Gonzales Chief-of-Staff Trapped in More Misrepresentations; Suspicions Mount About Milwaukee U.S. Attorney Biskupic

By Scott Horton

Newly released emails directly contradicted the claims of Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, that he had not prepared the names of replacement candidates for the eight terminated U.S. attorneys. This raises the possibility that senior Justice Department figures consciously misled Congress about the matter. Making false statements to Congress is a crime under federal law.

The McClatchy Newspapers report:

Kyle Sampson, then chief of staff to Gonzales, listed the names of possible replacements in a January 2006 e-mail he sent to then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers.

The disclosure offers more evidence that Justice Department officials may have misled Congress about attempting to transform the ranks of the nation's top federal prosecutors by firing some—perhaps for refusing to follow political direction, some evidence suggests—and replacing them with conservative loyalists from the Bush administration's inner circle.

Other emails underscored the fact that the entire project was viewed as a highly sensitive political exercise, and that it was important to disguise the reality of what was being done in the face of the media. Karl Rove is viewed as the author of an original plan to fire all 93 U.S. attorneys as a cover for the smaller number to be terminated in key “election battleground” states. The plan was ultimately dismissed as impracticable.

Senate investigators also announced that they had examined internal Department of Justice documents which made clear that Wisconsin U.S. attorney Steven Biskupic had originally been slated for the ax. The disclosure will fuel speculation that Biskupic retrieved himself by concocting a politically charged prosecution, of a state civil servant named Georgia Thompson, to redeem himself in the eyes of Karl Rove. This suspicion has already been articulated in three Wisconsin newspapers. Writes McClatchy:

Nevertheless, the disclosure aroused investigators' suspicion that Biskupic might have been retained in his job because he agreed to prosecute Democrats, though the evidence was slight. Such politicization of the administration of justice is at the heart of congressional Democrats' concerns over the Bush Administration's firings of the U.S. attorneys.

Republicans had cited the June 2006 conviction as evidence that Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle's administration was rife with corruption as he ran for re-election last year. He won anyway—the first Democratic governor of the state to win re-election in 32 years.

All of these matters are expected to figure heavily in Alberto Gonzales's examination by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.