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.

Now that the Justice Department’s Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility (’OPR’) are expanding their internal probe beyond U.S. Attorney firings to include investigating hiring practices of Monica Goodling and others, it’s worth another look back at last year’s fight between OPR Chief H. Marshall Jarrett, Attorney General Gonzales, and the White House.

Jarrett has served as OPR’s Chief Counsel and Director since 1998 when then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno appointed to the position in the Clinton Administration. Jarrett was a career prosecutor — not a political hack — and has been a Department of Justice employee for more than 32 years.

According to a report by CBS News, Jarrett duked it out with Gonzales and President Bush. in the spring of 2006 when he was stonewalled while investigating the role of Justice Department attorneys in creating the warrantless surveillance progam authorizing NSA to conduct domestic surveillance.

Memos from Jarreett to “Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, in February, March and April of [2006],” CBS reported, “show that while Gonzales publicly told the Senate that OPR was investigating, Jarrett was complaining to higher-ups that he was “unable to move forward” because of the lack of security clearances for himself and six staff members.”

Two weeks ago former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified that in 2004 Gonzales tried to push renewal of a domestic surveillance bill past then Attorney General John Ashcroft after Ashcroft and Comey had already concluded that a warrantless domestic surveillance program was unconstititonal.

Given Jarrett’s battles with Ashcroft and President Bush over these highly controversial legal moves in the past, it would appear that his record as a career prosecutor — and not a political hack — will serve this investigation well.

Wasting no time in answering Goodling’s testimony this morning where she portrayed Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty as a scapegoat in the U.S. Attorney firings controversy, McNulty (inset, left) fired back with a response this afternoon.

“I testified truthfully at the Feb. 6, 2007, hearing based on what I knew at that time. Ms. Goodling’s characterization of my testimony is wrong and not supported by the extensive record of documents and testimony already provided to Congress.”

McNulty announced last week that he would be resigning from the second-highest lawyer position at the Justice Department by the end of the summer.

Immediately after McNulty tendered his resignation letter, Gonzales praised his colleague, saying he was “valued here at the Department…as both a colleague and a friend.”

The very next day, Gonzales stabbed him in the back in a speech and Q&A with reporters at the National Press Club, saying that McNulty bore responsibility for the firing of U.S. Attorneys.

“At the end of the day,” Gonzales told reporters, “the recommendationon [on which U.S. Attorneys should be fired and lose their jobs] reflected the views of the Deupty Attorney General. He signed off on the names. He would know better than anyone else, anyone in this room. Anyone. Again, the Deputy Attorney General would know best about the qualification and experiences of the United States Attorney community, and he signed off on the names.”

In exchange for a court-ordered grant of immunity from prosecution, Monica Goodling testified before the House Judiciary Committee today.

The former Senior Counsel to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and DOJ Liaison to the White House. Following in Gonzales’ footsteps, Goodling alleges that soon-to-be resigning Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty should be blamed in the U.S. Attorney firings scandal.

Here is Goodling’s prepared testimony.