Unanimous-Consent Request--S. 214

UNANIMOUS-CONSENT REQUEST--S. 214 -- (Senate - February 15, 2007)

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, I thank our leader on the Judiciary Committee, the Senator from Vermont, for his leadership on this issue, as well as for yielding time. It is unfortunate that the unanimous consent request of the Senator from Vermont was objected to.

Now, I would like to report to my colleagues on both the hearing we had, which is public record, and, more to the point, the private meeting we had yesterday with the Deputy Attorney General, Mr. McNulty, who was gracious and who is a very fine person. But neither the hearing nor the private meeting we had allayed our fears. In fact, they increased them in a variety of ways.

As we know, at least seven U.S. attorneys were summarily fired in recent weeks. The Attorney General has flatly denied that politics has played a part. But the bottom line is, even at the hearing it was admitted that one U.S. attorney was fired without cause and replaced by somebody who had worked for Karl Rove and the Republican National Committee and did not have much of a record being a prosecutor. Even more troubling was the firing of the U.S. attorney from San Diego, of the Southern District of California, who was in the midst of a very high-level investigation that led to the conviction of Congressman Cunningham and, yesterday, the indictment of two more in that. So it is hardly a concluded investigation.

The bottom line at yesterday's briefing by the Deputy Attorney General did little to alleviate our concerns that politics was involved in several of these firings and, in fact, raised those concerns.

It seems, when you have a preliminary look--we did not get a look--but a preliminary description of the EER reports, the evaluations, that most of the U.S. attorneys, not all but most of the U.S. attorneys who were fired had very fine recommendations.

There were a few policy disputes, but particularly in the area of the U.S. attorney from the Southern District of California, in the midst of an ongoing investigation, there was some policy disagreement about how to deal with those crossing the border. She was told to change it. And there is no knowledge or observation whether she changed it or not, and yet she was fired in the midst of a much more serious, much more high-profile political investigation.

So the idea that people were fired for no cause, the idea that some may have been--and this is not proven, but certainly the hearing and the private meeting increased rather than decreased my concerns--fired for political reasons because they may have either, in some cases, not done what the Justice Department wanted them to do--particularly, remember, this was right before election time--or may have been going forward with a very serious investigation into local political officials remains a real possibility.

We asked to see the EER reports at the hearing. At the private meeting yesterday, Paul McNulty, Deputy U.S. Attorney General, said some of the information was taken under confidence. These are evaluations, and they ask lawyers, judges, fellow U.S. attorneys how the office is doing and how the U.S. attorney is doing. And if they were to reveal their names, it might jeopardize the confidentiality of future EER reports. That is a reasonable assertion. So we asked, could we get the reports and redact the names of those who were saying this is a good or bad U.S. attorney? Mr. McNulty said he would get back to us on the issue. We await.

But make no mistake about it: We will get those EER reports. Either they will be given to us with the necessary redaction--and I have spoken to my colleague from California, Senator Feinstein--or we will ask Senator Leahy, our leader on this issue, through the Judiciary Committee to subpoena them. We will see them. If they show that the U.S. attorneys were doing a good job, if they show that they were people who should be there, there will be real trouble.

It means two things. First, we will get to the bottom of this. There are still too many troubling questions out there. If we have to have another hearing, we will. Second, it means whatever the investigation finds, there is enough troubling evidence out there now that the legislation Senator Feinstein has authored, and Senator Leahy and myself have cosponsored, should be passed immediately. Therefore, it is regrettable there was objection that we don't move to rectify the situation and do it right now.

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