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WASHINGTON - An e-mail from former top Justice Department official Kyle Sampson suggests that he may have tried to push Paul Warner, then the federal prosecutor in Utah, out of office before 2005 but was rebuffed by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.

The e-mail, from Jan. 9, 2005, notes that Sampson and Alberto Gonzales, then the nominee to be U.S. attorney general, had agreed to replace 15 percent to 20 percent of the 93 U.S. attorneys, but they anticipated resistance.

"I suspect that when push comes to shove, home-state senators likely would resist wholesale (or even piecemeal) replacement of U.S. attorneys they recommend (see Senator Hatch and the Utah U.S. attorney)," Sampson wrote.

Sampson's attorney, Brad Berenson, is not discussing his client's situation.

On Friday, Warner, now a U.S. magistrate in Utah, said: "I guess what that says stands on its own face. I'm not going to offer comment on what it means because I don't know."

"I certainly was unaware of any of that going on at the time," he said. "I never received any pressure at all from the department, officials at the department, the attorney general, anybody to leave or suggest that I should go."

Warner had been re-confirmed to another four-year term as U.S. attorney in August 2003. He announced he was leaving the office in January 2006 and was nominated as a federal magistrate.

When Warner stepped aside, Sampson had lined up support so he could take the job, including the backing of the attorney general.

Hatch, however, chose to back Brett Tolman, an assistant U.S. attorney in Utah who had been working for the Senate Judiciary Committee, first for Hatch, then for new Chairman Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.

After several months, the White House nominated Tolman in June.

"I'm just going to be honest with you. Yeah, Kyle Sampson wanted my job. That's not nearly as Machiavellian as it sounds because lots of people wanted my job," Warner said. At one point, Sampson told Warner directly he was interested in the post.

That said, there was no indication that he was "affirmatively going to take it," Warner said. "I think Senator Hatch would have had something to say about that."

"It's just a pure fact that a judicial position was going to be open. It made sense for my career, and I moved on," he said.

Sampson resigned his position as the attorney general's chief of staff this week. He had been intimately involved in an effort to identify U.S. attorneys around the country who should be replaced by the Bush administration.

But Gonzales said that Sampson failed to tell other Justice Department officials the details of the plan, and they passed on incomplete information to Congress.

The Justice Department had been expected to release additional documents to the House Judiciary Committee on Friday, and the White House had assured it would advise the committee about the level of its cooperation with its investigation into the firings of the prosecutors. Neither happened.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said he was dismayed by the missed deadline, although he was assured the information would be provided early next week.

"Despite those assurances and my continued hope that the White House will resolve these questions in a cooperative fashion, the committee must take steps to ensure that we are not being stonewalled or slow walked on this matter," said Conyers, who said he would ask the committee to approve subpoenas.