The Justice Department released e-mails to the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday — a day after Sampson tendered his resignation. One showed he had worked with the White House on a plan to get rid of specific attorneys after he "beat back" a White House plan to fire all 93 attorneys at once.

The earliest of the released e-mails between Sampson and White House counsel Harriet Miers started in March 2, 2005, where he recommended removing attorneys "who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration initiative etc" and keeping attorneys "who have produced, managed well, and exhibited loyalty to the President and Attorney General."

Sampson did not become Gonzales' chief of staff until Sept. 23, 2005, according to a Justice Department press release. At the time of these e-mails, he would have been the attorney general's deputy chief of staff and counselor.

Former Chief of Staff Theodore W. Ullyot stepped down Sept. 16, 2005, and it is not clear in the e-mails who directed Sampson to discuss the issue with the White House or who was helping with compile the lists, if anyone. A call to Ullyot was not returned and his voice mail said he was out of the office.

Sampson sent an e-mail on Jan. 9, 2006, to Miers with a list of seven U.S. attorneys recommended for removal. Four of the seven were eventually fired; three of the names have been redacted from the e-mails.

It was no secret Sampson wanted to be Utah's U.S. attorney, something he outright told the most recent former attorney Paul Warner, now a magistrate judge in the state. But Warner made clear in an interview Wednesday that his decision to leave was purely his own, although he would be curious — as anyone would — whether his name appeared on these lists.

"It was a natural progression for me to leave when I did," Warner said.

Warner served 7 1/2 years through two presidential administrations and under three U.S. attorneys general. He said he was not in a hurry to leave but was not being pushed out, either. The judge job came up, which Warner said does not happen often, and it was a good time to move.

"You know you are not going to have (the job) forever," Warner said, although he said he "loved every minute of it."

Warner said when "serving at the pleasure of the president," as U.S. attorneys do, there is a "certain unwritten, unspoken rule that as long as you are doing a good job you will continue to serve."

He said he was never instructed or felt pressure to abuse his power but that he was "expected to do the right things for the right reason."

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