Fired Attorneys Fallout: Bush, Congress Want Gonzales' Clarification

March 14, 2007 — -- President Bush signaled his support for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today but made a point of telling him to go to Capitol Hill and clean up the mess he's made. "I've talked to him this morning," Bush told the press traveling with him in Mexico. "And we talked about his need to go up to Capitol Hill and make it very clear to members in both political parties why the Justice Department made the decisions it made; make it very clear about the facts."

Growing criticism over the Justice Department's firing of eight U.S. attorneys came to a head yesterday with allegations of White House involvement and the resignation of Gonzales' top aide.

Gonzales took responsibility for the department's communication breakdown, saying, "I acknowledge that mistakes were made here. I accept that responsibility and my pledge to the American people is to find out what went wrong here, to assess accountability, and to make improvements so that the mistakes that occurred in this instance do not occur again in the future."

The president said he's unhappy with those mistakes because they clouded what he sees as a simple issue. "There is a lot of confusion over what really has been a customary practice by the presidents. U.S. attorneys and others serve at the pleasure of the president." Bush admitted he had passed along complaints about some U.S. attorneys to Gonzales, but never "brought up a specific case, nor gave him specific instructions." Even with controversy over the means, Bush stands by the end, saying, "The Justice Department recommended a list of U.S. attorneys. I believe the reasons why were entirely appropriate."

But the president and the White House are not supposed to interfere with Justice Department criminal investigations, which Democrats maintain the administration did.

Today Democrats continued to hammer away, pointing to a string of e-mails between Gonzales' top aide D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned yesterday amid the controversy, former White House counsel and Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, and other high-ranking officials in both the White House and the Justice Department. Critics on Capitol Hill suggest the recent firings may have targeted U.S. attorneys for strictly political reasons.