GOP Braces For Testimony Fight, Likely Gonzales Exit

The White House and top GOP officials are bracing for a lengthy battle over executive privilege and the likely resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in the escalating fight over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, several key Republicans said Tuesday.

With Democrats demanding public testimony of top White House aides, including Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and the White House insisting on private interviews only, the GOP officials said the controversy over the fired prosecutors is likely to intensify and prompt Gonzales to step aside.


President Bush on Tuesday called Gonzales, offering a public show of support. And White House press secretary Tony Snow said that news reports about a search for a replacement were "flat false."

But people involved in the process to sound out potential replacements for Gonzales said they had not talked to Snow. A GOP loyalist close to the White House said the process went on ice after Bush made his call to Gonzales. "They were reaching out," the operative said. "Now, we're in lockdown. We're just waiting. They've reached out to everyone they need to reach out to and are waiting to get a 'yes' from someone."

The operative assumption, the GOP source said, is that Gonzales will go but that he will do so on his own schedule. The first stage in finding a replacement is gauging who is available among the well-established lawyers under consideration, most of whom have previously been confirmed by the Senate. "I think it is going to come down to who is willing to take the job," said the source.

Meanwhile, support for Gonzales on Capitol Hill continued to wane. A member of the House Republican leadership, speaking on the condition of anonymity at a luncheon with 13 reporters, spoke scathingly of the "drip, drip, drip" produced by the furor over the attorneys.

"I can't imagine that he's going to be around a whole lot longer," said the House Republican leader. "It seems like a leak about developing a short list of replacements, combined with a direct call from the president, are sort of the two indications that your days are numbered. I just don't see him lasting through this current maelstrom.

"There's already Republicans on the Hill calling for him to quit and there's certainly not a deep well of support on the Hill for him," the leader said. About the administration's dealings with Congress, the leader said, "They're never really reached out."

Bush's call essentially leaves it up to Gonzales whether to try to hang on to his office at a time when Democratic lawmakers are gunning for him and many Republicans have given up on him.

A Republican source said Tuesday that Bush is "unmoved," and that Gonzales will not be pushed out or fired. Bush telephoned him from the Oval Office at 7:15 a.m., and aides said he "reaffirmed his strong support and backing" for his longtime friend and aide.

Asked if Gonzales had promised to remain in office for the rest of the presidency, Snow told reporters on Air Force One: "No, that didn't come up."

At the same time, Republicans debated who should succeed Gonzales if he should decide to resign as a final act of loyalty to Bush. "The president understands that Al Gonzales is a big boy and if this ongoing investigation is a distraction from the department's goals, he's basically said, 'It's going to be up to Al to make that decision,'" a senior Republican close to the situation said.

White House counsel Fred Fielding went to Capitol Hill with an offer Tuesday, outlined in a letter released after his meeting, offering testimony by Rove and other top aides but only if the interviews "would be private and conducted without the need for an oath, transcript, subsequent testimony or the subsequent issuance of subpoenas."

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) responded coolly to Fielding's proposal, calling it unique but "with a lot of pitfalls" that made it inadequate. "With no transcript, with no oath, with private conversations that can be contradicted, recollections can fail, you're not going to get very far," he told reporters. "Counsel Fielding … said he wanted this to be a conversation rather than a hearing. A conversation's fine. But let's have a conversation under oath with a transcript. … Mr. Fielding indicated that he did not want to negotiate, but that doesn't mean we're not going to try."

In a feisty statement at the White House late Tuesday afternoon, Bush told reporters in the Diplomatic Reception Room that he will not abet "show trials" by Democrats and that their initial response indicated they "appear more interested in scoring political points than in learning the facts." He said he wanted to avoid an "impasse" but said defiantly: "I will oppose any attempts to subpoena White House officials."

"I'm worried about precedents that would make it difficult for someone to walk in the Oval Office and say, 'Mr. President, this is what's on my mind,' '' Bush added. Asked if he would go to the mat and go to court over the matter, the president replied, "Absolutely."

House and Senate Democrats vowed to continue pursuing their investigation of December's U.S. attorney purge, and they dismissed Monday night's document dump by the Justice Department as woefully inadequate.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) suggested on Tuesday that even more U.S. attorneys may have been fired than the eight that have been publicly acknowledged by the White House or Justice Department, although the Vermont Democrat was not able to offer any more information publicly than redacted e-mails between senior administration officials where the names of some prosecutors have been blanked out.

Leahy will seek authority on Thursday from his panel to issue subpoenas to Rove and Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel. "Frankly, I would hope the administration would cooperate with us, but if they don't, we will subpoena," Leahy told reporters, repeating a threat that he has made frequently in the past two weeks.

In DOJ documents that were publicly posted by the House Judiciary Committee, there is a gap from mid-November to early December in e-mails and other memos, which was a critical period as the White House and Justice Department reviewed, then approved, which U.S. attorneys would be fired while also developing a political and communications strategy for countering any fallout from the firings.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the Judiciary panel, noted that six of the eight fired prosecutors were involved in corruption investigations focusing on GOP lawmakers or officials, and she questioned whether the firings were an effort by Republicans to protect their own.

After fighting off GOP attempts to alter the bill, Senate Democrats on Tuesday pushed through legislation that would revise the Patriot Act so that Gonzales or his successor does not have the power to unilaterally appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation. The legislation, sponsored by Feinstein, passed by a 94-2 margin, with only Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Kit Bond (R-Mo.) voting against the bill.