A former acting U.S. attorney for Colorado who reportedly was considered by the Bush administration for firing said Thursday that he presumed he didn’t get the permanent job for “political reasons.”
“If you do that job well, and do it long enough, you’re going to make some people angry. That just comes with the territory. I don’t know if that happened, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it did,” said William Leone, now in private practice after acting as Colorado’s top federal prosecutor from December 2004 through August 2006.
McClatchy Newspapers and The Washington Post, citing sources familiar with secret documents, separately reported Thursday that Leone was one of at least 26 U.S. attorneys that the Justice Department considered dismissing in 2005 and 2006.
U.S. district judges in Denver voted unanimously to keep Leone on the job while White House officials and senators weighed candidates for an official appointment. Instead, Troy Eid was confirmed in August as permanent U.S. attorney.
Leone said he was proud to work as acting U.S. attorney and wanted to continue as long as possible but lacked the “rich presidential pedigree” required for an appointment.
“I was hopeful that, if I hung in there and did a good job, I might be allowed to continue until the end of the administration,” he said. “It didn’t work out that way. I assume that was for political reasons. I was never told I was on any list; never told I displeased anybody.”
Eid said Thursday that he doesn’t know whether any to-be-fired list of attorneys exists, or whether Leone was targeted or why.
“I’ve never seen a list of any kind. … How would I know? I’m a U.S. attorney in Colorado. I’m not sitting in (Attorney General Alberto) Gonzales’ office. … I have absolutely no inside knowledge whatsoever as to the firing decisions,” Eid said.
The hiring and firing of U.S. attorneys across the country “is inherently political because the president and the Senate pick the prosecutors. That’s the way it’s been since the 1790s” when the system was designed, Eid said.
But once an attorney is appointed, “it becomes an entirely apolitical position,” he said.
