US:A former aide to US attorney general Alberto Gonzales has flatly contradicted Mr Gonzales's claim that he was only marginally involved in the controversial sacking of eight federal prosecutors.
The attorney general's former chief of staff Kyle Sampson told the Senate judiciary committee that the final decision on who should be fired was made by Mr Gonzales and former White House counsel Harriet Miers.
"I don't think the attorney general's statement that he was not involved in any discussions of US attorney removals was accurate. I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain US attorneys to resign," Mr Sampson said.
Mr Gonzales said on March 13th that he "was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on".
Democrats claim that the sackings were politically motivated and that prosecutors were targeted because they were pursuing cases that were damaging to Republicans or not pursuing cases damaging to Democrats.
Mr Sampson said that he and Mr Gonzales first discussed the possibility of firing prosecutors in January 2005, before Mr Gonzales became attorney general. Mr Sampson said the two men talked about the matter several times between January 2005 and December 2006 as Mr Sampson developed a target list of US attorneys.
"Ultimately he approved both the list and the notion of going forward and asking for these resignations," Mr Sampson said.
He defended the sackings, insisting that none was improper and arguing that, as political appointees, the prosecutors could legitimately be expected to support government policy.
"The distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a United States attorney is, in my view, largely artificial. Some were asked to resign because they were not carrying out the president's and the attorney general's priorities. In some sense that may be described as political by some people," he said.
As the White House declined to defend Mr Gonzales yesterday, saying it would wait for the attorney general to speak for himself, Democratic senator Chuck Schumer said that Mr Sampson's testimony was damning for his former boss.
"The credibility of the attorney general on this issue has been more or less shattered by what happened in that hearing room," Mr Schumer said.
Hours before Mr Sampson's testimony yesterday, the justice department admitted that it gave senators inaccurate information about the sackings and presidential advisor Karl Rove's role in trying to secure a US attorney's post in Arkansas for one of his former aides, Tim Griffin.
Officials acknowledged that a letter sent to four Democratic senators in February was wrong in asserting that the department was not aware of any role Mr Rove played in the decision to appoint Mr Griffin to replace US attorney Bud Cummins in Little Rock, Arkansas.