Kyle Sampson, under oath
Excerpts from the testimony of the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Editor's note: Following are excerpts from Thursday's hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee. During the hearing, D. Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, testified before the committee about the ongoing controversy over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Speaking, along with Sampson, are Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chairman of the committee, as well as Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.
Read more: Politics, Orrin Hatch, Dianne Feinstein, News, Alberto Gonzales, Richard Durbin, U.S. Attorneys, Primary sources
March 30, 2007 | LEAHY: Mr. Sampson, please stand and raise your right hand.
Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you're about to give in this matter shall be the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help you God?
SAMPSON: Yes.
...
SAMPSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. ...
I was responsible for organizing and managing the process by which certain U.S. attorneys were asked to resign. From that vantage point, I believe I was well-positioned to observe and understand what happened in this matter. ...
After the 2004 election, the White House inquired about the prospect of replacing all 93 U.S. attorneys with new appointees. I believed, as did others, that less sweeping changes were more appropriate. The Department of Justice then began to look at replacing a limited number of U.S. attorneys in districts where, for a variety of reasons, the department thought change would be beneficial. ...
I would be the first to concede that this process was not scientific, nor was it extensively documented. That is the nature of presidential personnel decisions. ...
When I speak about U.S. attorney performance it is critical to understand the performance for a Senate-confirmed presidential appointee is very different than -- it's a very different thing than performance for a civil servant or a private sector employee.
Presidential appointees are judged not only on their professional skills, but also their management abilities, their relationships with law enforcement and other governmental leaders, and their support for the priorities of the president and the attorney general. ...
The distinction between political- and performance-related reasons for removing a U.S. attorney is, in my view, largely artificial. A U.S. attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective, either because he or she has alienated the leadership of the department in Washington or cannot work constructively with law enforcement or other governmental constituencies in the district, is unsuccessful.
...
Based on everything I've seen and heard, I believe that each replaced U.S. attorney was selected for legitimate reasons falling well within the president's broad discretion and relating to his or her performance in office, at least as performance is properly understood in the context of Senate-confirmed political appointees.
Nonetheless, when members of Congress began to raise questions about these removals, I believe the department's response was badly mishandled. It was mishandled through an unfortunate combination of poor judgments, poor word choices and poor communication in preparation for the department's testimony before Congress. ...
For that reason, I offered the attorney general my resignation. I was not asked to resign. I simply felt honor-bound to accept my share of blame for this problem and to hold myself accountable. ...
The mistakes I made here were made honestly and in good faith. I failed to organize a more effective response to questions about the replacement process. But I never sought to conceal or withhold any material fact about this matter from anyone. I always carried out my responsibilities in an open and collaborative manner.
Others in the department knew what I knew about the origins and timing of this enterprise. None of us spoke up on those subjects during the process of preparing Mr. McNulty and Mr. Moschella to testify, not because there was some effort to hide this history, but because the focus of our preparation sessions was on other subjects...
As I see it, the truth of this affair is this: The decisions to seek the resignation of a handful of U.S. attorneys were properly made, but poorly explained. This is a benign, rather than sinister, story. And I know that some may be disposed not to accept it, but it's the truth as I observed it and experienced it.
...
SPECTER: Are you prepared to swear under oath that no U.S. attorney was asked to resign because the U.S. attorney was pursuing an investigation which you thought was too hot, or was failing to undertake a prosecution which you thought should have been made?
SAMPSON: To my knowledge, that was the case.
SPECTER: In his press conference on March the 13th, Attorney General Gonzales said that he was not involved in any discussions relating to the issue. But the e-mails show that on November 27th, there was a meeting which Attorney General Gonzales attended which took up the issues or, apparently, discussions on the U.S. attorney appointments. ...
SAMPSON: I don't think the attorney general's statement that he was not involved in any discussions about U.S. attorney removals is accurate. ... I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain U.S. attorneys to resign. And I believe that he was present at the meeting on November 27th.
...
SCHUMER: Similarly, DOJ spokesman, on March 24th, Ms. Scolinos, said the attorney general did not participate in the selection of U.S. attorneys to be fired. Was that an accurate statement?
SAMPSON: I don't think that's an accurate statement.
...
CORNYN: Is there any -- is there any reason, to your knowledge, to believe that the -- that the replacement of a United States attorney with another individual appointed by the president, and confirmed by the United States Senate, would by -- in and of itself, tend to interfere or impede with any investigation into any criminal -- serious criminal matter that a U.S. attorney's office was investigating or prosecuting?
SAMPSON: Not to my knowledge.
...
KOHL: Isn't there tremendous damage done to the Justice Department and our entire system of justice when the appearance of partisan politics seems to trump the administration of justice?
...
SAMPSON: Let me just say that, in my e-mails, by referring to loyal Bushies or loyalty to the president and the attorney general, what I meant was loyalty to their policies and to the priorities that they had laid out for the U.S. attorneys.
...
HATCH: When you evaluated the performance of U.S. attorneys, did you look only at statistical categories and written evaluations, or was your idea of performance much broader than that?
SAMPSON: To me and to others in the process, performance-related was much broader. It included production in the office, management abilities, extracurricular U.S. attorney work on the attorney general's advisory committee or other work in developing policies of the administration. It included not engaging in policy conflicts with main Justice.
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