(CBS) A resolution calling for a vote of no confidence in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is being introduced in the Senate this week, but the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee says he thinks Gonzales will resign before then.
"I have a sense ... that before the vote is taken, that Attorney General Gonzales may step down," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., said on Face The Nation. "Votes of no confidence are very rare... And I think historically, that is something which Attorney General Gonzales would like to avoid."
Specter would not say which way he will vote on the no confidence resolution, but he did say that there is no doubt that the Justice Department would be better off if Gonzales left.
"I think the actual termination is a personal one for the attorney general, and also for the president," Specter said. "I'm not going to tell the president what to do... We have separation of powers."
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is introducing the no confidence vote, told Bob Schieffer that she wasn't sure if enough Republicans would join her for it to pass, but she said Gonzales had little support on either side of the aisle.
"I see no strong support for the attorney general within the Republicans," she said. "I think on our side of the aisle, the Democratic side, there are very strong feelings that go way back to many of the opinions, his concept of attorney general, which is that he wears two hats Eone to serve the president, the other to serve the people."
Specter said he believed a "sizable number" of Republican lawmakers would join Democrats in the vote.
Both Specter and Feinstein said what is important is that the Justice Department continue to do its duty.
"I'm very worried about the department. I think its credibility is crumbling. I think what's happened to one of it most powerful arms, which is the federal prosecutorial arm, has damaged it seriously," Feinstein said. "And I think the only thing that can really change that is a new attorney general."
"The Department of Justice is second only to the Department of Defense in providing for security Ethey do the work on anti-terrorism investigations, they have the work on drug enforcement, violent crime enforcement," Specter said. "And the morale in the department is very low."
Dems Seek No-Confidence Vote On Gonzales
(AP) Senate Democrats said Thursday they will seek a no-confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales over accusations that he carried out President Bush's political agenda at the expense of the Justice Department's independence.
Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, who have led the investigation into the conduct of White House officials and Gonzales, said the attorney general has become too weakened to run the department.
"It seems the only person who has confidence in the attorney general is President Bush," Schumer told reporters. "The president long ago should have asked the attorney general to step down."
"I think the time has come for the Senate to express its will," Feinstein said. "We lack confidence in the attorney general."
Schumer said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid supports the resolution and would try to bring it to a floor vote next week. Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, too, was expected to sign on.
"I have absolutely no confidence in the attorney general or his leadership," Leahy, D-Vt, said earlier in the day.
Schumer predicted the resolution, which has yet to be finalized, would win support from at least the 60 senators required to beat a filibuster.
Five Republican senators have called outright for Gonzales' resignation, including Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who added his voice Thursday. Several other Republicans have suggested that Gonzales consider stepping down.
One of the latter group, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, has left no doubt that he thinks Gonzales should leave. But he told The Associated Press that he wanted to see Schumer's resolution before saying he would vote for it.
The announcement is the latest in a series of blows suffered by Gonzales this week, including new criticism from Republicans and the prediction of one GOP veteran that the investigation into the firings of federal prosecutors would end with the attorney general's resignation.
Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said earlier Thursday that the Justice Department can't properly protect the nation from terrorism or oversee Mr. Bush's no-warrant eavesdropping program with Gonzales at the helm.
"I have a sense that when we finish our investigation, we may have the conclusion of the tenure of the attorney general," Specter said during a committee hearing. "I think when our investigation is concluded, it'll be clear even to the attorney general and the president that we're looking at a dysfunctional department which is vital to the national welfare."
His comment echoed new criticism of Gonzales this week. Former deputy attorney general James Comey testified that Gonzales tried to get his predecessor as attorney general, John Ashcroft, to approve Mr. Bush's eavesdropping program as Ashcroft lay in intensive care.
Asked twice during a news conference Thursday if he personally ordered Gonzales and then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card to Ashcroft's hospital room, Mr. Bush refused to answer.
Gonzales: Deputy Advised Attorney Firings
(CBS/AP) Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday he relied on his resigning deputy more than any other aide to decide which U.S. attorneys should be fired last year.
His comments come a less than a day after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty announced he would resign at the end of the summer Ea decision that people familiar with the plans said was hastened by the controversy over the purge of eight prosecutors.
Democratic opponents of the Bush administration say the firings were politically motivated and have called for the resignation of Gonzales, the top U.S. law enforcement official who heads the Justice Department.
President George W. Bush has steadfastly supported Gonzales, saying the firings were appropriate based on the attorneys' performance, but conceding that Gonzales and the Justice Department did a poor job of communicating to Congress how the changes in the federal prosecutor offices were handled.
"You have to remember, at the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names," Gonzales told reporters at a National Press Club forum in Washington. "And he would know better than anyone else, anyone in this room, anyone Eagain, the deputy attorney general would know best about the qualifications and the experiences of the United States attorneys community, and he signed off on the names."
Gonzales also called McNulty's pending departure "a loss. ... I'm really going to miss him." But he said he relied on McNulty's views more than another other adviser, and said he was reassured by his deputy as recently as March that the firings all were justified.
"The one person I would care about would be the views of the deputy attorney general, because the deputy attorney general is the direct supervisor of the United States attorneys," Gonzales said.
The attorney general, who has long been a confidant and associate of George W. Bush, has apparently surmounted a wave of calls last month for his resignation in the wake of the flap over the firings of the federal prosecutors.
Republicans taking part in a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week defended him, saying that Democrats should back away in their continuing investigation of the firings. That contrasted sharply with calls from some Senate Republicans for Gonzales' resignation earlier this year.
McNulty was the third top Justice official to leave in recent months, reported CBS News correspondent Bob Orr. Gonzales' liaison to the White House, Monica Goodling, and his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, have also resigned.
"It seems ironic that Paul McNulty, who at least tried to level with the committee, goes while Gonzales, who stonewalled the committee, is still in charge," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
McNulty's resignation is expected to be the start of significant turnover at the department, particularly within the office he heads. Possible replacements for McNulty, according to several Justice officials, include Kevin O'Connor, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, who also serves now as Gonzales' staff chief; Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein; and Susan Brooks, top prosecutor in Indiana, who is vice chair of the attorney general's advisory committee.
