The Daily Background

Breaking from NBC News: newly released documents prove Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was intimately involved in the firing of US Attorneys last year, despite his repeated claims that he was not aware of what was going on in his office. NBC reports, moments ago:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales approved plans to fire several U.S. attorneys in a November meeting, according to documents released Friday that contradict earlier claims that he was not closely involved in the dismissals.

The Nov. 27 meeting, in which the attorney general and at least five top Justice Department officials participated, focused on a five-step plan for carrying out the firings of the prosecutors, Justice Department officials said late Friday.

There, Gonzales signed off on the plan, which was crafted by his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. Sampson resigned last week amid a political firestorm surrounding the firings.

The meeting, which took an hour and was held in Gonzales’ personal conference room, reportedly was arranged to hash out the details of how US Attorneys were fired and the process that would be taken from there forward. You’ll recall that Gonzales told reporters on March 13:

:
“I knew my chief of staff was involved in the process of determining who were the weak performers — where were the districts around the country where we could do better for the people in that district, and that’s what I knew…. But that is in essence what I knew about the process; was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on. That’s basically what I knew as the attorney general.”

There’s very little information about this right now, just the NBC report that was published a very short time ago, but this looks very bad. It seems as though there is now proof that Gonzales has outright lied about his involvement (or what he claimed was his lack of involvement) in the scandal. This could hasten Gonzales’ exit or at the very least amplify calls for his outster. It figures that this sort of thing would happen on a Friday afternoon though… More on th is when I get it.

Update: Slightly more from the Associated Press: “The documents were released Friday night, a few hours after Sampson agreed to testify at a Senate inquiry next week into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year.” Typical timing.

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