Today’s Must ReadI think we’ve identified a rule of Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department: the more senior you are in the leadership, the less of a clue you have of what’s going on there.
We were all treated to Gonzales’ historical display of bumbling amnesia before the Senate Judiciary Committee a couple of weeks ago. Now we learn that the second in command, Paul McNulty, wasn’t really in the loop, either. From The Washington Post:
Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty told congressional investigators that he had limited involvement in the firing last year of eight U.S. attorneys and that he did not choose any to be removed, congressional aides familiar with his statements said yesterday.
McNulty said he provided erroneous testimony to Congress in February because he had not been informed that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and his aides had been working with the White House on the firings for nearly two years, the congressional aides said.
Put this together with the news yesterday that McNulty, along with other members of the senior leadership in the department, had been cut out of the hiring and firing process for junior political appointees, and it’s clear that he really didn’t have much to do with running the place. From all evidence, that responsibility fell to Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling, two young aides who acted as little more than proxies for the White House.
As Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) puts it: “If the top folks at DOJ weren’t the key decision-makers, it’s less likely that lower-down people at DOJ were, and much more likely that people in the White House were making the major decisions.”
