US:White House insistence that the firing of eight attorneys was not politically motivated has been undermined by court records, writes Denis Staunton.
The row over last year's sacking of eight US attorneys, or federal prosecutors, has escalated during the past two weeks from a political scandal into a constitutional showdown between the White House and Congress.
Justice department officials testified under oath last year that the sackings were for administrative and managerial reasons and that there was no political involvement.
The White House has subsequently admitted, however, that senior administration officials had been discussing for two years the possibility of firing unsympathetic prosecutors.
The 93 US attorneys, the top federal law enforcement officials in their districts, are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president.
Incoming presidents, including Bill Clinton, have often replaced them all at once but the Bush administration used a little-noticed provision in the anti-terrorism Patriot Act to replace eight prosecutors without seeking confirmation from the Senate.
The sacked prosecutors claim they were targeted because they failed to pursue prosecutions that would damage Democrats or because they had successfully prosecuted Republicans.
New Mexico's David Iglesias this week described his firing as a "political hit" because the Republican leadership in his state was unhappy that he failed to prosecute Democrats in a voter fraud case.
Another dismissed prosecutor in Arkansas was replaced by Tim Griffin, a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove.
California's Carol Lam was dismissed after she had convicted one Republican congressman for corruption and was expanding her investigation to include another Republican congressman.
The White House continues to insist there was no inappropriate political influence brought to bear.
However, the claim by the administration that the eight prosecutors were sacked for poor performance has been undermined by court records showing that three of those fired, including Mr Iglesias and Ms Lam, were among the top 10 in the US in terms of convictions and prosecutions.
Democrats, who initially pressed for the resignation of attorney general Alberto Gonzales, have shifted their focus towards pressurising
Mr Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers to
testify about their role in the affair.
The White House has vowed to fight any attempt to force the aides to testify but has offered to allow them to be interviewed in private, not under oath, on a limited number of issues, and on condition that no transcript of the interviews should be published.
The White House, which has also offered to make available all internal documentation relating to the sackings, says such interviews would allow the American public to discover the truth about what happened while avoiding a "political spectacle".