Tony Snow fielded more questions on the U.S. Attorney firings during the White House press briefing this afternoon.
He seemed to get caught on one question in particular:
Q The President said, “I’ve heard those allegations about political decision-making; it’s just not true.” How can he say that when he hasn’t seen all the emails, emails continue to come out, and of those that have already come out, some of them clearly seem to show that at some level, at least, there was political decision-making?
MR. SNOW: I’m not — how would you define “political decision-making”?
Q Well, decision-making that involves politics.
Q How would you define it, Tony?
MR. SNOW: Well, it’s a loaded term. I mean, I think what the President — what the President is saying is that there is no — that in evaluating U.S. attorneys, this is based on performance. And the important thing to do — and furthermore, the Department of Justice made recommendations that the President has accepted. Also keep in mind, the President has the authority to remove people and put other folks in the job. That is at his discretion. That’s presidential power.
Q But is he saying that he was so in the loop, then, that he definitely knew there was nothing political, or was he, in fact, removed, as you indicated this morning?
MR. SNOW: No, I think — again, what the President has — the Department of Justice has made recommendations, they’ve been approved. And it’s pretty clear that these things are based on performance and not on sort of attempts to do political retaliation, if you will.
Update: There was also this:
Q Do you think the White House made any mistakes in this whole matter of the discussions over the firings? And particular, I’m wondering if Attorney General Gonzales was making statements to members of Congress, beginning in January, that later proved to be not exactly in line with the facts, weren’t people in the White House aware of that?
MR. SNOW: I’m not going to get into extensive sort of fact witnessing….
