Gonzales resigns as U.S. attorney general

WASHINGTON - Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, under fire from congressional Democrats and even some Republicans, announced Monday that he has resigned from his post.

“It has been one of my greatest privileges to lead the Department of Justice,” Gonzales said at a news conference, announcing his resignation effective Sept. 17.

“I often remind our fellow citizens that we live in the greatest country in the world and that I have lived the American dream,” he added.

In his brief statement, Gonzales reflected on his up-from-the-bootstraps life story, the son of migrant farm workers from Mexico who didn’t finish elementary school. “Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father's best days,” he said.

Gonzales sent a letter to President Bush on Friday stating his intention to step down, a senior official told NBC News, but the president did not accept it and instead invited Gonzales to his Texas ranch to talk about it.

That meeting did not change Gonzales' decision, a source said, and Bush on Monday said that he “reluctantly accepted his resignation.”

“His good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons,” Bush added in a brief statement to reporters. The 52-year-old Bush loyalist was at the center of a political firestorm over the firings of eight federal prosecutors.

U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, and can be removed. But congressional Democrats said politics played an unusually critical role in the ousters. And some of the fired U.S. attorneys said they felt pressured to investigate Democrats before elections.

Gonzales maintained that the dismissals were based the prosecutors’ lackluster performance records.

Thousands of documents released by the Justice Department show a White House plot, hatched shortly after the 2004 elections, to replace U.S. attorneys. At one point, senior White House officials, including political adviser Karl Rove, suggested replacing all 93 prosecutors. In December 2006, eight were ordered to resign.

In several House and Senate hearings into the firings, Gonzales and other Justice Department officials failed to fully explain the ousters without contradicting each other.