Gonzales blames scandal on deputy
The news came the day after McNulty tendered his resignation, after serving 18 months as the Justice Department's second-in-command.
"At the end of the day, the recommendation reflected the views of the deputy attorney general," Gonzales said in a speech at the National Press Club. "I mean, again, the deputy attorney general would know best about the qualifications and experiences of the United States attorney community, and he signed off on the names."
McNulty in turn has blamed former Justice Department White House Liaison Monica Goodling, who resigned last month, and others for "failing to inform him of pertinent facts prior to his testimony," according to Goodling's attorneys. The House Judiciary Committee voted to grant Goodling immunity for her testimony on the firings as part of their investigation.
Utah native D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned as Gonzales' chief of staff in March, initially took the fall for the political furor caused by the firings, describing it as an "unfortunate combination of poor judgments, poor word choices and poor communication and preparation for the department's testimony before Congress."
Congress is investigating what went into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year, particularly the White House's involvement, after different reasons emerged as to why and how the prosecutors were fired. McNulty told Congress the firings were "performance-based," but the attorneys forced to resign were told something different and had good performance records.
Some of the attorneys have also testified before Congress that there may have been political undertones to their terminations, based on cases they were handling at the time.
In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Gonzales said the list of attorneys to be fired came from a consensus of senior leadership. Gonzales, in the committee testimony, said he takes responsibility for the situation.
But in a question-and-answer session Tuesday at the National Press Club, Gonzales pointed the finger at McNulty.
"The one person that I would care about would be the views of the deputy attorney general, because the deputy attorney general is the direct supervisor of the United States attorneys," Gonzales said. "And in this particular case, Mr. McNulty was a former colleague of all of these United States attorneys, and so he would probably know better than anyone else about the performance and the qualifications of these — of our United States attorney community."
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