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John Nichols | Contempt of Congress    [

    Patrick Leahy Ready to Fight White House
    By Hope Yen
    The Associated Press

    Sunday 01 July 2007

    The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman said Sunday he was ready to go to court if the White House resisted congressional subpoenas for information on the firing of federal prosecutors.

    "If they don't cooperate, yes I'd go that far," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. He was asked in a broadcast interview whether he would seek a congressional vote on contempt citations if President Bush did not comply. That move would push the matter to court.

    "They've chosen confrontation rather than compromise or cooperation," Leahy said. "The bottom line on this U.S. attorneys' investigation is that we have people manipulating law enforcement. Law enforcement can't be partisan."

    At issue is whether the White House exerted undue political influence in the Justice Department's firing of prosecutors. Leahy's hardening stance is pushing the Democratic-led investigation ever closer to a constitutional showdown over executive power and Congress' right to oversight.

    The White House accused the committee of overreaching.

    "After thousands of pages of documents, interviews and testimony by Justice Department officials, it's clear that there's simply no merit for this overreach," presidential spokesman Tony Fratto said.

    He said Leahy "is seeking access to candid and confidential deliberations from the president's advisers - an intrusion he would never subject his own staff to. We have gone to great lengths to accommodate the committee in their oversight responsibilities."

    Separately, the Senate has subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office for documents related to the administration's legal basis for conducting warrant-free eavesdropping on people in the United States.

    Leahy and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., who heads the House Judiciary Committee, have demanded a White House explanation by July 9 as to its grounds for claiming executive privilege in refusing to turn over additional documents.

    The two lawmakers say that regardless of whether the White House meets the deadline, they would begin acting to enforce the subpoenas as appropriate under the law.

    Legal experts have been somewhat divided over the scope of a president's power to shield information and ensure candid advice from top aides. The dispute, if it does head to court, could take months and ultimately outlast the remaining term of Bush's presidency, which ends in January 2009.

    Last week, White House counsel Fred Fielding said Bush was claiming executive privilege. Bush also was invoking the privilege to prevent Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel, and Sara Taylor, the former political director, from testifying publicly under oath.

    The White House has urged the House and Senate Judiciary committees to withdraw the subpoenas and accept Bush's offer to provide information in private briefings with lawmakers without a transcript.

    Over the years, Congress and the White House have avoided a full-blown court test. Under federal rules, lawmakers could vote to cite witnesses for contempt and refer the matter to the local U.S. attorney to bring before a grand jury. Since 1975, 10 senior administration officials have been cited, but the disputes were all resolved before getting to court.

    On Sunday, Leahy dismissed the White House's proposal for private briefings because, he said, it forecloses Congress' right to subpoena additional information should officials fail to provide meaningful information.

    Leahy said he might be open to an offer in which White House officials were to agree to private briefings that were both sworn and committed to a transcript. But ultimately, the public have a right to hear what's been done, he said.

    Leahy's committee also has summoned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to testify this month on the eavesdropping program and an array of other matters that have cost a half-dozen top Justice Department officials their jobs.

    "The president and the vice president are not above the law any more than you and I are," Leahy said. "The White House hasn't given us anything. What we have been able to get has been some things, a lot of it erased or blanked out from the Department of Justice."

    Fratto, the White House spokesman, said the eavesdropping program was designed as an early-warning system to detect and prevent terrorist attacks by intercepting communications in or out of the U.S. by suspected al-Qaida terrorists. He said intelligence committees in Congress have been consistently briefed on the programs.

    "It was safe and effective and saved lives," Fratto said.

    Leahy spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press."

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    Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann in Kennebunkport, Maine, contributed to this report.

 

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    Go to Original

    Contempt of Congress
    By John Nichols
    The Nation

    Thursday 28 June 2007

    No one was all that surprised when the Bush administration announced Thursday that it would not cooperate with congressional demands for documents and testimony by prominent former officials that would likely confirm this White House's reckless disregard for the rule of law.

    What was surprising, and encouraging, was the decisiveness with which key players in Congress responded.

    After the White House asserted executive privilege in rejecting subpoenas issued by the House and Senate Judiciary committees as part of the ongoing probe of abuses within the Department of Justice, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers wasted no time expressing his sense that a Contempt of Congress citation is in order.

    "The President's response to our subpoena shows an appalling disregard for the right of the people to know what is going on in their government," explained Conyers, a Michigan Democrat who is the only Judiciary Committee to have participated in the fight between Congress and the Nixon White House for Watergate-related documents. "At this point, I see only one choice in moving forward, and that is to enforce the rule of law set forth in these subpoenas."

    The best way to enforce the rule of law is by issuing a Contempt of Congress citation. The rules of Congress permit standing committees, such as the House and Senate Judiciary panels, to compel witnesses to produce documents and testimony required to complete inquiries. Committee chairs are permitted to issue subpoenas seeking documents and testimony. And, when the targets of those subpoenas refuse to cooperate, a Contempt of Congress citation - outlining a criminal offense against the legislative branch of the federal government - can be drawn up.

    The issuance of a Contempt of Congress citation would provoke the sort of Constitutional showdown that it now appears will be required if this administration is to be held to account for its abuses of power. In such a showdown between the legislative and executive branches, the third branch of the federal government, the judiciary, would be asked to decide whether the White House has a right to assert, as White House counsel Fred Fielding did in a letter telling the committee chairs that their demands would not be met.

    The "fear of being commanded to Capitol Hill to testify or having their documents produced to Congress" would prevent presidential advisers from communicating "openly and honestly" with the president," wrote Fielding.

    Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy suggests, there is another sort of fear in play: the fear of having improper and potentially illegal schemes exposed.

    Fielding's assertion of executive privilege came in response to subpoenas for documents and testimony relating to the firing of nine federal prosecutors in 2006. Leahy and members of his committee have explored the question of whether those U.S. Attorneys were dismissed for improper political reasons as part of a broad move by the White House to politicize federal investigations and prosecutions.

    "This White House cannot have it both ways," says Leahy. "They cannot stonewall Congressional investigations by refusing to provide documents and witnesses, while claiming nothing improper occurred."

    The Vermont Democrat described assertion of executive privilege in an investigation of official misconduct as a "further shift by the Bush administration into Nixonian stonewalling."

    "Increasingly," says Leahy, "the president and vice president feel they are above the law - in America no one is above law."

    The senator is right, at least in theory.

    But, in practice, this administration has operated above, or more precisely outside the law for more than six years. Without proper congressional and judicial oversight, the White House has expanded the reach and authority of the executive branch far beyond the limits imagined by the founders. And it will continue to do so until Congress reasserts itself as a coequal branch of government.

    That process begins with the issuance of Contempt of Congress citations.

    For the sake of the Republic, those citation cannot be dispatched quickly enough.

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    John Nichols's book The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Most Powerful Vice President in American History (The New Press) is available nationwide at independent bookstores and at www.amazon.com.

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