Leahy doesn’t believe e-mails were lost

RNC purge policy
Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said RNC lawyer Rob Kelner reported that roughly 50 White House officials have had e-mail accounts on the GOP committee's servers during Bush's tenure but the RNC may be able to recover only those sent from 2004 on. That's when the RNC put a hold on an automatic purge policy.

It was unclear, Waxman wrote, whether the RNC had or would be able to recover e-mails written by White House officials, including Rove, and sent on the committee's account.

The exchange was one of several developments on the U.S. attorney issue, five days before Gonzales is to testify before Leahy's committee.

The Justice Department prepared to release more documents detailing the decisions -- and their aftermath -- to fire the eight prosecutors. The department has already given more than 3,400 pages of e-mails, schedules, memos and other documents to congressional panels.

Questions for Gonzales
On Capitol Hill, Democrats tried to stave off charges of setting perjury traps for witnesses. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., released 10 questions the panel would be asking Gonzales.

"'I don't know' will not be an adequate response to any question by the committee," said Schumer, who is leading the investigation. Gonzales, who in the past has issued conflicting accounts of his role in the firings, emerged Thursday from weeks of closed-door preparations for his testimony to attend the funeral of an FBI agent in Readington Township, N.J.

Also Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee authorized Leahy to issue subpoenas that would require the administration to surrender hundreds more documents and force two officials -- Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General William Moschella and White House political aide Scott Jennings -- to reveal their roles in the firings. The panel delayed for a week a vote on whether to authorize a subpoena for Rove's deputy, Sara Taylor.

Also Thursday, House and Senate Judiciary Committee members interviewed Mike Battle, the former head of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys who carried out the firings. On Friday, they were to call back Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' former chief of staff who quit amid the uproar and testified last month that his former boss was involved in the planning.

Leahy has not issued any subpoenas, but permission by his committee Thursday gives him authority to require testimony from all eight of the fired U.S. attorneys and several White House and Justice Department officials named as having had roles in the firings. The White House has refused to make officials such as Rove available to testify under oath.

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