WASHINGTON, DC - Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, under fire from congressional Democrats and even some Republicans, announced Monday that he has resigned from his post.
“It has been one of my greatest privileges to lead the Department of Justice,” Gonzales said at a news conference, announcing his resignation effective Sept. 17.
“I often remind our fellow citizens that we live in the greatest country in the world and that I have lived the American dream,” he added.
In his brief statement, Gonzales reflected on his up-from-the-bootstraps life story, the son of migrant farm workers from Mexico who didn’t finish elementary school. “Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father’s best days,” he said.
Gonzales sent a letter to President Bush on Friday stating his intention to step down, a senior official told NBC News, but the president did not accept it and instead invited Gonzales to his Texas ranch to talk about it.
That meeting did not change Gonzales’ decision, a source said, and Bush on Monday said that he “reluctantly accepted his resignation.”
“His good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons,” Bush added in a brief statement to reporters.
Solicitor General Paul Clement will be acting attorney general until a replacement is found and confirmed by the Senate, Bush said.
Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff was among those mentioned as possible successors. However, a senior administration official said the matter had not been raised with Chertoff. Bush leaves Washington next Monday for Australia, and Gonzales’ replacement might not be named by then, an official said.
The 52-year-old Bush loyalist was at the center of a political firestorm over the firings of eight federal prosecutors.
U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and can be removed. But congressional Democrats said politics played an unusually critical role in the ousters. And some of the fired U.S. attorneys said they felt pressured to investigate Democrats before elections.
Gonzales maintained that the dismissals were based the prosecutors’ lackluster performance records.
Thousands of documents released by the Justice Department show a White House plot, hatched shortly after the 2004 elections, to replace U.S. attorneys. At one point, senior White House officials, including political adviser Karl Rove, suggested replacing all 93 prosecutors. In December 2006, eight were ordered to resign.
In several House and Senate hearings into the firings, Gonzales and other Justice Department officials failed to fully explain the ousters without contradicting each other.
Democrats react
Reaction from Democrats to Gonzales’ resignation was swift.
“It has been a long and difficult struggle but at last, the attorney general has done the right thing and stepped down,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat. “We beseech the administration to work with us to nominate someone whom Democrats can support and America can be proud of.”
“Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job. He lacked independence, he lacked judgment, and he lacked the spine to say no to Karl Rove,” added Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
“This resignation is not the end of the story. Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow the facts where they lead, into the White House,” Reid warned.
Republicans reacted cautiously.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who offered only muted support for the attorney general when some Republicans called for Gonzales’ resignation, on Monday largely blamed his troubles on Democrats.
“It is my hope that whomever President Bush selects as the next attorney general, he or she is not subjected to the same poisonous partisanship that we’ve sadly grown accustomed to over the past eight months,” McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement.
Current and former administration officials had said the department’s integrity had been damaged under Gonzales with controversy over the firing of the prosecutors, his support for Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program and other issues.
They said as a result employee morale had been hurt and Gonzales’ relations with the Democratic-controlled Congress had deteriorated beyond repair in a firestorm of criticism from lawmakers, including some Republicans.
Drew fire from GOP’s Specter
Several senators had said they had lost confidence in Gonzales and his ability to head the Justice Department.
Last month, in response to criticism by Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania that the department was ”dysfunctional,” Gonzales told a congressional hearing “I have decided to stay and fix the problems.”
While acknowledging mistakes in the handling of the dismissals, Gonzales had denied the firings were politically motivated to influence federal probes involving Democratic or Republican lawmakers.
Bush steadfastly — and at times angrily — refused to give in to critics, even from his own GOP, who argued that Gonzales should go. Earlier this month at a news conference, the president grew irritated when asked about accountability in his administration and turned the tables on the Democratic Congress.
“Implicit in your questions is that Al Gonzales did something wrong. I haven’t seen Congress say he’s done anything wrong,” Bush said testily. “As a matter of fact, I believe we’re watching … a political exercise.”
Gonzales worked for Bush when he was governor of Texas in the 1990s. He served as White House lawyer in Bush’s first term as president before becoming the first Hispanic to serve as attorney general in February 2005.
Gonzales drew fire from civil liberties groups for writing in January 2002 that parts of the half-century-old Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war were “obsolete” and some provisions were “quaint.”
He also was criticized for Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program adopted after the Sept. 11 attacks. Only in January, in an abrupt reversal, did Gonzales say the program finally would be subject to court approval.
Gonzales, whom Bush once considered for appointment to the Supreme Court, is the fourth top-ranking administration official to leave since November 2006. Donald Rumsfeld, an architect of the Iraq war, resigned as defense secretary one day after the November elections. Paul Wolfowitz agreed in May to step down as president of the World Bank after an ethics inquiry. And Rove earlier this month announced that he was stepping down.
