Kyle Sampson

Even before today's testimony by Kyle Sampson, Alberto Gonzales' former chief-of-staff, Democrat Jerrold Nadler of New York was convinced that the attorney general's days were numbered.

"I think it' the end of Gonzales, but I hope it's a lot more," said Nadler earlier this week. The chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties added that he is in favor of issuing subpoenas to the most senior administration officials.

When I asked him about the prospect of the officials fighting the subpoenas and refusing to testify in court, Nadler said "They can't contest every single one. If they do there will be a confrontation."

--Jason Horowitz

As Chuck Schumer predicted , today is proving to be a big one for the investigation into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, as the former chief-of-staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testifies to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The former top aide, Kyle Sampson told the committee that Gonzales offered inaccurate testimony to Congress when he claimed not to have had a role in the discussion about firing the attorneys. He also said Gonzales was wrong when he said that inaccurate testimony offered by other senior Justice Department officials was a result of them not being sufficiently briefed about the terminations.

''I shared information with anyone who wanted it,'' Sampson said. When Schumer pushed Sampson as to whether that rendered Gonzales' statement false, Sampson said, ''I don't think it's accurate if the statement implies that I intended to mislead the Congress.''

In an interview on with the Observer on Tuesday, Schumer dismissed Sampson as a "longtime Republican Apparatchik."  read more »