MTP Transcript for Mar. 25, 2007

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER (R-PA): Well, I think that there’s a second, very critical element in this matter, and that is whether the attorney general has been candid. And this, on top of the underlying question as to whether the Department of Justice acted properly or improperly in asking for the resignations, makes it very important that the Judiciary Committee get to the bottom of it. I’m doing more—I’m more interested, Tim, than connecting the dots, I want to find out what the facts are. And we’re going to have Kyle Sampson in next Thursday. We’re going to have the attorney general in the Tuesday after we come back from recess, and I think Attorney General Gonzales’ testimony will be a make or break situation for him. There are a lot of questions to be answered beyond credibility. There’s no doubt that what has happened has had a very chilling effect on the United States attorneys across the country.

Listen, they serve at the pleasure of the president, and President Clinton discharged, in one fell swoop, all 93. So that the president can discharge without a reason, but I think they cannot be discharged for a bad reason. There are conflicting stories as to what happened with these eight U.S. attorneys, and I think the Judiciary Committee has to have a very intense investigation to find out what the facts were.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that the attorney general has been candid, Senator Specter?

SEN. SPECTER: Well, on the appearance, he’s got questions to answer. I’m not going to make a judgment based upon newspaper stories. I talked to the attorney general yesterday, and I told him that he would have an opportunity, as far as I was concerned, to present his case, but that he was going to have to have an explanation as to why he said he wasn’t involved in discussions—that’s the key word—and now you have these e-mails which appear to contradict that. Look, we have to have an attorney general who is candid, truthful. And if we find he has not been candid and truthful, that’s a, a very compelling reason for him not to stay on.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Durbin, in the USA Today on March 7^th, the attorney general wrote this: “To be clear, it was for reasons related to policy, priorities and management—what have been referred to broadly as ‘performance-related’ reasons. ...

“While I am grateful for the public service of those U.S. attorneys, they simply lost my confidence. I hope that this episode ultimately will be recognized for what it is: an overblown personnel matter.”

If the attorney general is saying that these attorney—U.S. attorneys lost his confidence because of their performance-related reasons, then he obviously reviewed the cases, reviewed their situations, reviewed their work records and came out with this reason for their dismissal. That means he was intimately involved.

SEN. DURBIN: Tim, there were so many contradictions in what the attorney general’s already told us. And your viewers have just got to meet two of these dismissed U.S. attorneys on a more personal basis. John McKay and Mr. Iglesias come off as very good, professional prosecutors, and it’s very clear what has happened here. They fell out of favor politically. The e-mails now tell us that story. As Senator Specter said, each new president gets to put in a new team of U.S. attorneys. But, as Mr. Iglesias noted, over the last 25 years, only two out of the 486 U.S. attorneys had been removed for something other than cause, something other than criminal misconduct. And here, in one fell swoop, there were eight U.S. attorneys that were dismissed. We know there was politics behind it.

The reason why it’s so significant is that a U.S. attorney, in many respects, has more power than many people in the federal government. And we have to make certain that, that U.S. attorneys’ credibility is protected.

One thing I’ll tell you is that I left a restaurant in Chicago the other night, stopped by a fellow at the door who said, gave me his name and he says, “I’m an assistant U.S. attorney here in the northern district of Illinois. Please get to the bottom of this. I’ve given my life to this. This shadow, this cloud over the U.S. attorneys’ offices across America has got to be lifted.” And that’s why these hearings are so important.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe, Senator Durbin, that the current attorney general has the independence and integrity to continue in that office?

SEN. DURBIN: I don’t believe he enjoys the confidence of the American people or of Congress. You’ll find more and more Republican members expressing doubt about whether or not he can continue, and, as you notice, the president more frequently is now saying that he’s standing behind him. It’s an indication of the problems that he’s facing. It would be so refreshing to bring a real prosecutor in there, someone independent to clean up the Department of Justice to restore the integrity and credibility, what that important agency needs.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Specter, again, another USA Today article. This one is a fixed, a fired—“3 fired prosecutors were in top 10 for convictions, federal data show.”

“Three of the eight federal prosecutors ousted by the Justice Department as poor performers ranked in the top 10 for prosecutions and convictions by the nation’s 93 U.S. attorneys, an analysis of court records” show. Paul Charlton in Arizona; David Iglesias, who was just on, was number four; Carol Lam in California was number seven. What does this tell you?

SEN. SPECTER: Well, it tells me that the attorney general has a lot of explaining to do. The factors that you have cited are important, but there are other factors. I was district attorney of Philadelphia for eight years and have some substantial familiarity with a prosecutor’s role. There, there are—there are lots of facets involved. But I’m not going to convict anybody from what appears in the newspapers or on television. And, as I say, the attorney general is going to—due before the Judiciary Committee. I’ve asked him tough questions in the past, and I will again. And if he can’t respond to establish that he had a reason for what was done, I will be the first to say so.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe, as of now, he has the independence, the integrity and the candor to continue in his position?

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