The resignation statement in full

Comment Central: Reaction to the Gonzalez resignation

Alberto Gonzales, the embattled US Attorney-General, quit abruptly yesterday, the final member of President Bush’s original Texas inner circle to leave his Administration.

Mr Gonzales, a close friend of Mr Bush, announced his resignation after months of controversy over his role in the dismissal of federal prosecutors and accusations that he lied to Congress about the President’s warrantless wire-tapping programme.

His departure, two weeks after that of the President’s chief political adviser Karl Rove, leaves Mr Bush without any of the coterie of advisers he brought with him to the White House from Texas in 2000.

And while Mr Gonzales’s resignation solves one problem for Mr Bush – he will no longer have to defend a disastrous Attorney-General who had lost the confidence of both Democrats and Republicans – it will likely trigger many more.

Mr Gonzales had become something of a political firewall between the Democratic-controlled Congress and the White House. As the country’s top justice official, and a Bush loyalist, he has taken the brunt in recent months of congressional investigations into warrantless eavesdropping, the treatment of terror suspects and the controversial firing of nine US attorneys. Democrats say the prosecutors – all Republican appointees – were the victims of a politically motivated purge overseen by Mr Gonzales because they refused to do the White House’s bidding.

With Mr Gonzales gone, Democrats pledged immediately to refocus their investigations on the White House itself and to use the confirmation hearings for his successor as a forum to demand more accountability – and more documents, e-mails and testimony from past and present White House officials.

Some Democrat senators have even said privately that they will refuse to confirm Mr Gonzales’s replacement unless the nominee agrees to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the White House’s role in the US attorney scandal.

Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate Leader, said: “This resignation is not the end of the story. Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow the facts where they lead, into the White House.”

Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, predicted a bruising confirmation battle. “This is not going to buy peace,” he said. “This is going to bring more chaos.” He said he expected a “tumultuous confirmation process,” adding: “The Democratic majority will use this as a way to continue to bash the Bush Administration.”

Mr Bush, who had steadfastly refused calls for Mr Gonzales’s resignation, even from senior Republicans, made clear last night that he had not wanted his old friend to go and that it had been Mr Gonzales’s decision to quit.

In a curt statement made to the cameras in Texas, Mr Bush accused Democrats of dragging Mr Gonzales’s name “through the mud for political reasons” and said the Attorney-General had endured months of “unfair treatment”. He added: “Al Gonzales is a man of integrity, decency and principle, and I have reluctantly accepted his resignation.”

Mr Bush said that Paul Clement, the Solicitor-General, would act as Attorney-General until a replacement was found. Those in contention include Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security Director; Frances Townsend, a homeland security adviser to Mr Bush; and Ted Olsen, a conservative former Solicitor-General.

Mr Chertoff would bring heavy baggage to any confirmation hearing: it was his department that oversaw the debacle in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Mr Gonzales, 52, was always a controversial choice when he was appointed in 2005. As White House counsel during Mr Bush’s first term, he was a central figure behind the Administration’s legal justifications for its actions after the September 11 terror attacks in 2001.

In a now-infamous memo he drafted for Mr Bush in January 2002, he described parts of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war as “obsolete” and “quaint”.

He advocated the narrowest possible definition of torture and civil liberties groups laid much of the blame for the subsequent Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the mistreatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay at his door.

Since becoming America’s first Hispanic Attorney-General – technically a position of public service – Mr Gonzales has been called repeatedly before Congress to answer accusations that he was instead a craven servant of the White House who authorised the prosecutors’ dismissals at Mr Rove’s behest.

His performances were evasive and muddled. Last month his testimony over spying programmes without court warrants appeared so dissembling that some Democrats threatened perjury charges. Republicans effectively deserted him months ago.

But not so Mr Bush, who had plucked him from a law firm in Houston in 1995 to be his legal adviser in the Texas Governor’s mansion. He once even considered him for an appointment to the US Supreme Court.

Absent friends

“Texas mafia” who have left the Bush Administration

Karl Rove, senior White House adviser (August 2007)

Alberto Gonzales Attorney-General (August 2007)

Dan Bartlett White House communications director (June 2007)

Harriett Miers, White House counsel (January 2007)

Mark McClellan Medicare administrator (September 2006)

Scott McClellan (brother of Mark) press secretary (April 2006)

Pat Wood Federal Energy Regulatory Commission chairman (April 2005)

Rod Paige, Education Secretary (November 2004)

Don Evans Commerce Secretary (November 2004)

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