Welcome to Gonzales Watch - Blawging the Ex-Attorney General

As this blog predicted exactly one month ago, Michael Elston announced that he is resigning from his position at the Department of Justice.

The Chief of Staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who announced his resignation last month, also worked with McNulty during his tenure as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Elston has been named as a key DOJ official who was allegedly involved in the U.S. Attorney firings controversy. Fired U.S. Attorneys Paul K. Charlton of Phoenix, Arizona and John McKay of Seattle, Washington told the House Committee on the Judiciary that felt that they were threatened by Elston exactly one day before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 18, 2007.

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty (inset, left) is resigning from the No. 2 position in the Justice Department.

According to a prepared statement released by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, McNulty will “leave the Department later this summer.”

Prior to working in the DOJ’s headquarters in 2005, McNulty was the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virignia, prosecuting some of the highest profile terrorism cases. These included the successful prosecutions and convictions of:

• 9-11 Frenchman and Moroccan-born Zacarias Moussaoui
• American Talib John Walker Lindh
• The Khobar Towers bombing case where Hezbollah terrorists attacked a U.S. Military residence in Saudi Arabia
• The espionage case against FBI mole Robert Philip Hanssen

With McNulty leaving, it seems very likely that his Chief of Staff (and former Assistant U.S. Attorney in Virginia) Michael Elston (inset, below) will also be announcing his resignation soon.

Elston’s resignation also seems likely, given that fired U.S. Attorneys Paul K. Charlton of Phoenix, Arizona and John McKay of Seattle, Washington reportedly told the House Committee on the Judiciary that they felt threatened by McNulty’s aide in telephone calls that he made to the former prosecutors just before Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 18, 2007.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales chose Kenneth E. Melson (inset), a career prosecutor with an expertise in foresnic investigation as the new head of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys to replace newly departed Michael Battle.

In closed door sessions, Battle reportedly gave the Senate and House Judiciary Committee members investigating the U.S. Attorney firings detailed confirmation about Gonzales being at a November 27, 2006 meeting with senior DOJ aides to discuss the U.S. Attorney firings. Battle’s information would refute the Attorney General’s foggy “I have no recollection” testimony before the U.S Senate about that meeting in his office discussing the termination of career federal prosecutors. According to Battle, Gonzales was privy to a memo about the firings distributed at that meeting in the Attorney General’s own conference room.

Like Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty (his former boss at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia) and Michael Eslton (McNulty’s Chief of Staff), the Melson was involved in several high-profile terror and espionage cases at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arlington, Vriginia. He assisted in prosecuting the Khobar Towers bombing case that involved a terror attack by Hezbollah on a U.S. Military residence in Saudi Arabia.

Melson was involved in the Robert Philip Hanssen case where an FBI agent spied for, and passed military secrets to, Russia and the former Soviet Union.

He also represented the U.S. Government in opposing efforts by a convicted al Qaeda conspirator and truck driver from Ohio to have his sentencing overturned. That case involved Iyman Faris, a man convicted for plotting to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge for al Qaeda.

In 2005 Nelson received an Outstanding Adjunct Faculty Teaching Award from George Washington University Law School. He is a 1973 graduate of the school.

He wrote a book review for the May 2007 issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences, critiquing Robert Henley Woody’s “Search and Seizure: The Fourth Amendment for Law Enforcement Officers.”

Fired U.S. Attorneys Paul K. Charlton of Phoenix, Arizona and John McKay of Seattle, Washington told the House Committee on the Judiciary that felt that they were threatened by Michael J. Elston (inset), the Chief of Staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, and that the threat happened one day before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 18, 2007.

According to McKay, “my handwritten and dated notes of this call reflect that I believed Mr. Elston’s tone was sinister and that he was prepared to threaten me further if he concluded I did not intend to continue to remain silent about my dismissal.”

Charlton says that “after December 7, 2006, but prior to the Attorney General’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I received a call from Mike Elston, Chief of Staff to the DAG. In that conversation I believe that Elston was offering me a quid pro quo agreement: my silence in exchange for the Attorney General’s.”

McKay and Charlston told Congress that Elston tried to broker a deal for their silence about being fired from their U.S. Attorney positions in exchange for Gonzales not saying a thing to the Senate Judiciary Committee about why they were let go.

In other words, Elston pulled a ‘Hannibal Lecter’ on McKay and Charleston: “Quid pro quo. Yes or no? Yes or no” counselors?