Official Close to Attorney Firings Quits

Mike Elston chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, left, arrives for a closed-door meeting with members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, in this March 30, 2007, file photo on Capitol Hill in Washington. Elston, a senior Justice Department official who helped carry out the dismissals of federal prosecutors said Friday, June 15, 2007, he is resigning. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook) (Dennis Cook - AP)

"I believe that Elston was offering me a quid pro quo agreement: my silence in exchange for the attorney general's," wrote Paul Charlton, the former U.S. attorney in Nevada.

John McKay, former top prosecutor in Seattle, said he perceived a threat from Elston during his call. And Carol Lam, who was U.S. attorney in San Diego, said that "during one phone call, Michael Elston erroneously accused me of 'leaking' my dismissal to the press, and criticized me for talking to other dismissed U.S. attorneys."

A fourth former U.S. attorney, Bud Cummins in Little Rock, Ark., had made a similar accusation in an e-mail released in March. At the time, Elston said he was "shocked and baffled" that his Feb. 20 conversation with Cummins could be interpreted as threatening.

"I do not understand how anything that I said to him in our last conversation in mid-February could be construed as a threat of any kind, and I certainly had no intention leaving him with that impression," Elston in a two-page letter to Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., who had questioned the call.

The Senate Judiciary Committee authorized a subpoena for Elston's testimony about his role in the firings but never issued it because he voluntarily met with congressional investigators to answer more than seven hours of questions behind closed doors.

Other aides who have resigned in the wake of the firings include former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson and White House liaison Monica M. Goodling. A fifth official, Mike Battle, who ran the Justice office that oversees the U.S. attorneys, left in March.

Elston has worked for the Justice Department since 1999, winning its highest award for attorneys in 2006 for his legal performance.

He started as a trial prosecutor in Illinois, and moved to the U.S. attorney's office in northern Virginia in 2002. There, Elston worked for McNulty, then the U.S. attorney whom he followed to Justice Department headquarters in late 2005.