By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday May 15, 2007
WASHINGTON - Support for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
sank further Thursday as Democrats proposed a no-confidence
vote, a fifth GOP senator called for his resignation and yet
another Republican predicted he won't survive a congressional
investigation.
The White House shrugged off the no-confidence idea as merely
symbolic, and President Bush continued to stand by his embattled
friend.
By any measure, the news was not good for Gonzales.
Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein
of California said they will seek a Senate vote on a nonbinding
resolution expressing what senators of both parties have said
for weeks: that Gonzales has become too weakened to run the
Justice Department.
"It seems the only person who has confidence in the attorney
general is President Bush," Schumer told reporters. "The
president long ago should have asked the attorney general to
step down."
"I think the time has come for the Senate to express
its will," Feinstein said. "We lack confidence in
the attorney general."
The White House dismissed the Democrats' proposals.
"A 'no-confidence' vote is nothing more than a meaningless
political act, not that that's stopped them before," White
House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "The attorney general
has the full confidence of the president."
The Justice Department said Gonzales was concentrating on
fighting crime and terrorism. "The attorney general remains
focused on doing the job that the American people expect," said
spokesman Brian Roehrkasse.
For all of the administration's defense, several GOP officials
acknowledged privately that Republicans were still reeling
from testimony this week that Gonzales, when he was Bush's
White House counsel, pressured Attorney General John Ashcroft
to certify the legality of Bush's controversial eavesdropping
program while Ashcroft lay in intensive care.
Asked twice during a news conference Thursday if he personally
ordered Gonzales to Ashcroft's hospital room, Bush refused
to answer.
"There's a lot of speculation about what happened and
what didn't happen. I'm not going to talk about it," Bush
said.
James Comey's account to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Schumer
said, turned more lawmakers against Gonzales. New criticism
came from multiple Republicans.
One, Sen. Norm Coleman (news, bio, voting record) of Minnesota,
on Thursday became the fifth Republican senator to demand that
Gonzales leave.
"I would hope that the attorney general understands that
the department is suffering right now, and he does the right
thing, and that is allows the president to provide new leadership," Coleman
told reporters on a conference call.
And Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., usually a staunch GOP ally, suggested
Thursday that Bush consider ejecting Gonzales.
"The president might decide that the current leadership
remaining at DOJ is doing more harm than good," Bond told
The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record),
the Judiciary Committee's top Republican, said the Justice
Department cannot properly oversee Bush's eavesdropping program
with Gonzales at the helm of the agency.
"I have a sense that when we finish our investigation,
we may have the conclusion of the tenure of the attorney general," Specter
said during a committee hearing. "It'll be clear even
to the attorney general and the president that we're looking
at a dysfunctional department which is vital to the national
welfare."
Democrats predicted that a no-confidence resolution, which
could come to the floor next week, would put more pressure
on Bush to scuttle Gonzales, or inspire the attorney general
to step down on his own.
For his part, Gonzales will be in Europe next week, visiting
his counterparts in Hungary and Switzerland before joining
the G-8 conference Thursday in Munich, Germany. He will be
back in Washington on Friday the night before the long
Memorial Day weekend.
Democrats had hoped to hold the vote before they leave town
for the holiday, in part to capitalize on other bad news for
Gonzales that renewed pressure on him to step down.
A no-confidence vote, though symbolic, could sink Gonzales
into deeper political trouble. Any attorney general needs to
work with Congress on legislation, as well as nominees who
require Senate confirmation. Gonzales would need to confirm
a new deputy attorney general because his current one, Paul
McNulty, is leaving over the firings of federal prosecutors.
Still, no-confidence votes are not often received well in
the Senate. The last one, in September 2006, failed when Republicans,
then in the majority, blocked an attempt by Democrats to pass
a nonbinding call for the ouster of then-Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld.
This time, however, the five GOP senators have called for
Gonzales' resignation and others have suggested that he leave.
Specter has left no doubt that he thinks Gonzales should depart.
But he told The Associated Press that he wanted to see Schumer's
resolution before saying he would vote for it.
Another Judiciary Committee Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham
(news, bio, voting record) of South Carolina, also said he
wanted to see Schumer's resolution before deciding.
Also surfacing were reports that many more than eight prosecutors
were considered for dismissal, as Gonzales has said.
The Justice Department, over nearly two years, listed as many
as 26 prosecutors after performance concerns were raised, a
senior government official familiar with the process said Thursday.
The names were first reported by The Washington Post.
Democrats sought more testimony from current and former Justice
Department officials. House Democrats announced that Gonzales'
former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, would testify
next week under a grant of immunity.
___
Associated Press writers Lara Jakes Jordan, Sam Hananel and
Fred Frommer contributed to this report.
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