A top aide to US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned, a US official said on Tuesday, the latest fallout from the firing of federal prosecutors that has embarrassed the Bush administration and prompted calls for Gonzales to step down.
Lawmakers are investigating whether the dismissal last year of eight prosecutors, some of whom had been criticised by Republicans, was a politically motivated interference in federal prosecutions by the White House.
The Justice Department official said Kyle Sampson, chief of staff to Gonzales, resigned after reports detailed his extensive dealings with the White House on the matter.
Major US newspapers reported on Tuesday that the White House had suggested two years ago that the Justice Department fire all of the nation's 93 US attorneys, but approved the idea of dismissing a smaller group.
Eight prosecutors were fired last year after President George W. Bush spoke to Gonzales about complaints he received that some of them had not energetically pursued voter-fraud investigations, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told The Washington Post and The New York Times.
The Post said Sampson resigned after acknowledging he did not tell other Justice Department officials about the extent of his communications with the White House. His omission led Justice officials to provide incomplete information to Congress, it said.
Democrats in Congress expressed outrage. "The White House and the attorney general have dodged Congress's questions and ducked accountability as if they still were dealing with a rubberstamp Congress. They are discovering that those days are gone," said Senator Patrick Leahy, the Judiciary Committee chairman. "I am outraged that the attorney general was less than forthcoming with the Senate while under oath," the Vermont Democrat said.
Gonzales appeared before Leahy's panel earlier this year and said that politics was not a factor in the dismissals. The New York Times, citing an administration official, said Sen. Pete Domenici, a New Mexico Republican, was among the politicians who complained directly to the president about the prosecution of voter fraud in the 2004 elections.
Republicans in New Mexico and several other states, including some where the party suffered narrow losses to Democrats, had complained about voter registration fraud. Perino said Bush did not call for the removal of any specific United States attorneys, according to the Times.
She said she had "no indication" that Bush had been personally aware that a process was already under way to identify prosecutors who would be fired, the Times said. But Perino said that White House officials had consulted with the Justice Department in preparing the list of United States attorneys who would be removed, the Times reported.
E-mails and internal documents that the administration will submit to Congress on Tuesday indicated that then-White House counsel Harriet Miers suggested to Sampson in February 2005 that all prosecutors be dismissed and replaced, the Post said.
While it was not clear whether the documents would answer Congress's questions, they show that the White House and other administration officials were more closely involved in the dismissals, and at a much earlier date, than previously acknowledged, the Post said.
Although most of the ousted prosecutors had received positive job reviews, the Justice Department has said they were largely dismissed because of employment-related matters or policy differences.