WASHINGTON - U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' hold on his job grew more uncertain Monday as the Senate debated removing his authority to unilaterally name U.S. attorneys and the White House said it merely hoped he would survive the tumult.
Asked if Gonzales had contained the political damage from the firing of eight federal prosecutors, White House spokesman Tony Snow said, "I don't know."
Snow declined to predict how long Gonzales would stay in his job but reiterated President Bush's support of him.
"No one's prophetic enough to know what the next 21 months hold," Snow said. "We hope he stays."
The Justice Department also turned over to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees some 3,000 pages of new documents related to the firings.
White House counselor Dan Bartlett said that Bush had full confidence in Gonzales and that the attorney general had not offered to resign.
The good news for Gonzales late Monday was that the two most senior Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania and Orrin Hatch (news, bio, voting record) of Utah, both former chairmen, had not called for a new attorney general. But neither were they endorsing the embattled Justice chief. Specter said he will reserve judgment until he gets all the facts; Hatch has not given interviews on the subject, his spokesman said.
Either way, Gonzales faces a tough week. The Senate was devoting Monday and Tuesday to debating and voting on rescinding his authority to appoint replacement U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation.
"We need to close the loophole exploited by the White House and the Department of Justice that facilitated this abuse," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said opening the debate.
With Gonzales under fire, speculation turned to who might succeed him. Possible candidates include:
- White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend,
- Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff,
- Former Solicitor General Ted Olson,
- Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein,
- Federal appeals judge Laurence Silberman, and
- PepsiCo attorney Larry Thompson, who was the government's highest ranking black law enforcement official when he was deputy attorney general during Bush's first term.
In other trouble for the administration, the Justice Department's inspector general is to testify Tuesday and Wednesday before House and Senate committees on what he says was Justice's misuse of its power to secretly go through people's financial, Internet and other records in terrorism cases.
Gonzales, himself, is the star witness Thursday before a House panel considering his department's budget request. That will be his first public appearance on Capitol Hill since Bush told him last week to quickly patch up relations with lawmakers.
There was no indication that would happen anytime soon. Not a single Republican in Congress has come to Gonzales' defense, though some have stated the administration's right to replace prosecutors without offering a reason.
Calls for resignation
One Republican senator has called for Gonzales' resignation and another has said the attorney general has lost the confidence of Congress. In the House, one GOP member has stepped forward to call for his replacement while another says he will do so if and when Gonzales testifies. Democrats widely have called for Gonzales to step down, including presidential hopefuls Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards.
However, many Democrats -- like most Republicans -- are waiting to see what shoe falls next.
Democrats kept up their effort to find out why eight U.S. attorneys were fired after Dec. 7 -- noting that six were involved in public corruption cases at a time when Republicans were still smarting from being stripped of their congressional majority in the November elections.
Some of those fired had pursued Republicans in corruption cases; one, David Iglesias of New Mexico, said he had refused political pressure to rush indictments that would hurt Democrats.
"If any U.S. attorney were removed because of a public corruption investigation or prosecution, this could well comprise obstruction of justice," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. She said e-mails among Justice Department and White House officials show that "politics has in fact played some role."
The Justice Department denied that, saying it was taking a "virtually unprecedented" step by releasing the documents.
"The Department did not remove the U.S. attorneys for improper reasons, such as to prevent or retaliate for a particular prosecution in a public corruption matter," said Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Sciolinos in a statement accompanying the release.
The White House is expected to announce this week whether it will let political strategist Karl Rove and other officials testify in congressional hearings. White House counsel Fred Fielding was to meet Tuesday on that issue with leaders of two judiciary committees.
Some of Bush's staunchest allies urged the administration to stem the political damage by being more clear about the White House's role in the dismissals.
"I've told the attorney general that I think this has been mishandled, that by giving inaccurate information ... at the outset, it's caused a real firestorm, and he better get the facts out fast," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, on Sunday.
Leahy has scheduled a vote by his Judiciary Committee for Thursday on whether to issue subpoenas for Rove, former counsel Harriet Miers and her deputy, William Kelley.
"I want testimony under oath. I am sick and tired of getting half-truths on this," Leahy said Sunday.
Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the committee, said he had a long talk with Fielding on Friday and was reserving judgment. Specter said he also would like to see Rove and Miers testify in public.
Gonzales initially had asserted the firings were performance-related, not based on political considerations.
But e-mails between the Justice Department and the White House contradicted that assertion. The e-mails showed that Rove, as early as Jan. 6, 2005, questioned whether the U.S. attorneys should all be replaced at the start of Bush's second term.
