WASHINGTON — Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales acknowledged for the first time Thursday that U.S. attorneys might have resigned under pressure from the Justice Department, but said their departures were unrelated to the controversial firings of eight prosecutors last year.
In an often-testy House Judiciary Committee hearing, Democrats sought to expand their inquiry beyond the eight prosecutors to broader questions about political interference in Justice Department cases. But Gonzales calmly deflected most of their questions.
And unlike the bipartisan grilling he endured in the Senate last month, several Republicans came to his defense, indicating that Gonzales may have passed the worst of the crisis that put his job in jeopardy.
Democrats pressed him on recent revelations about an exodus of federal prosecutors, in some cases in battleground states central to Republican political fortunes.
Gonzales confirmed the resignation last year of Todd P. Graves, the former U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo. But he denied charges by Democrats that Graves had been forced out for balking at a voter fraud lawsuit pushed by the Justice Department.
Gonzales said the department had "issues" with another U.S. attorney, Thomas Heffelfinger of Minneapolis, whose resignation last year has touched off an office coup of sorts aimed at his successor.
Gonzales also addressed the resignation last year of Debra Wong Yang, the former U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.
Responding to suggestions that Yang was eased out with a lucrative private-sector job offer to take the heat off Republicans who were being investigated in Southern California, Gonzales said Yang's resignation was "entirely voluntary" and for reasons he understood to be personal and financial.
The daylong hearing produced some revelations, including the fact that the Justice Department and White House aides behind the firings had once considered targeting the U.S. attorney in Milwaukee, Steven Biskupic.
The prosecutor was spared, according to documents released at the hearing, because of concern that his firing would alienate Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who was seen as a supporter of Biskupic.
Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) suggested that Biskupic had succumbed to Republican pressure to bring a corruption case against a state purchasing official who worked for the Democratic governor -- a case that was tossed out by a judge.
