PHOENIX (AP) — A Justice Department internal investigation has concluded that Paul Charlton wasn't fired as U.S. attorney for Arizona because of his office's involvement in a criminal probe of U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi.

Instead, Charlton apparently ended up being ousted primarily because he pushed for a policy to require FBI agents to record interviews in order to bolster prosecutions and because he tried to get the Justice Department to reconsider its decision to seek the death penalty in a criminal case, investigators said.

Contacted after the report's release Monday in Washington, Charlton said he had not read it and could not comment in detail on its findings. However, he said he welcomed Attorney General Michael Mukasey's naming of a prosecutor to investigate further.

"That's the right thing to do. The inspector general's authority stops at the walls of the Department of Justice. They have little transparency, if any, through the walls of the White House," Charlton said.

The report said current and former department officials interviewed by investigators denied any link between Charlton's ouster and the investigation of Renzi, an Arizona Republican, in a case stemming partly from a proposed federal land swap.

The investigators also said they found no documents or e-mails that the Renzi case had anything to do with Charlton appearing on a firing list more than a year after the Renzi investigation began in 2005.

Charlton, a career state and federal prosecutor, was appointed U.S. attorney for Arizona by President Bush in 2001. Along with U.S. attorneys in other states, Charlton was told in December 2006 to resign. He left office on Jan. 30, 2007, and now works as a partner with a Phoenix law firm.

Democratic Party officials and others had alleged that Charlton's ouster was related to Renzi's case. Renzi has pleaded innocent and awaits trial in federal court in Tucson. The FBI began investigating Renzi in early 2005.

"We found no evidence that Charlton was removed because of his office's investigation and prosecution of Congressman Renzi, as was alleged in some media reports after the U.S. Attorney removals became public," the Justice Department report stated.

FBI officials complained about Charlton's stance on the taping issue, and then-Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told the department investigators that Charlton had demonstrated poor judgment.

The report said Charlton wasn't insubordinate, as some department officials believed, in asking Gonzalez to reconsider the decision to seek the death penalty for a man accused of murdering his methamphetamine dealer in 2003.

Charlton hadn't previously been allowed to discuss the issue with the deputy attorney general before Gonzalez made a final decision, the report said.

Charlton has said he didn't think prosecutors had enough evidence to get a death sentence for Jose Rios Rico.

The report cited two other apparent secondary factors in Charlton being included on a hit lit of U.S. attorneys nationally.

One of those was his "alleged resistance" to assisting in prosecution of cases produced by an obscenity task force and the other was department officials' erroneous belief that Charlton had gone outside channels to lobby U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl for additional funding for Charlton's office, the report said.

Charlton responded to an inquiry from Kyl about what Charlton's office needed to step up prosecutions related to illegal immigration, the report said.

On the Net:

Justice Department report: http://www.usdoj.gov/opr/us-att-firings-rpt092308.pdf