Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Sunday lost the support of an influential US conservative as he prepared for make-or-break testimony over the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors.
Until now, pressure for the long-time ally of President George W. Bush to resign -- after evidence emerged implicating Gonzales in the firings of the attorneys for allegedly partisan reasons -- has come mainly from Democrats in Congress.
Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives and one of the most influential conservative US Republicans, told Fox News it was time for a new attorney general.
"I think the country, in fact, would be much better served to have a new team at the Justice Department, across the board," said Gingrich.
He said that he "cannot imagine how he (Gonzales) is going to be effective for the rest of this administration."
The Senate Judiciary Committee is investigating why the US attorneys were fired, even as several of them were in the middle of sensitive corruption investigations, and to what extent Gonzales and the White House were involved.
Although US attorneys, who are powerful regional prosecutors appointed by the president, are often replaced at the start of a new presidential administration, it is not common to do so in mid-term.
"I think it is amazing that there's any doubt about the fact that they (Gonzales and his aides) have totally mishandled this," said Gingrich, himself a possible 2008 presidential candidate.
Republican Senator Jon Kyl, speaking on ABC News, offered only lukewarm support for Gonzales and said he hoped concise testimony could restore faith in the Justice Department.
The attorney general has "got to clear up the conflicts and apparent conflicts in testimony between his chief of staff and some public comments that he's made in the past," Kyl said.
"The confusion and the ham-handed way that these firings was done certainly undermines the confidence of the Justice Department," he said.
"And part of his effort to come up and testify before the Hill will be to restore some of that confidence."
Gonzales is heavily focused on preparing for his April 17 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Washington Post and Newsweek magazine reported.
Preparations include mock question-and-answer sessions with advisers filling in the roles of questioning senators.
According to Newsweek, Gonzales kept contradicting himself at a recent session, with a source telling the magazine he kept "getting his timeline confused" until his advisers grew "exasperated."
In late March Gonzales's former right-hand man, Kyle Sampson, told US lawmakers that the attorney general had indeed approved the dismissals.
In a related scandal, the Post reported that Gonzales overlooked key ethical questions surrounding former New York city police commissioner Bernard Kerik, nominated in December 2004 to be secretary of homeland security.
Kerik, a close associate of former New York city mayor Rudolph Giuliani, withdrew his name when it surfaced that he hired an undocumented migrant as a nanny.
But the Post reported that Gonzales also overlooked Kerik's friendship with a businessman linked to the mafia -- and that federal prosecutors are now likely to charge Kerik with several felonies, including lying to the government.
