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Democrats: Deputy AG not being candid about firings

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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The departing deputy to embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales strongly defended himself and the Justice Department Thursday, but failed to satisfy skeptical Democrats investigating the firings of federal prosecutors.

In his opening statement, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, who has announced he will soon resign, said his earlier Senate testimony about the U.S. attorney firings controversy was truthful but "in some respects incomplete."

McNulty was one of the key figures in meetings and discussions about the shakeup over the department's firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

McNulty, a former U.S. attorney himself, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in February that the firings were performance-related.

McNulty is the highest-ranking Justice official to leave or say he will leave since the controversy over the prosecutor firings. He has not announced his departure date, but indicated it will likely be late this summer.

That provoked an outcry from the officials who have already left, some of whom raised allegations that some of the firings were politically motivated.

In May, former Justice Department aide Monica Goodling, after she was granted immunity by the House Judiciary Committee, testified that McNulty's testimony about the firing "was not fully candid about his knowledge of White House involvement in the replacement decision."

But McNulty defended the earlier testimony.

"When I testified in February before the Senate Judiciary Committee, I testified truthfully, providing the committee with the facts as I knew them at that time," McNulty said in his opening statement.

"We have learned that my knowledge at the time I testified about the replacement of the U.S. attorneys was in some respects incomplete," McNulty said. "I also want to be clear that I do not believe and have never believed that anyone in the Department of Justice set out to mislead me so that I might provide Congress with inaccurate information about this matter."

Democratic leaders of the committee criticized what they saw as his lack of candor.

"This was not a fully candid discussion. It's hard to believe he didn't know anything, didn't hear anything," said Committee Chairman Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan.

The GOP rejects the investigation as politically motivated.

Republicans on the panel praised McNulty, who had worked for several years as an aide to the committee. Ranking GOP member Chris Cannon, R-Utah, rejected Democratic assertions the ongoing investigation was not politically motivated. "We're just here to see who will throw who under the proverbial bus," Cannon complained.

CNN's Terry Frieden contributed to this report.

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