A Justice Department probe said Monday that native Utahn Kyle Sampson, when he was chief of staff to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, pushed an "unsystematic and arbitrary" process to fire nine U.S. attorneys for political reasons — and then lied about it.
In response to the probe, current Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey appointed a special prosecutor on Monday to pursue possible criminal charges against those involved in the firings and subsequent deception.
"The Justice Department has an obligation to the American people to pursue this case wherever the facts and the law require," Mukasey said. He appointed Nora Dannehey,
a career prosecutor, to direct the new investigation.
In 2006, the Bush administration forced nine U.S. attorneys to resign. Almost immediately, questions arose about why they were dismissed, including whether it was intended to influence some prosecutions they oversaw. It created a scandal that would lead, in part, to the resignation of Gonzales.
The Justice Department's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility on Monday released results of their joint investigation into the matter.
While it said presidential appointees can be removed for any reason, or even no reason, "Department officials publicly justified the removals as result of an evaluation that sought to replace underperforming U.S. attorneys."
But in fact, it said, politics were the real reason, and "we determined that the process implemented largely by Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to the attorney general, was unsystematic and arbitrary."
It added, "Sampson did not adequately consult with the department officials most knowledgeable about their performance, or even examine formal evaluations of each U.S. Attorney's Office, despite his representations to the contrary."
"It is mystifying and disappointing that the inspector general chose to impugn Mr. Sampson's candor and integrity," said his attorney, Bradford Berenson. Sampson "at all times cooperated fully and voluntarily with any and all investigators, without preconditions, and provided his best, most honest and complete recollection of these events," he lawyer said.
The probe said the removed U.S. attorneys were not given an opportunity to address concerns about their performance, nor were they provided the reasons for their removal.
"And to make matters worse, after the removals became public, the statements and congressional testimony provided by the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, Sampson and other department officials about the reasons for the removals were inconsistent, misleading and inaccurate," the report said.
It added that the political reasons for removing the U.S. attorneys in various states ranged from trying to make room for political friends of the administration to removing some attorneys because of complaints about them by Republican politicians.
For example, it said, U.S. Attorney for Arkansas Bud Cummings was forced out to make way for Timothy Griffin, who had been a deputy to White House political director (and former Utahn) Karl Rove.
And it said U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias was removed after Sen. Pete Dominici and Rep. Heather Wilson, both R-N.M., complained about Iglesias' handling of voter fraud and public corruption cases, which in their view had hurt Republicans.
The report concluded Iglesias was fired because of their complaints to Sampson, Rove and others, "and that the other reasons proffered by the department after his removal were after-the-fact rationalizations that did not actually contribute to Iglesias' removal."
The probe report also said, "From start to finish, Sampson mishandled the removal process. ... He inappropriately advocated bypassing the Senate confirmation process for replacing U.S. Attorneys through a strategy of 'gumming this to death' and 'running out the clock' while appearing to act in good faith," to wait for the Senate to recess, when President Bush could make temporary appointments without Senate approval.
It added, "We were also troubled by Sampson's claims that he did not recall the reasons for many of the removals or who had recommended that certain U.S. attorneys be moved. For example, while Sampson said he did not place Iglesias on the (removal) list at the request of the White House, his recollection on this issue was varying and vague."
It said, "We also concluded that Sampson made various misleading statements about the U.S. attorney removals to the White House, Congress, and other department officials."
While the report criticizes Sampson heavily, it said the primary responsibility for failures rests with Gonzales and former deputy attorney general Paul McNulty.
It said they "abdicated their responsibility to adequately oversee the process and to ensure that the reasons for removal of each U.S. attorney were supportable and not improper."
Of note, Sampson — a graduate of Brigham Young University and a former Judiciary Committee aide to Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah — was also criticized in an earlier probe for illegally allowing politics to influence the selection of career judges and immigration judges.
However, the Justice Department said after that earlier probe that only civil law had been violated, so no criminal charges of those involved were possible.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., complained the new report shows "that partisan, political interests in the prosecution of voter fraud and public corruptions by the White House and some at the department play a role in many of these firings. These abuses are corrosive to the very foundations of our system of justice."
E-mail: lee@desnews.com