Fired attorney: Rove, Gonzales resignations 'absolutely linked'
Like President Bush's top political adviser, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned to avoid encroaching Congressional investigations, a fired federal prosecutor said Monday.
During an appearance on CNN, former US Attorney David Iglesias said Gonzales's resignation is "absolutely linked with Karl Rove leaving two weeks ago," and speculated the two resigned "for the same reason": Congressional investigators closing in on their suspected roles in the attorney-firing scandal.
"This is what happens when there is not check and balance" under a Republican-controlled Congress and White House "and all of a sudden you have a new sheriff in town - so to speak - that wants answers to hard questions."
Due to obstruction by Gonzales and other Bush officials, Iglesias added, the extent of the White House's attempt to have politically inconvenient prosecutors fired remains unknown. "We still don't know who put our names on that list," he said. The former US Attorney for New Mexico contends that he was fired after two Congressional Republicans - Sen. Pete Dominici and Rep. Heather Wilson - urged him to speed indictments of a Democratic state senator before the election.
"What triggered this [resignation] was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales going in front of the US Senate and not being fully candid, telling half truths (and) having very convenient memory lapses," Iglesias said Monday. "Had he shot straight with the American people and shot straight with the Senate, perhaps a lot of this would've been mitigated."
The Justice Department's credibility has sunk to Nixon-era levels under Gonzales's soon-to-end tenure, Iglesias charged. "I'm not aware of the Justice Department losing so many top people, probably since ... the early 70s during the Watergate scandal," he said.
Iglesias wouldn't comment on any specific names that have been mentioned as possible replacements for Gonzales, but he called for an end to partisan influence within the Justice Department.
"I just hope that the next Attorney General is a person who understands the core mission in the Justice Department is not to play politics, it is to enforce the law," Iglesias said. "And it's to give the president hard advice that he sometimes doesn't want to hear like, 'Mr. President, you can't do that, it's not constitutional.'"
The following video is from CNN's Newsroom, broadcast on August 27.
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