Word: sampson
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...least one of them, Bud Cummins of the Eastern District of Arkansas, had been removed to make room for Tim Griffin, a Karl Rove protégé who had headed the opposition-research operation at the Republican National Committee. Gonzales was upset, his former chief of staff Kyle Sampson has told congressional investigators, that McNulty's revelation put "in the public sphere" the uncomfortable fact that the White House helped engineer the dismissal...
...minimum, he has handed an extraordinary amount of authority, particularly over hiring and firing, to young, lightly credentialed and fiercely partisan aides who appear to have put politics ahead of the public interest. One of those aides was Sampson, 37, who assembled the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired and who was himself bucking for a U.S. ttorney post, despite the fact that he had limited experience as a prosecutor. The other was Monica Goodling, 33, the department's White House liaison, the product of a law school where more than half her graduating class flunked the bar exam...
...What Gonzales' team wanted in U.S.attorneys, according to an e-mail that Sampson sent to the White House, was "loyal Bushies." And thanks to a provision they quietly slipped into last year's reauthorization of the Patriot Act, they were able to put their candidates in without going through the customary route of Senate confirmation...
...Gonzales would not be the first Justice official to diminish the White House role in the attorney firings. Sampson himself did so, inadvertently or otherwise, when he prepped top DOJ officials for Congressional testimony earlier this year. He and Monica Goodling, the former counselor to Gonzales whom Congress has granted immunity to testify, had multiple e-mail conversations with White House officials throughout the fall of 2006 about the plan to remove the U.S. attorneys, including with Scott Jennings in Karl Rove's office and Harriet Miers and her assistants in the White House counsel's office, documents released...
...McNulty has told Congressional investigators that he was troubled to learn of the extent of White House involvement when Sampson told him March 8. That afternoon Sampson went to McNulty's deputy, a forty-year Justice Department veteran named David Margolis, and read him e-mails showing the White House role. In an interview with Judiciary committee staffers, Margolis said he was stunned by the revelations, Congressional sources tell TIME. Sampson then went to McNulty's office to read him the e-mails directly. Monica Goodling then came into Margolis' office and proceeded to break down...