Posted on 12/15/2001 1:14:28 PM PST by t-shirt
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:50:04 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
President Bush yesterday invoked for the first time his presidential power of executive privilege to prevent Congress from reviewing Justice Department documents in several high-profile cases, including the probe into former President Bill Clinton's fund-raising practices.
"Because I believe that congressional access to these documents would be contrary to the national interest, I have decided to assert executive privilege with respect to the documents and to instruct you not to release them" to the House Committee on Government Reform, Mr. Bush wrote in a memorandum to Attorney General John Ashcroft.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Demand justice for all be adhered to in this Free Republic and that Clinton not be forever held above the law. Demand the criminal evidence on Clinton and his fellow criminals from the FBI and other the criminal investigations be handed over to the US Congress and justice not obstructed any longer. The evidence Clinton and his fellow Gambino crime family connected mass murder associate Whitey Flemmi who murdered/assainated atleast ten people while on the FBI payroll as an informant should be turned over to the Congress. If murder and treason are allowed to be above the oversight of Congress and prosecution then this Republic will soon die.
-------
(Congress' Sept 11, 00 Subpoena For Clinton's Criminal Evidence Blocked By Bush Exec Order)(Thead4)
Will Ashcroft Obey House Subpoena Commanding Evidence by11th or KeepProtecting Clinton?Thread 2 1/2
US Congress Subpoena Orders Ashcroft To Release Clinton Evidence on Sept. 11, 2001 - Re-Post
US Congress Subpoena Orders Ashcroft To Release Clinton Evidence on 9/11/01 - Re-Post Thread 2
Bush Halts Inquiry of FBI and Stirs Up a Firestorm
by Glen Johnson
WASHINGTON - President Bush yesterday invoked executive privilege to block a congressional subpoena exploring abuses in the Boston FBI office, prompting the chairman of a House committee to lambaste his fellow Republicans and triggering what one congressman said is the start of ''a constitutional confrontation.''
''We've got a dictatorial president and a Justice Department that does not want Congress involved... Your guy's acting like he's king, '' GOP Representative Dan Burton of Indiana (left) tells Carl Thorsen, a deputy assistant attorney general.
''You tell the president there's going to be war between the president and this committee,'' Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who heads the House Government Reform Committee, told a Justice Department official during what was supposed to be a routine prehearing handshake.
''His dad was at a 90 percent approval rating and he lost, and the same thing can happen to him,'' Burton added, jabbing his finger and glaring at Carl Thorsen, a deputy assistant attorney general who was attempting to introduce a superior who was testifying.
''We've got a dictatorial president and a Justice Department that does not want Congress involved. ... Your guy's acting like he's king.''
The searing tone continued for more than four hours from Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. All objected to the order Bush signed Wednesday and made public yesterday. It claimed executive privilege in refusing to hand over prosecutors' memos in criminal cases, including an investigation of campaign-finance abuses, saying doing so ''would be contrary to the national interest.''
Committee members said the order's sweeping language created a shift in presidential policy and practices dating back to the Harding administration. They complained also that it followed a pattern in which the Bush administration has limited access to presidential historical records, refused to give Congress documents about the vice president's energy task force, and unilaterally announced plans for military commissions that would try suspected terrorists in secret.
Representative William D. Delahunt, a Quincy Democrat and former district attorney, said: ''This is the beginning of a constitutional confrontation. In a short period of time, this Department of Justice has manifested tendencies that were of concern to Senate members during the confirmation hearings for John Ashcroft as attorney general.''
The Government Reform Committee is investigating the FBI's use of confidential informants while the bureau investigated New England organized crime activities.
The committee seeks information on deals FBI officials struck with suspected murderers Stephen ''the Rifleman'' Flemmi and James ''Whitey'' Bulger.
It is also exploring what FBI officials, including former director J. Edgar Hoover, knew about the innocence of Joseph Salvati of Massachusetts. Salvati spent 30 years in prison for the 1965 murder of Edward ''Teddy'' Deegan in Chelsea, but the Governor's Council commuted his sentence in 1997. His conviction was overturned in January after a judge concluded that FBI agents hid testimony that would have cleared Salvati because they wanted to protect an informant.
''The federal government wanted Joe Salvati to die in jail because dead men don't tell tales,'' said Salvati's lawyer, Victor J. Garo, at the hearing yesterday.
In buttressing the executive order, Michael E. Horowitz, chief of staff for the Justice Department's criminal division, told the committee that providing documents about prosecutorial decision-making could have a ''chilling effect'' on the advice that lower-level attorneys may be willing to provide to top prosecutors.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Ronald Reagan invoked such a privilege three times, while Bill Clinton did so on four occasions. Forms of privilege were also claimed in the Nixon administration during the Watergate investigation. Fleischer said the Justice Department has already turned over 3,500 pages to Burton's committee, although members complained that many were heavily redacted.
The Justice Department offered to provide summaries of 20 documents it believes would be covered by the subpoena.
Representative Barney Frank, a Democrat from Newton, said he and Burton, a conservative, had sometimes disagreed on the committee's inquiries into the Clinton administration. He said the chairman's strong words for his fellow Republicans showed he had not merely been partisan.
Turning to Horowitz, Frank asked why the Bush administration might cover up mistakes made in a previous administration. ''I don't know what bureaucratic reflex drives people to do this,'' the congressman said.
By Joseph Curl
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
President Bush yesterday invoked for the first time his presidential power of executive privilege to prevent Congress from reviewing Justice Department documents in several high-profile cases, including the probe into former President Bill Clinton's fund-raising practices.
"Because I believe that congressional access to these documents would be contrary to the national interest, I have decided to assert executive privilege with respect to the documents and to instruct you not to release them" to the House Committee on Government Reform, Mr. Bush wrote in a memorandum to Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Committee Chairman Dan Burton had been seeking Justice Department memos about prosecutors' decisions in cases involving Democratic fund-raising practices, a former Clinton White House official, the handling of mob informants in Boston and a former federal drug enforcement agent.
A committee subpoena requested a memo from the chief of the Justice Department's campaign finance task force recommending that Janet Reno, attorney general during the Clinton administration, appoint a special prosecutor.
Mr. Bush's invocation of executive privilege angered Mr. Burton.
"This is not a monarchy. The legislative branch has oversight responsibility to make sure there is no corruption in the executive branch," the Indiana Republican said.
"We might be able to go to the [House] floor and take this thing to court," Mr. Burton told Justice Department lawyers at a hearing after the announcement. "Everyone is in agreement you guys are making a big mistake."
However, the threat of legal action seems remote. The full House, controlled by Republicans, would have to vote to find Mr. Bush in contempt to initiate such a court battle.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman, the top Democrat on the committee and a fierce Clinton defender, agreed with Mr. Burton, a vocal Clinton foe.
"An imperial presidency or an imperial Justice Department conflicts with the democratic principles of our nation," Mr. Waxman said.
Mr. Bush, however, said complying with the subpoena would have been contrary to the intentions of the Founding Fathers of America.
"The Founders' fundamental purpose in establishing the separation of powers in the Constitution was to protect individual liberty," Mr. Bush wrote.
"Congressional pressure on executive branch prosecutorial decision making is inconsistent with separation of powers and threatens individual liberty."
Mr. Bush continued: "Disclosure to Congress of confidential advice to the attorney general regarding the appointment of a special counsel and confidential recommendations to Department of Justice officials regarding whether to bring criminal charges would inhibit the candor necessary to the effectiveness of the deliberative process by which the department makes prosecutorial decisions."
Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said the subpoena was an attempt to "politicize" the prosecutorial process.
"The reason President Bush in this case exerted executive privilege was to protect the effectiveness and the deliberativeness of the justice process," Mr. Fleischer said.
"In this case, where after the administration had already turned over 3,500 pages to the House committee in question, they continued to pressure the administration to obtain very specific prosecutorial decision-making memoranda that are the heart of the justice process," he said.
Executive privilege is best known for the unsuccessful attempts by Presidents Nixon and Clinton to keep evidence secret during impeachment investigations. Mr. Clinton asserted the privilege four times during his administration.
December 14, 2001
On Capitol Hill, Rep. Dan Burton (right), R-Ind., chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform, talks with ranking member Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., during a hearing investigating the handling of confidential informants in Boston, Thursday, in Washington.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush invoked executive privilege Thursday to block Congress from seeing prosecutors' memos in controversial criminal cases in a move that angered lawmakers already concerned about access to sensitive information.
The president said he invoked the legal privilege, which gained notoriety during Nixon and Clinton scandals, because he was concerned that sharing such documents with Congress could chill prosecutors' private deliberations in criminal cases.
''I believe congressional access to these documents would be contrary to the national interest,'' Bush wrote in a memo ordering Attorney General John Ashcroft to withhold the papers.
A Republican House chairman threatened to take the president to court, and other lawmakers from both parties said they feared Bush was trying to create an ''imperial presidency'' by thwarting Congress' ability to oversee the executive branch.
''This is not a monarchy,'' said Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., whose House Government Reform Committee sought the documents from cases ranging from a 1960s murder in Boston to the Clinton-era fund-raising probe.
Executive privilege is a doctrine recognized by the courts that ensures presidents can get candid advice in private without fear of its becoming public.
The maneuver was expected -- White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez recommended earlier this year that Bush use the privilege to keep lawmakers from meddling in or exposing sensitive law enforcement conversations.
The United States chose a different form of representitive republic. In ours the power was split equally three ways. The President was equal in power but not subservient to the congress. The congress was equal in power to the president but not subservient to him. Both the president and congress have equal power with the federal courts. The idea was to make it as hard as possible for the government to do anything. The parlimentary system is powerful because the party in power controls the entire government. We wisely wanted no part of that. Many of the libertarian stripe right cry for a powerful legislative branch when not crying for a more powerful president to restore "priniples" while at the same time while decrying the power of the federal government. It may have something to do with wearing t-shirts way too tight.
In our goverment no chief executive is subservient to the House of Representitives or the Senate. He is not subservient to the Courts either. He does not report to either. They do not report to him. The are in fact co-equal. A court can not fine or jail a president. He is not subservient to the courts. He answers to the public who elect or defeat him at the polls.
In England the Prime Minister serves at the pleasure of the legislature. Here the President is elected for a term of 4 years by direct election. In the United States no legistlatue can control the president. No president has control of the legislature. In England the prime Minister runs the legislature. It brings up the bills he wants brought up. The house of commons votes on what the prime minister wants voted. The prime minister runs the legislature and the admimistration of government.
Here no president has that power. Today Bush can't make the Senate vote on his economic plan, and the house can not make Bush give them white house records. No president who was awake in high school civics class, would give that much power to the legislature. It would destory our delicate balance of power, preserved so well for over 200 years. For if our legistature were to achieve its grasp for power,we would be as socialist as France or England with in a decade.
However many Anti-American advocates would like to change our system. They would like either the legistative branch to be all powerful or the president to be all powerful depending on who controls which branch of governemnt that is most to their likeing at the moment. Our freedom to a great extent is based on no branch being powerful enough to be in control.
To preserve presidential power no president would give up his authority to a house committee. To do so would put the House in charge. Presidents would, in effect, report to the house.
In that case were a Dick Gephard to become Speaker of the House the President then in office would have to serve at Dickies beck and call. If Dick Gephardt said bring me all the records I want to use them for political purposes, the president would have to do it. Our founders foresaw that possibility and prevented it in our Constitution. Which it seems few Libertarians have read or if they have they were too stoned at the time to understand it.
Burton is an dangerous and ambition fool. He, in an effort to gain power and fame, tries to influence our people to give up our checks and balances to make him and the house of representatives the supreme law of the land.
But our system of government gives Dan Burton no power to compel the president to do anything. The only power over the president the House has is to impeach. Even then the Senate must convict for it to have any effect.
If Bush were to fold and give Burton the publicity he seeks, he would sacrefice the power of many future presidents. And what could Burton do with these records. The only power the House has is to investigate for the purpose of passsing new laws. Burton only has the power to investigating to pass new laws or repeal old ones. He has no judical powers at all. He can write laws but not enforce them. That is part of the separation of powers. Our founders knew that if the people who wrote teh laws got to eforce the laws no one they charged could ever be found innocent. It is our most basic freedom and Dan Burton wants to destory it for his own glory.
Burtons only real job according to the constitution is to investigate for the purpose of writing new laws so something the congress does not like will be against the law for future offenders. But unless he could get the house to pass it and the president to sign it, it would not become a law anyway. And certainly could not apply to acts done during the clinton administration. Burton is grandstanding based on his certain knowledge that most peope do not have a clue.
So burton is playing for the ignorant fools. The suckers that sent money to Judical watch no doubt just love Dan Burton. He plays on the ignorance of citizens who have not studied our form of govnerment and how it works to protext us.
If so then why do you support Bill Clinton being above prosection?
And why do you support details of Mr.Flemmi murdering while an FBI paid informant being kept from the Congress?
Would you want this kept secret if the FBI allowed people to murder a member of your family?
And in the summer he will be cruising. He has nothing to fear from his goombah Bubba Bush.
But,HEY! Just wait until that tough NY media gets ahold of Hillary....,uhhhh,wait untill we get a Republican president and a real Attorney General!. Uhhhhh,never mind.
President Bush probably feels that if the truth were made public about Clinton, it would certainly shake the confidence and power of the Presidency, the country, and the Constitution.
22 posted on 9/8/01 2:02 AM Pacific by Revel
From Above quote from : Breaking: US Congress Subpoena Orders Ashcroft To Release Clinton Evidence on Sept. 11, 2001
If everything that previous Presidents have done came out in the general news, Washington would be burned to the ground, with the legeslative doors locked first. I am getting sick of these creeps thinking we are idots.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.