The prosecutor purge scandal claimed its fourth resignation late yesterday when Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty stepped down, citing the financial burden of having two children in college.
Of course, given the circumstances, we know there’s a lot more to it than that. The NYT reports that McNulty, who’d been rumored to have one foot out the door for several weeks now, “had been shaken by the intensity of the storm over the removals and the sometimes sharp personal criticism directed at him from the White House and former Republican allies.”
McNulty blamed himself for failing to resist the dismissal plan when Mr. Sampson brought it to him in October 2006, according to associates. He took one prosecutor off the removal list but acquiesced to the removal of seven others, according to Congressional aides’ accounts of his private testimony to Congress on April 27. […]
Friends of Mr. McNulty said he had tried to be candid about what he knew of the removals. In his private Congressional testimony, Mr. McNulty said he did not realize until later the extensive White House involvement in Mr. Griffin’s appointment or Mr. Sampson’s nearly year-long effort to compile a list.
White House aides complained privately that Mr. McNulty’s testimony gave Democrats a significant opening to demand more testimony from the Justice Department and presidential aides. Several aides said he should have been combative in defending the dismissals.
For me, that’s the key here. The White House (and to a limited extent, Alberto Gonzales) held McNulty responsible for this scandal, almost from the outset. Because he politicized the process? Because he misled lawmakers? No, because he inadvertently told the Senate Judiciary Committee the truth, which was the opposite of what the Bush gang wanted.
When it came to the firing of Bud Cummins in Arkansas, for example, McNulty told senators it was done to make room for a Karl Rove protege, which highlighted a process the Bush gang wanted to keep secret.
During a private interview with Judiciary Committee staffers [Kyle] Sampson said three times in as many minutes that Gonzales was angry with McNulty because he had exposed the White House’s involvement in the firings — had put its role “in the public sphere,” as Sampson phrased it, according to Congressional sources familiar with the interview.
McNulty helped connect the White House to the firings — which in and of itself shouldn’t have been too big a deal, since the White House is supposed to be involved with U.S. Attorney placement. But therein lies the rub: McNulty noted reality and the Bush gang flipped out, making it rather obvious that they wanted to cover something up.
For his part, McNulty appears to have been largely out of the loop on the firings, because Gonzales preferred to bypass senior Justice Department officials and empower junior aides (like Goodling and Sampson) who would be more inclined to advance a partisan agenda. Indeed, McNulty actually tried to prevent at least one of the firings, and came clean with lawmakers about several scandal details.
“It seems ironic that Paul McNulty — who at least tried to level with the committee — goes, while Gonzales, who stonewalled the committee, is still in charge,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said. “This administration owes us a lot better.”
Senate Dems may yet get more of the information they seek. As Tim Grieve noted, “Once he’s off the Justice Department payroll, McNulty may well find himself feeling more comfortable about telling senators what else he knows about his days on Team Gonzales.”
Stay tuned.