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 News from Around the Americas | March 2007 
House OKs Subpoenas for Top Bush Aides
 Laurie Kellman - Associated Press
| | Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove (L) and White House Spokesman Tony Snow (R) board Air Force One with US President George W. Bush Tuesday vowed to resist any attempt by Congress to compel testimony under oath by top aides in a row over fired prosecutors, warning against a "partisan fishing expedition." (AFP/Jim Watson) |
A House panel on Wednesday approved subpoenas for President Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove and other top White House aides, setting up a constitutional showdown over the firings of eight federal prosecutors.
By voice vote, the House Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law decided to compel the president's top aides to testify publicly and under oath about their roles in the firings.
The White House has refused to budge in the controversy, standing by embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and insisting that the firings were appropriate. White House spokesman Tony Snow said that in offering aides to talk to the committees privately, Bush had sought to avoid the "media spectacle" that would result from public hearings with Rove and others at the witness table.
"The question they've got to ask themselves is, are you more interested in a political spectacle than getting the truth?" Snow said of the overture Tuesday by the White House via its top lawyer, Fred Fielding.
"There must be accountability," countered subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sanchez (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif.
The panel approved, but has not issued, subpoenas for Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, their deputies and Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff, who resigned over the uproar last week.
The panel also voted to compel the production of documents related to the firings from those officials and Gonzales, Fielding and White House chief of staff Joshua Bolton. Fielding a day earlier refused to provide Congress internal White House communications on the subject.
The full Judiciary Committee would authorize the subpoenas if Chairman John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan chose to do so.
The committee rejected Bush's offer a day earlier to have his aides talk privately to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, but not under oath and not on the record.
Authorizing the subopenas "does provide this body the leverage needed to negotiate from a position of strenghth," said Rep. William Delahunt (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass.
Republicans called the authorization premature, though some GOP members said they would consider voting to approve the subpoenas if Conyers promises to issue them only if he has evidence of wrongdoing.
Conyers agreed. "This (authority) will not be used in a way that will make you regret your vote."
Several Republicans said, "No" during the voice vote, but no roll call was taken.
For his part, Bush remained resolute.
Would he fight Democrats in court to protect his aides against congressional subpoenas?
"Absolutely," Bush declared Tuesday.
Democrats promptly rejected the threat. The Senate Judiciary Committee planned to approve subpoenas for the same officials on Thursday.
"Testimony should be on the record and under oath. That's the formula for true ccountability," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) of Vermont.
Bush said he worried that allowing testimony under oath would set a precedent on the separation of powers that would harm the presidency as an institution.
If neither side blinks, the dispute could end in court - ultimately the Supreme Court - in a politically messy development that would prolong what Bush called the "public spectacle" of the Justice Department's firings, and public trashings, of the eight U.S. attorneys.
Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., the Senate panel's former chairman, appealed for pragmatism.
"It is more important to get the information promptly than to have months or years of litigation," Specter said.
Bush, in a late-afternoon statement at the White House, decried any attempts by Democrats to engage in "a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants."
"It will be regrettable if they choose to head down the partisan road of issuing subpoenas and demanding show trials when I have agreed to make key White House officials and documents available," the president said.
Bush defended Gonzales against demands from congressional Democrats and a handful of Republicans that Gonzales resign over his handling of the U.S. attorneys' firings over the past year.
"He's got support with me," Bush said. "I support the attorney general."
Democrats say the prosecutors' dismissals were politically motivated. Gonzales initially had asserted the firings were performance-related, not based on political considerations.
But e-mails released earlier this month between the Justice Department and the White House contradicted that assertion and led to a public apology from Gonzales over the handling of the matter.
The e-mails showed that Rove, as early as Jan. 6, 2005, questioned whether the U.S. attorneys should all be replaced at the start of Bush's second term, and to some degree worked with former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson to get some prosecutors dismissed.
In his remarks Tuesday, Bush emphasized that he appoints federal prosecutors and it is natural to consider replacing them. While saying he disapproved of how the decisions were explained to Congress, he insisted "there is no indication that anybody did anything improper."
Nonetheless, the Senate on Tuesday voted 94-2 to strip Gonzales of his authority to fill U.S. attorney vacancies without Senate confirmation. Democrats contend the Justice Department and White House purged the eight federal prosecutors, some of whom were leading political corruption investigations, after a change in the USA Patriot Act gave Gonzales the new authority.
"What happened in this case sends a signal really through intimidation by purge: 'Don't quarrel with us any longer,'" said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (news, bio, voting record), D-R.I., a former U.S. attorney.
The White House had signaled last week that it would not oppose the legislation if it also passed the House and reached Bush's desk.
In an op-ed in Wednesday's editions of The New York Times, one of the eight, David Iglesias of New Mexico, responded to the president: "I appreciate his gratitude for my service - this marks the first time I have been thanked. But only a written retraction by the Justice Department setting the record straight regarding my performance would settle the issue for me."
Congressional Report: Clinton Didn't Do It Too
ThinkProgress.org
Both President Bush and Karl Rove have argued that the administration's U.S. Attorney purge is a "normal and ordinary" process that was also carried out by President Clinton. ThinkProgress has spent some time debunking this claim, but the Congressional Research Service has put the nail in the coffin.
A CRS report released yesterday examines the tenure of all U.S. Attorneys who were confirmed by the Senate between the years 1981 and 2006 to determine how many had served - and, of those, how many had been forced to resign for reasons other than a change in administration.
The answer:
• Of the 468 confirmations made by the Senate over the 25-year period, only 10 left office involuntarily for reasons other than a change in administration prior to the firings that took place in December.
• In virtually all of those 10 previous cases, serious issues of personal or professional conduct appeared to be the driving issue. Prior to December, for example, only two U.S. Attorneys were outright fired for improper, and in one case criminal, behavior. The CRS report identifies six other U.S. Attorneys who resigned during the 25-year period who were implicated in news reports of "questionable conduct."
• For two others, the CRS was unable to determine the cause.
In other words, the Bush administration pushed out almost as many U.S. Attorneys in December as had been let go over the past 25 years.
American Progress fellow Scott Lilly writes on the CRS report:
It is clear that of the four administrations that controlled the executive branch of government during the past quarter-century, only the current administration has held the view that U.S. Attorney can or should be removed absent serious cause. In no instance is there any indication of a removal because a U.S. attorney failed to meet certain political criteria, such as prosecuting cases that were considered too sensitive to partisan issues or failing to prosecute cases that would be helpful from a partisan perspective.
The innovative philosophy of the current Bush administration with respect to the service of U.S. Attorneys is worthy of the attention it is now receiving. Those eight forced resignations threaten the very basis of our justice system - to quote the words written above the pillars on the west front of the Supreme Court, "Equal Justice Under Law." |
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