Senate to Vote on Subpoenas for DoJ Officials

The prosecutor purge story continues to move forward.

When the Senate Judiciary Committee meets tomorrow, they will vote on whether to issue subpoenas to several Justice Department officials.

Those officials are: Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty’s chief of staff Mike Elston, Alberto Gonzales’ chief of staff Kyle Sampson, acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer, outgoing Director of the Executive Office of the United States Attorney Michael Battle, and the Justice Department’s White House liaison, Monica Goodling.

In a statement Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said, “Now that it’s clear that there was a concerted effort to purge an impressive crop of U.S. Attorneys, the next step is to identify and question those responsible for hatching this scheme to use U.S. Attorneys as pawns in a political chess game.”

Update: To be clear, the committee will first be requesting the officials’ voluntary testimony. The vote is to authorize subpoenas if they don’t accept.

Update: So let’s go through the list and why the committee wants to hear from them.

— Mike Elston, we know, made the now infamous not-at-all-threatening phone call to former USA Bud Cummins.

— Alberto Gonzales’ chief of staff Kyle Sampson and the Justice Department’s White House liaison Monica Goodling were involved in generating the list of prosecutors to fire.

— Acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer told two of the fired prosecutors that they were being replaced in order to free up the spot for someone else.

— And Michael Battle, who will be stepping down at the end of next week, actually made the calls firing the prosecutors.