The Hill: Miers weighed firing Yang, according to Feinstein. Debra Wong Yang, the former US attorney in Los Angeles, was leading the investigation into former House appropriations committee chairman Jerry Lewis. Yang has said she decided to step down last fall to take a more lucrative private sector job at the firm, Gibson Dunn and Crutcher, which happens to be representing Lewis. The Hill:

In her previous comments to The Hill, Yang argued that her departure would not affect the case against Lewis in any way, noting that the Justice Department said it would have allowed her to stay in the position “as long as I wanted to.”

“The investigation [into Lewis] would never be delayed or affected in any way because of my departure,” she said. “We had 260 attorneys in that office.”

She said she had been looking for a more lucrative position in the private sector for months. She added that a longtime friend in the Orange County office of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, Nick Hanna, was the one who first contacted her about the position, not Olson or anyone else with close ties to the Bush administration. She also said she turned down a more lucrative offer from another firm.

Yang has said prior to her departure from the attorney's office, she never received a single phone call from Justice or anyone in the administration discouraging her from pursuing the Lewis investigation.

Posted by Laura at April 24, 2007 08:14 AM