WaPo: Gonzales Sought Dismissal of 26 U.S. Attorneys

By Scott Horton

In a dramatic expansion of the current Purgegate scandal, the Washington Post reports this morning that Alberto Gonzales knowingly gave false evidence to the Judiciary Committee when he attempted to limit the scope of the program aimed at removing U.S. Attorneys.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified last week that the effort was limited to eight U.S. attorneys fired since last June, and other administration officials have said that only a few others were suggested for removal. In fact, D. Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales’s chief of staff, considered more than two dozen U.S. attorneys for termination, according to lists compiled by him and his colleagues, the sources said.

They amounted to more than a quarter of the nation’s 93 U.S. attorneys. Thirteen of those known to have been targeted are still in their posts. […]

The number of names on the lists demonstrates the breadth of the search for prosecutors to dismiss. The names also hint at a casual process in which the people who were most consistently considered for replacement were not always those ultimately told to leave.