INTRODUCTION: On December 7, 2006, at the direction of senior Department of Justice (Department) officials, seven U.S. Attorneys were told to resign from their positions. Two other U.S. Attorneys had been told to resign earlier in 2006. When these removals became public in late 2006 and early 2007, members of Congress began to raise questions and concerns about the reasons for the removals, including whether they were intended to influence certain prosecutions.

Beginning in March 2007, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) conducted this joint investigation into the removals of these U.S. Attorneys. Our investigation focused on the reasons for the removals of the U.S. Attorneys and whether they were removed for partisan political purposes, or to influence an investigation or prosecution, or to retaliate for their actions in any specific investigation or prosecution.

We also examined the process by which the U.S. Attorneys were selected for removal, and we sought to identify the persons involved in those decisions, whether in the Department, the White House, Congress, or elsewhere. In addition, we investigated whether the Attorney General or other Department officials made any false or misleading statements to Congress or the public concerning the removals, and whether they attempted to influence the testimony of other witnesses.

Finally, we examined whether the Attorney General or others intended to bypass the Senate confirmation process in the replacement of any removed U.S. Attorney through the use of the Attorney General’s appointment power for Interim U.S. Attorneys.

II. Organization of this Report
In Chapter Two of this report, we provide background information about the jurisdiction and duties of U.S. Attorneys, how they are selected and evaluated, and their position in the Department’s organizational structure.

In Chapter Three, we describe in detail the background leading to the removal of the U.S. Attorneys in 2006, including the genesis of the plan to replace them, the various modifications of the plan in 2005 through 2006, and the involvement of the White House and Department officials in the development of the plan. We then discuss the removals and events following the removals, including the initial Congressional and public focus on the removals, the Department’s efforts to explain the removals, the public statements and testimony of senior Department officials about the reasons for the removals, and the Congressional hearings regarding the removals.

In Chapters Four through Twelve, we discuss in detail the circumstances surrounding the removal of each of the nine U.S. Attorneys. We examine the reasons the Department offered for each removal, the process by which the
U.S. Attorneys were selected for removal, the process by which they were removed, and our conclusions regarding their removal.

In Chapter Thirteen, we provide our conclusions about the process by which the U.S. Attorneys were selected for removal and removed, the reasons proffered for removal, the actions of senior Department leaders in the removal process, and whether any Department employee made false or misleading statements to Congress or the public related to the removals.

Download An Investigation into the Removal of Nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006

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U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General
U.S. Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility
September 2008

V. Conclusion

In sum, we believe that the process used to remove the nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006 was fundamentally flawed. While Presidential appointees can be removed for any reason or for no reason, as long as it is not an illegal or improper reason, Department officials publicly justified the removals as the result of an evaluation that sought to replace underperforming U.S. Attorneys. In fact, we determined that the process implemented largely by Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to the Attorney General, was unsystematic and arbitrary, with little oversight by the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, or any other senior Department official. In choosing which U.S. Attorneys to remove, Sampson did not adequately consult with the Department officials most knowledgeable about their performance, or even examine formal evaluations of each U.S. Attorney’s Office, despite his representations to the contrary.

We also determined that the U.S. Attorneys were not given an opportunity to address concerns about their performance or provided the reasons for their removal, which led to widespread speculation about the true reasons for their removal, including that they were removed for improper partisan political reasons. And to make matters worse, after the removals became public the statements and congressional testimony provided by the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, Sampson, and other Department officials about the reasons for the removals were inconsistent, misleading, and inaccurate in many respects.

We believe the primary responsibility for these serious failures rest with senior Department leaders – Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty – who abdicated their responsibility to adequately oversee the process and to ensure that the reasons for removal of each U.S. Attorney were supportable and not improper. These removals were not a minor personnel matter – they were an unprecedented removal of a group of high-level Department officials that was certain to raise concerns if not handled properly. Yet, neither the Attorney General nor the Deputy Attorney General provided adequate oversight or supervision of this process. We also concluded that Sampson bears significant responsibility for the flawed and arbitrary removal process. Moreover, they and other Department officials are responsible for failing to provide accurate and truthful statements about the removals and their role in the process.

We believe our investigation was able to uncover most of the facts relating to the reasons for the removal of most of the U.S. Attorneys. However, as described in this report, there are gaps in our investigation because of the refusal of certain key witnesses to be interviewed by us, including former White House officials Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and William Kelley, former Department of Justice White House Liaison Monica Goodling, Senator Pete Domenici, and his Chief of Staff. In addition, the White House would not provide us internal documents related to the removals of the U.S. Attorneys.

The most serious allegation that we were not able to fully investigate related to the removal of David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, and the allegation that he was removed to influence voter fraud and public corruption prosecutions. We recommend that a counsel specially appointed by the Attorney General assess the facts we have uncovered, work with us to conduct further investigation, and ultimately determine whether the evidence demonstrates that any criminal offense was committed with regard to the removal of Iglesias or any other U.S. Attorney, or the testimony of any witness related to the U.S. Attorney removals.

The Department’s removal of the U.S. Attorneys and the controversy it created severely damaged the credibility of the Department and raised doubts about the integrity of Department prosecutive decisions. We believe that this investigation, and final resolution of the issues raised in this report, can help restore confidence in the Department by fully describing the serious failures in the process used to remove the U.S. Attorneys and by providing lessons for the Department in how to avoid such failures in the future.

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