conclusions have been reached by Senator Schumer, who is in charge of the investigation,” he said.
He then criticized Schumer, who is chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, for conducting the investigation into the firings while at the same time highlighting the controversy on the DSCC’s website and in fundraising letters.
Meanwhile, House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) charged that the U.S. attorney firings parallel a 2002 incident involving the federal prosecutor in Guam. According to Slaughter’s account, then-U.S. Attorney Frederick Black was demoted and replaced by a lawyer who had been recommended by Karl Rove. At the time he was replaced, Slaughter said, Black was investigating a questionable lobbying arrangement involving former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and clients in Guam.
The Justice Department did not return a call for comment by press time.
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