BREAKING: McNulty Resigning according to CNN and MSNBC. Another domino falls. I will diary more shortly but I thought that it was important to get this out.
UPDATE From the AP via MSNBC
WASHINGTON - Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty said Monday he will resign, the highest-ranking Bush administration casualty in the furor over the firing of U.S. attorneys, The Associated Press has learned.
McNulty, who has served 18 months as the Justice Department's second-in-command, announced his plans at a closed-door meeting of U.S. attorneys in San Antonio, according to two senior department aides. He said he will remain at the department until this fall or until the Senate approves a successor, the aides said.
Now things are going to start getting a tad interesting. Deputy USAG Paul McNulty will be stepping down. This is shaping up to be a very bad week indeed for AG Gonzalez. First Monica Goodling immunity, now Paul McNulty. Any bets on how long before the final shoe drops?
UPDATE 2 This is from Josh Marshall at talkingpointsmemo.com Josh has done a great job on this story form the very beginning.
Even Later Update: If I were Gonzales and the White House, I'd see McNulty's departure as a very unwelcome development. Behind the scenes, supporters of McNulty and Gonzales have been increasingly at odds as the scandal has progressed -- with McNulty's supporters saying he wasn't kept in the loop and that that the Gonzales clique is made of crooks and the Gonzales supporters (read: Sampson, Goodling, Elston, et al.) saying McNulty let the cat out of the bag in his testimony earlier in the year. (So, McNulty: You guys are crooks; Gonzales: Yeah, whatever, but no one would know if you'd kept your mouth shut.) And it seemsclear that McNulty's been fairly generous with what he's told the Senate Judiciary Committee, perhaps building on his rapport with Sen. Schumer (D-NY). A lot of this is tea leaf reading, trying to figure out who's spilling and who's not. But it's hard to figure where McNulty gets less forthcoming once he's no longer part of the administration.