Lying to Congress

Our boy Sampson may have a problem:

WASHINGTON, April 13 — A Justice Department e-mail released on Friday shows that the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales proposed replacement candidates for seven United States attorneys nearly a year before those prosecutors were fired, in contrast to testimony last month in which the aide said that no successors were considered before the firings.

The e-mail written by D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned last month as the top aide to Mr. Gonzales, provides the first evidence that the Justice Department wanted to appoint its own candidates, despite the insistence of Justice Department officials in recent weeks that the eight prosecutors, with one exception, were removed in December 2006 for performance reasons, without regard to who might succeed them.

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But Mr. Sampson testified under oath on March 29 at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee that he had no candidates in mind to replace any of the fired prosecutors.