House Dems Push for More DoJ Testimony, Evidence (plus ltr to Gonzo)

[babylonsister]

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002713.php

House Dems Push for More DoJ Testimony, Evidence
By Paul Kiel - March 8, 2007, 6:23 PM

In a letter sent to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and Subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sánchez (D-CA) pushed for the Justice Department to make six Justice Department officials available for questioning about the department's purge of eight U.S. attorneys.

"We ask that you make available to us several officials at the Department for follow-up questioning next week and that you provide us with certain critical documents and information," they write. You can read it in full here.

In a statement, Conyers said that this week's hearing "provided an important first look into what may be a much larger and wide-ranging problem at the Department of Justice and in the Administration as a whole."

Conyers and Sanchez want to talk to the same group sought by the Senate Judiciary Committee, namely:

-- Mike Elston, we know, made the now infamous not-at-all-threatening phone call to former USA Bud Cummins.

-- Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson and the Justice Department's White House liaison Monica Goodling were involved in generating the list of prosecutors to fire.

-- Acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer told two of the fired prosecutors that they were being replaced in order to free up the spot for someone else.

-- Michael Battle, who will be stepping down at the end of next week, actually made the calls firing the prosecutors.

-- and Paul McNulty, the Deputy Attorney General who has already testified before the Senate about the firings.

So we're just getting started.


Text of letter sent to Gonzo from Conyers, at link:


http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/ag-letter/?resultpage=1&