Leahy Asks Attorney General To Provide Details
Of His Role In U.S. Attorney Dismissal Plan
At Upcoming Oversight Hearing
…Chairman
Also Seeks Answers To Committee’s Outstanding Questions
From Previous Oversight Hearings
WASHINGTON (Thursday, April 5) –
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), sent the following letter to Attorney General
Alberto Gonzales seeking information relating to Gonzales’s role in the plan
to fire and replace certain federal prosecutors.
Leahy, chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee, asked Gonzales to provide a full account of the
development of the plan as well as the details of his role in the matter as
part of Gonzales’s testimony before the panel at an upcoming oversight
hearing. Gonzales is scheduled to testify before the Committee on Tuesday,
April 17th at 10 a.m. in the Hart Senate Office Building Room
216.
Leahy also asked Gonzales to
provide answers to outstanding questions from the Committee before his April
17th appearance. Members of the Committee submitted questions to
Gonzales following his January 18, 2007 oversight hearing. Those questions
have not been answered.
Below is the text of the letter.
A
pdf version is also available.
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April 4, 2007
The Honorable Alberto Gonzales
Attorney General
United States Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Attorney General Gonzales:
You have agreed to testify before the Senate
Judiciary Committee on April 17, 2007. As you will recall, my staff had
suggested earlier dates, in March and earlier in April, but you had declined
those offers and suggested the 17th. The Committee set the
hearing for that date to accommodate you.
In accordance with our Committee Rules, you
are to file your written statement at least 48 hours in advance of the
hearing. [Rule II. 2., Rules of Procedures, Senate Committee on the
Judiciary.] Please include in your written testimony a full and complete
account of the development of the plan to replace United States Attorneys,
and all the specifics of your role in connection with that matter. This
information will be useful for the Committee and it could help expedite the
questioning on that matter during the hearing. If you wished to do so,
nothing prevents you from providing the Committee with your statement more
than 48 hours in advance of the hearing.
At our last oversight hearing with you on
January 18, 2007, you apologized for the tardiness with which you had
provided written responses to questions that had been outstanding for six
months. Regrettably, the Committee has yet to receive answers from the
written questions sent to you in connection with that January 18th
hearing. We are approaching three months since the last hearing, yet you
and the Department seem to be repeating the practice of not responding in a
timely manner. Instead, if you respond at all, you do so only as a hearing
appearance approaches. Although the Committee was informed weeks ago to
expect your answers to our questions on a rolling basis, we have yet to
receive a single answer. Please ensure that the Committee receives your
answers to the oversight questions from the January 18th hearing
without further delay.
As I noted in a letter to you last month, the
Committee had also not received answers to the questions we had propounded
to the FBI Director following his appearance in December. We proceeded with
a hearing on March 27th without the benefit of those answers. I
had received a letter from his staff indicating that the Director had
provided the Department of Justice with his responses to the questions
propounded to him following his December appearance. It is now four months
since those questions were propounded and we still do not have answers from
the Department of Justice.
You would not tolerate this kind of response
time in a Justice Department investigation where months go by without
answers and when those answers are finally provided they are outdated or
superseded by events. That is not conducive to effective oversight.
Sincerely,
PATRICK LEAHY
Chairman
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