Discover GOP Opprobrium

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U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, facing bipartisan calls to resign, makes a possible make-or-break appearance on Thursday before a congressional panel investigating the firing of U.S. prosecutors.

In testimony prepared for delivery to the Senate Judiciary Committee, set to meet at 9:30 a.m. EDT, Gonzales said he had "nothing to hide." With lawmakers asking whether the dismissals were politically motivated, Gonzales said none of the firings was an attempt to influence any particular investigation.

But the attorney general, who initially released his prepared remarks on Sunday, admitted the ousters were mishandled and that he had been "less than precise with my words" when he first discussed them.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, denounced Gonzales' statement as "another in a series of contradictory statements," and said he looked forward "to getting to the truth."

Gonzales appears before the committee three weeks after his former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, testified to the same panel that the attorney general was more deeply involved in the firings than Gonzales had initially acknowledged.

President George W. Bush has voiced confidence in Gonzales, the chief U.S. law enforcement officer.

But Bush has also said the attorney general needs to go to Congress to answer questions and ease concerns about shifting and even conflicting explanations about why eight of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys were fired last year, seven of them in December.

The Justice Department initially said the dismissals were largely performance related. But it later said they involved policy differences. Recently released documents show the prosecutors' perceived loyalty to Bush was also a factor.

Democratic as well as some Republican lawmakers have said Gonzales' performance before the Judiciary Committee may seal his fate.

The plan to fire U.S. attorneys originated in the White House shortly after Bush was re-elected in November 2004.

One of the ousted prosecutors was replaced by a former aide to Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser.

"The attorney general and his supporters seem to think that simply denying that U.S. attorneys were fired for political reasons exonerates him," said Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat. "That just won't wash."

"The attorney general needs to give specific details as to why each U.S. attorney was fired, who made the initial complaints, who investigated those complaints, and why was this U.S. attorney fired and that U.S. attorney not fired," Schumer said.