From The Politico:
Republican officials operating at the behest of the White House have begun seeking a possible successor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose support among GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill has collapsed, according to party sources familiar with the discussions.
Among the names floated Monday by administration officials are Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House anti-terrorism coordinator Frances Townsend. Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson is a White House prospect. So is former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, but sources were unsure whether he would want the job.
Republican sources also disclosed that it is now a virtual certainty that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, whose incomplete and inaccurate congressional testimony about the prosecutors helped precipitate the crisis, will also resign shortly. Officials were debating whether Gonzales and McNulty should depart at the same time or whether McNulty should go a day or two after Gonzales. Still known as “The Judge” for his service on the Texas Supreme Court, Gonzales is one of the few remaining original Texans who came to Washington with President Bush.
Inquiries like this don’t begin for the fun of it. At this point, I’d say it’s almost a virtual certainty that Gonzalez will be gone. The U.S. Attorney story will be the public reason for it, but it seems like there’s something going on here.? Redstate.org has a theory about that:
Paul McNulty, on the other hand, wants to be Attorney General. I’ve been told by several highly reliable people that it is McNulty’s office that is now leaking like a sieve everything they can find to cast the blame at the White House and Alberto Gonzales. It is McNulty who smeared the reputations of the eight fired U.S. Attorneys. It is McNulty who most likely added Kevin Ryan, a very popular and very competent U.S. Attorney in San Francisco, to the list of the fired. And McNulty is being aided an abetted by several career Democrats at Justice who President Bush should have fired when he came into office.
Let me put this bluntly: there is a coup going on at the Department of Justice. It has been fostered by career Democrats the President should have fired, but did not. It has now picked up momentum by a less than competent Deputy AG who has decided he can shove out his boss in a series of leaks and take his boss’s job.
The only problem with this theory, or at least the McNulty part of it, is that it looks like Paul McNulty will be leaving as well. This is all just very odd right now.
