Senate Judiciary Committee Members to DoJ: Don’t Be Holding Out On Us!

David Johnston for the NY Times reports: Four senators said Monday that they suspected that the Justice Department had failed to turn over all relevant documents related to the dismissals of eight United States attorneys. The department has released more than 3,000 pages of e-mail messages and other files. But, the senators wrote in a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, “We are concerned that additional documents relevant to the committee’s investigations are missing or have been withheld.” (…) The signers of the letter were one Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and three Democrats, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee chairman; Dianne Feinstein of California; and Charles E. Schumer of New York. Among the missing documents the senators mentioned was a chart cited in a Feb. 12, 2007, e-mail message from Monica Goodling, a former aide to Mr. Gonzales, to other department officials. The senators suggested that other documents had been withheld, like biographies of each of the 93 prosecutors in briefing books provided for Mr. Gonzales in December in preparation for a meeting of United States attorneys. The meeting was held to start an initiative against child exploitation.