Gonzalez leaves Attorney General office
WASHINGTON -- Resigning U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales left the scandal-scarred Justice Department on Friday, declaring himself hopeful about its mission of ferreting out crime and defending the truth.
Gonzales quit after 2½ years at the department amid investigations into whether he broke the law and lied to Congress. He has denied any wrongdoing.
President George W. Bush is expected to announce a nominee next week to replace his longtime friend and fellow Texan. He joins former Bush political adviser Karl Rove as one of the last members of Bush's inner circle to leave the administration.
In a Friday speech, Gonzales said his time at the Justice Department made him determined to fight terrorists and sexual predators and crack down on guns, drugs and gang violence plaguing U.S. neighborhoods.
Protesters who for months had dogged Gonzales at congressional hearings and other public appearances blew party horns and shook tambourines outside the Justice Department during the ceremony.
Solicitor General Paul Clement will serve as acting attorney general until the Senate confirms Gonzales' successor.
It was a furor over the firings of nine U.S. attorneys that marked the beginning of the end of Gonzales' tenure as attorney general. The midterm firings, planned after the 2004 elections, were unprecedented in the department's recent memory and prompted Democrats to question whether they were politically motivated.
Gonzales' conflicting public statements about the ousters led Democrats and Republicans alike to criticize his honesty. Their charges were compounded by his later sworn testimony about the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program, which was contradicted by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller and former senior Justice Department officials.
The Justice Department has opened an internal investigation into charges against Gonzales. Its conclusions are not expected until the end of the year at the earliest.
Despite months of calls for his resignation, from lawmakers and critics, Gonzales told employees as recently as July he was going to stay to fix problems at the Justice Department. His sudden announcement on Aug. 27 that he was leaving took most of his 110,000 employees by surprise and left the White House scrambling to find a replacement.
"Over the past two and a half years, I have seen tyranny, dishonesty, corruption and depravity of types I never thought possible," Gonzales said in remarks prepared for a Hispanic Heritage Month ceremony at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington. "I've seen things I didn't know man was capable of.
"But I will tell you here and now that these things still leave me hopeful," he said. "Because every time I see a glimmer of the evil man can do, I see the defenders of liberty, truth and justice who stand ready to fight it."
Later, Gonzales was feted at a standing-room-only Justice Department farewell ceremony attended by, among others, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, considered a top contender to replace Gonzales, also was in the audience.