New AG Will Share Bush Views
Democratic lawmakers are urging President Bush to choose a consensus candidate to replace Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, but administration officials said the goal is to find a candidate who will pursue the right policies.
“It is the president’s prerogative to appoint someone who shares his views,” a senior administration official told the Washington Post.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said he shared a list of potential candidates with White House counsel Fred Fielding when he paid a courtesy call yesterday. Fielding is leading the effort to find potential nominees along with White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten.
The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) lists Schumer as one of three men who contributed the most to Gonzales’ downfall.
“The New York Democrat who picked up a low-wattage scrum over the attorney firings and turned it into a major investigation, has called for a special prosecutor to investigate the ousters,” the newspaper reports.
It says the other two Gonzales detractors are Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Va., who plans to investigate the government’s surveillance powers, and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who wants more intelligence information.
Meanwhile the list of possible Gonzales successors grows. One new person under consideration is George Terwilliger, a former deputy attorney general in the administration of the elder President Bush said to be a Fielding favorite. Others include former solicitor general Theodore Olson, Judge Laurence Silberman of the D.C. Circuit, and former Chief Judge Michael Mukasey of the Southern District of New York.
