D. Kyle Sampson

For the Record: D. Kyle Sampson Will Not Be Libby'd

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Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, resigned from his CoS post effective March 12. Some news organizations reported that his resignation was due to a failure to keep senior Department of Justice officials in the loop about discussions he had with former White House counsel Harriet Miers concerning the controversial U.S. Attorney firings.
Kyle Sampson wants you all to know that such reports are incorrect. From the Politico:

Another act in the drama opened this weekend with the release of a statement by D. Kyle Sampson….

The statement was issued by his lawyer, Bradford A. Berenson, who had worked for Gonzales in the White House counsel’s office for the first two years of Bush’s presidency. The statement makes it clear that Sampson does not want to be blamed for the fiasco, and particularly for any incomplete briefing of Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General William E. Moschella before they testified to Congress about a lack of political influence on the decision to dismiss the prosecutors.

Here’s the full statement:

“Kyle did not resign because he had misled anyone at the Justice Department or withheld information concerning the replacement of the U.S. Attorneys. He resigned because, as Chief of Staff, he felt he had let the Attorney General down in failing to appreciate the need for and organize a more effective response to the unfounded accusations that the replacements were improper. The fact that the White House and Justice Department had been discussing this subject since the election was well-known to a number of other senior officials at the Department, including others who were involved in preparing the Department’s testimony to Congress. If this background was not called to Mr. McNulty or Mr. Moschella’s attention, it was not because any of these individuals deliberately withheld it from them but rather because no one focused on it at the time. The focus of preparation efforts was on why the U.S. Attorneys had been replaced, not how.”

Translation: “Sorry, Alberto, but I’m not taking the fall for you. I’m too young, and too ambitious, for my career to end now. I may be from Utah; but my name is not Angela Stander!”
Dems Seek Maximum Political Gain in Attorneys Uproar [Politico]

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