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Schumer Outraged Over US Attorneys

March 13, 2007 11:56 AM

ABC News' Jake Tapper Reports: "I was concerned that something didn't smell right," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, the No. 3 man in the Senate this morning, speaking to reporters about the US Attorney controversy. "But I didn't know how high it went."

Schumer called the involvement within the White House in firing eight U.S. Attorneys, "an unprecedented breach of trust, abuse of power, and misuse of the Justice Department."

"We now have evidence that Attorney General (Alberto) Gonzales was carrying out the political wishes of the White House in at least some of these firings," Schumer charged. "Attorney General Gonzales's chief of staff may have obstructed justice."

Sen. Schumer said that Attorney General Gonzales has "either forgotten the oath he took to uphold the constitution or he does not understand that his duty to protect the law is greater than his duty to protect the president."

Sen. Schumer outlined six "falsehoods we've been told", including that seven of the eight fired US Attorneys were fired for performance reasons.  He said Attorney General Gonzales previously testified that he would never, ever make a change in US Attorney for political reasons.

"This purge was based purely on politics," Sen. Schumer charged.
"We were told by the Attorney General that this was an overblown personnel matter."

"We were told the White House was not involved . . . (former White House counsel) Harriet Miers was the mastermind of this plan, she communicated extensively with (Gonzales chief of staff) Kyle Sampson," Sen. Schumer told reporters.

"We were told Karl Rove had no involvement in getting his protégé appointed US Attorney in Arkansas," said Schumer. "We were told the change to the PATRIOT Act was an innocent attempt to fix a loophole," Sen. Schumer said.

"So there has been misleading statement after misleading statement," he said. "We haven't gotten to bottom of this yet."

Sen. Schumer called for Attorney General Gonzales to step down.

"Today's resignation by his chief of staff does not take the heat off the Attorney General -- it raises the temperature," said Sen. Schumer.

The New York Senator also said congress and the public need to hear from key White House staff.

"Karl Rove should not wait for a subpoena he should come before us immediately," said Sen. Schumer, adding that Miers and Sampson should also appear before congress.

"The president must make his role clear . . . the sooner he explains this to the American people the better," said Sen. Schumer.

"They ought to help us get to the bottom of this and come clean," Sen. Schumer said of any potential White House officials' refusals to explain their actions.

"The cloud over the US Attorneys, the cloud over the Justice Department, is getting darker and darker," he said.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., focused on the March 2006 amendment of the PATRIOT Act that allowed appointments of US Attorneys that bypassed Senate confirmation. "Did the president know that this was in the works?" asked Sen. Feinstein.

"We now know it's very likely the amendment to the PATRIOT Act of March 2006 was done to facilitate the wholesale replacement of all or part of the US Attorneys without Senate confirmation," said Sen. Feinstein.

She said there will be a vote tomorrow in the Senate to rescind this part of the PATRIOT Act which she hopes will pass.

"This was a dangerous strategy," Sen. Feinstein said. "We will issue some subpoenas as soon as possible."

March 13, 2007 in Vote 2008: Democrats | Permalink | User Comments (0)

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