Posted on 03/10/2008 5:25:39 PM PDT by jdm
The House Judiciary Committee has filed a lawsuit to compel Josh Bolten and Harriet Miers to testify in the US Attorney firings scandal, now mostly forgotten. The lawsuit sets the stage for a resolution to the executive privilege claim by the Bush administration. It may also provide more closure on executive privilege than either branch of government will want:
The House Judiciary Committee filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to force the White House chief of staff and the former White House counsel to cooperate with the committee’s investigation into the firing of a group of federal prosecutors.
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the committee in federal District Court for the District of Columbia, names as defendants Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, and Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff. The lawsuit seeks to compel Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten to provide testimony and documents about the firing of nine United States attorneys. …
Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers are subpoenaed as part of the committee’s yearlong investigation into the circumstances of the firings. Questions over whether politics played a role led to an uproar in Congress and calls for the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who stepped down last summer.
At the time of the House vote, the White House said it had tried to cooperate with the committee and provide evidence short of direct testimony. Both the White House and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, Mr. Gonzales’s successor, have said the Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten do not have to testify before the committee because of executive privilege. The Judiciary Committee said the Justice Department had declined to pursue the contempt citations, which led to the filing of the civil lawsuit.
Congress has spent the fourteen months gnawing on this bone and gaining nothing more than demonstrating the incompetence of Alberto Gonzales. Their investigation has failed to produce any evidence of illegality or corruption, and in fact has underscored the fact that US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the presidents who appoint them. Calling Bolten and Miers to testify amounts to nothing more than a fishing expedition, a way to create exactly this kind of standoff.
Presidents have zealously protected executive privilege, both Democrats and Republicans, and for good reason. Absent specific evidence of lawbreaking, presidents have to have a reasonable expectation of privacy between themselves and their political advisers. Heads of agencies, such as Cabinet officials and lower ranks, do not qualify as the two branches share responsibility for their operations. Chiefs of staff and White House counsel — the attorney that advises the President in his official duties — fall into a completely different class.
If Congress had evidence of lawbreaking, they could forward that to the Department of Justice for investigation. In this case, they have nothing; they just want to see if they can set some perjury traps for Bolten and Miers in their ongoing war against the Bush administration. They claim they have oversight over the executive branch, but just as the government doesn’t have the right to subpoena people without the existence of a crime, neither does Congress regarding White House advisers.
The courts will hash this out, and will enter some very unchartered territory. Usually, these games of chicken end before they get to federal court, because neither branch wants the judiciary to map the boundaries of executive privilege. Someone will lose in that exchange — and most likely it will be Congress, especially in this case. Without evidence of a crime, the courts will likely reject these kinds of subpoenas as an abuse of Constitutional power.
Ironically, Congress won a similar argument last year, at least in part, when it told an appellate court that the FBI’s search of William Jefferson’s office violated the separation of powers between the two branches. Ample evidence of criminality existed for the Jefferson case. The court found that the separation of powers should have required the FBI to at least allow Jefferson to review documents before the FBI seized them in order to allow Jefferson to make claims of legislative privilege.
Now, with nothing more than a political hit job at risk, they want to essentially make the FBI’s argument against Bolten and Miers. They may wind up with a much larger definition of executive privilege than we have at the moment, but in their blind rush to score a few more political points, they risk not just their own standing but the standing of future Congresses against executives as well.
Political theater. - that may not play out very well.
Their investigation has failed to produce any evidence of illegality or corruption, and in fact has underscored the fact that US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the presidents who appoint them. Calling Bolten and Miers to testify amounts to nothing more than a fishing expedition, a way to create exactly this kind of standoff.
It’s just too bad that the Republican party in Washington is not tough like the dems. The dems never cave and never go to the other side.
Fart Head fired all of them. WHERE WAS CONGRESS? hillary will do the same if she wants to and is prez. will anything be said?
Did any of these con-artists object when Clinton fired over 90 Judges with the objective of disrupting the investigation into Clinton’s corrupt affairs?
The filers of the lawsuit should themselves be impeached or otherwise removed from office for malfeasance.
The Clinton Administration removed many times more government officials in the Department of Justice. The Democrats did not ask a single question or raise a single issue in the unprecedented and unjustified action by the Clintonistas. They should be ashamed of themselves for their gross overreaction to a perfectly legal action by the Bush Administration.
The current administration should have gotten rid of Clinton operatives eight years ago.
Should Pelosi be more concerned with solving the nation’s problems with the high cost of gasoline? They could take action to increase the refinery capacity of the USA, increase domestic production by allowing offshore drilling in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico and off the coasts of Florida and California. Instead the warped and twisted Democrats blame Bush and the oil companies for the high cost of gasoline, and they attack Bush for what they already did themselves. They should get the log out of their own eyes first! Who do they think they are fooling!
(1) Pelosi’s and the donks answer to high gas prices is the same as their answer for everything else: more taxes, this time to the tune of $18,000,000,000 (but their buddy _havez is exempt).
(2) Libscum are incapable of feeling shame.
(3) Most donk voters are morons who have bought the Dems BS hook, line, and sinker.
I don’t remember. I have no recollection. I do not recall. I don’t know. I have now knowledge of that. I can’t recall.
I’m glad I could help with this investigation.
The RATS have only one agenda here, "PERJURY".
Thats all it's about.
They've already decided on the crime, so all they have to do now
is force it to fit by any means possible, using their lies and spin.
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