Oh, you mean the very highest levels?
During today’s hearing, Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) finally asked a question we’ve been waiting to have asked for quite awhile here at TPM. The response was telling.
In early January, Paul McNulty’s chief of staff Michael Elston put the screws to Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney for San Diego, when she asked for more time in office in order to deal with several important prosecutions in her office. Chief among those cases, of course, was the ongoing Duke Cunningham investigation.
But Elston told Lam that she should forget about her cases, that she had to resign within “weeks, not months,” and that these orders were “coming from the very highest levels of the government.”
What did Elston mean by that? Sanchez wanted to know.
âHe was referring to his interactions with the attorney generalâs office in particular,” McNulty replied. Huh. Given that Elston’s regular contact in the attorney general’s office was Gonzales’ chief of staff Kyle Sampson, does that mean Sampson was the “very highest levels?” It’s certainly seemed like that at times.
When Sanchez asked if McNulty was sure about that, he waffled: “I’m not sure specifically who Mike was referring to there.”
