Gonzales was expected to receive a grilling from Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee about last year’s firing of eight U.S. attorneys. But rather than focus on how the prosecutors were dismissed, lawmakers turned the session into a series of partisan arguments about the status of U.S. attorney investigations of two sitting congressmen.

Gonzales responded that Sensenbrenner knew that he could not talk about ongoing investigations.

“Well, everybody’s talking about it except you,” Sensenbrenner retorted. “I’m just interested in finding out when this matter is going to be brought to conclusion, because we authorize and appropriate a heck of a lot of money to run your department and people are wondering what the dickens is going on.”

Gonzales then said he “had every confidence” that the prosecutors in the case will follow the evidence and take action at the appropriate time.

Not satisfied, Sensenbrenner tried a different tack. He asked whether Gonzales believed the raid on Jefferson’s office and the legal dispute over the separation of powers that it sparked had slowed a decision on whether to indict Jefferson.

Gonzales said only that he couldn’t comment but would do so at the appropriate time.

“Well, I would hope that the appropriate time would be pretty soon,” Sensenbrenner said, “because the people’s confidence in your department has been further eroded, separate and apart from the U.S. attorney controversy, because of the delay in dealing with this matter.”

The exchange took place after a dust-up over Rep. Linda Sanchez’s (D-Calif.) comments on an FBI investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), and whether the October departure of U.S. Attorney Debra Yang, who was leading the probe, was related to the other prosecutors’ firings in December. Yang resigned her position to take a partnership at a law firm defending Lewis in the probe. She has said that she did so for personal and financial reasons.

Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.) interjected when Sanchez attempted to cite for the record a New York Times article raising questions about Yang’s departure.

Lungren accused Sanchez of saying that Lewis was a specific target of an investigation and argued there was no proof of that.

“We ought to be careful about that before we start besmirching members’ names around,” he said.

Following Sensenbrenner’s comments about the Jefferson probe, Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) raised a point of order asking to “take down” Sanchez’s words that Lewis was a target.

Sanchez said she did not know if she had said he was a target, but apologized if she had and agreed to strike it from the record.