Ex-Gonzales aide to testify today

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’ chief of staff will defend the firings of eight U.S. attorneys in his testimony before a Senate panel today, one day after the White House condemned House Democrats for hiring private lawyers to help them investigate the Bush administration on the matter.

“If they are going to spend $25,000 a month to hire a private law firm in Washington, D.C., it’s only further evidence of what their intentions are,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. “I think it’s to investigate, not legislate.”

The Washington Times first reported yesterday that House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. had drawn up a contract with D.C. law firm Arnold & Porter, for $25,000 a month over nine months, in his probe of the eight fired federal prosecutors. But Democrats responded yesterday that congressional Republicans often hired private attorneys too during their 12 years in charge.

Mr. Conyers, however, told The Times in a statement that “over the last twelve years under Republican control, House Committees entered into consultant contracts more than 40 times at a cost of more than $1.6 million.”

Meanwhile yesterday, the prepared testimony of top Gonzales aide D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned over the firings and is scheduled to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, was leaked to several news organizations.

In his prepared remarks, Mr. Sampson defends the firings as related to President Bush’s law-enforcement priorities and thus appropriate because the president determines the executive branch’s goals, and he called the events “benign rather than sinister.”

“The distinction between ‘political’ and ‘performance-related’ reasons for removing a United States attorney is, in my view, largely artificial,” he said. “A U.S. attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective … is unsuccessful.”

Mr. Sampson said that while each of the ousted attorneys was a “wonderful lawyer,” they all served at the pleasure of the president and that to his knowledge none was ousted for “an improper reason.”

He also flatly denied Democrats’ charges that attorneys were removed for investigating Republicans too much or Democrats too little.

“To my knowledge, nothing of the sort occurred here,” he said.

But Democrats continued their attack yesterday, and Mr. Conyers defended the private-attorney hirings because it does not “cost the taxpayers any additional funds.”

“The budget of the Judiciary Committee is set by a vote of every Member of the House, and this contract comes out of those funds,” Mr. Conyers said.

House Republicans shot back that Mr. Conyers’ calculations were based on committee contracts for work that paid staff could not already do.

“No idea where he got that data, but it definitely includes service contracts that are wholly unrelated to the issue at hand,” said an aide to the House Republican leadership.

Also yesterday, the Justice Department acknowledged more inaccurate statements to Congress about the fired prosecutors, this time about presidential adviser Karl Rove’s involvement in the firings.

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