Sampson resigned March 12, 2007, after acknowledging that he did not tell others in the Justice Department about the extent of his communication with the White House on the firings of the eight U.S. attorneys, leading them to give incomplete information to Congress.
Sampson played a key role in putting together the list of eight U.S. Attorneys who were asked to resign late last year.
Democrats seized on dozens of emails between Sampson and the White House to renew calls for subpoenas for Sampson, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove to explore how broadly the ouster of the prosecutors was coordinated.
More than 60 pages of Sampson's emails, released by the House Judiciary Committee, lay out the deliberations over which prosecutors should be purged. Sampson advocated using language that the Justice Department had added to the Patriot Act, which allowed the Attorney General to appoint interim U.S. Attorneys.
Sampson came to Justice in 2003 from Gonzales's office at the White House, and was a counselor to former AG John Ashcroft. A native of Utah and a Mormon, Sampson cut his teeth on Capitol Hill by working as counsel to Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sampson is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, the alma mater of many prominent conservatives.
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