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(Photo: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
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McNulty said May 14, 2007, the he will resign, which will make him the highest-ranking Bush administration casualty of the furor over the firing of U.S. attorneys.
McNulty, who has served 18 months as the Justice Department's second-in-command, announced his plans at a private meeting of U.S. attorneys in Texas. He told them he would remain at the department until late summer or until the Senate has approved a successor.
"I thought this made a lot of sense," McNulty told The Associated Press in a telephone interview after talking to the prosecutors. "The U.S. attorneys have been very supportive. I've got a good relationship with them, and they were very kind, and I appreciate that."
He also sent a one-page letter of resignation to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose own job has been put in jeopardy by the firings and their aftermath. McNulty has been considering leaving for months, but his ultimate decision to step down, aides said, was hastened by anger at being linked to the purge of eight prosecutors that the Democratic-led Congress is investigating to determine whether they were fired for political reasons.
The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about McNulty's decision.
In his letter to Gonzales, McNulty noted "financial realities of college-age children" as one factor in his decision to quit. The letter did not mention the firings controversy.
Neither did Gonzales initially, in a responding statement that praised McNulty as "a dynamic and thoughtful leader."
"Paul is an outstanding public servant and a fine attorney who has been valued here at the department, by me and so many others, as both a colleague and a friend," Gonzales said.
A day later, Gonzales said he relied on McNulty more than any other aide to decide which U.S. attorneys should be fired last year.
"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 — again, 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."
McNulty, reached in San Antonio after Gonzales' more recent remarks, declined to comment.
McNulty has acknowledged approving the list of prosecutors who were ordered to leave last October, a few weeks before the firings were made official. But documents released by the Justice Department show he was not closely involved in picking all the U.S. attorneys who were put on the list — a job mostly driven by two Gonzales staffers with little prosecutorial experience.
Gonzales ultimately signed off on the list in a process that Congress is investigating to see whether the firings were politically motivated.
Gonzales also called McNulty's pending departure "a loss. ... I'm really going to miss him." But his comments about McNulty's role in the prosecutors' purge seemed designed to distance himself from the deputy who announced his resignation just 18 hours earlier, following a year and a half on the job.
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