Gonzales: Praise and Blame for Deputy McNulty?

May 15, 2007 — -- One day after his deputy Paul McNulty resigned, embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales praised him for doing "a really good job," but seemed to place blame for the fired U.S. attorneys scandal squarely on his former aide, saying he was their "direct supervisor" and "signed off on the names" on the list.

"The one person I would care about would be the views of the deputy attorney general because the deputy attorney general is the direct supervisor of the U.S. attorneys," Gonzales said at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., after a speech on the Justice Department's violent crime initiative.

"Mr. McNulty would probably know better than anyone else about the performance and the qualifications of our U.S. attorney community," he said.

McNulty, who cited "the financial realities of college-age children" as the reason for his resignation, is the highest-ranking Justice Department official to resign in the fallout from the firings of the eight prosecutors last year.

Gonzales said he relied on his staff, including McNulty and his former Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson, who stepped down in March, to submit the recommendations on which attorneys to dismiss, but now he says he wishes he had been more involved in the process.

"The recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names," said Gonzales. "I was justified in relying on the senior leadership in making these recommendations to me, but clearly in hindsight there are things that I would do differently."

Despite repeated calls for his own resignation, Gonzales said that he planned to stay on as long as he had the support of President Bush.

"That really is a question for the president. He gets to make that call," said Gonzales, adding that his close friendship with Bush was "a good thing."

"You have a pretty good idea of what's important for the president in terms of establishing policies and priorities. Having a personal relationship makes it much easier always to deliver bad news."

On Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders continued to voice their disapproval of Gonzales.

"Another resignation won't make the unanswered questions about the fired U.S. attorneys disappear," said House Democratic Caucus chairman Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois.

"Resignations are no substitute for the truth," he said.

"Mr. McNulty's resignation is a sign that top-level administration at the Justice Department may be crumbling under the pressure of ongoing revelations and what is yet to be disclosed," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich.

McNulty testified in February that one of the fired attorneys, Bud Cummins of Arkansas, was asked to leave his post to make way for Tim Griffin, a former aide to Bush's chief political adviser Karl Rove.

The testimony reportedly bothered Gonzales, who had asserted the attorneys were fired for performance-related issues.

"It seems ironic that Paul McNulty, who at least tried to level with the committee, goes, while Gonzales, who stonewalled the committee, is still in charge," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "This administration owes us a lot better."

Gonzales, who testified on Capitol Hill last month, said he would continue to work with Congress to provide lawmakers with the information they requested.

"It's been an unfortunate episode for the department. I'm committed to working with Congress to make information available about what happened here," the attorney general said.

"There are institutional interests here on both sides: institutional interests of Congress, institutional interests of the executive branch, and somehow we've got to find an accommodation of those two competing interests."