By Hanlon, on March 1st, 2008 at 08:01 PM
 Color me surprised. This is one of those times where you see the problem that arises when the executive branch is beholden to the president and the Congress has no balls. Attorney General Mukasey is refusing to prosecute two Bush aides who refused to comply with Congressional subpoenas.
In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Mukasey said the refusal by White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet E. Miers to comply with congressional subpoenas “did not constitute a crime.”
The department “will not bring the congressional contempt citations before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute Mr. Bolten or Ms. Miers,” Mukasey wrote.
…
The law provides for such cases to be sent to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia for possible referral to a grand jury. But Mukasey cited a 1984 Justice Department legal opinion, which said that “the contempt of Congress statute was not intended to apply and could not constitutionally be applied to an Executive Branch official who asserts the President’s claim of executive privilege.”
So basically, if the president cites executive privilege and refuses to divulge information, the AG is saying that there ain’t jack squat anyone can do about it. The man can just build a wall around himself and his circle and there’s nothing to break it down for any reason. Good stuff.
By Hanlon, on August 1st, 2007 at 03:40 PM
 Really, this is getting absurd. It seems like Bush is just sitting around to see who gets subpoenaed, and then immediately slaps an “executive privilege” claim on the targets. This time around, it’s Karl Rove and another aide.
White House Counsel Fred Fielding has consistently said that top presidential aides — present and past — are immune from subpoenas and has declared the documents sought off-limits under executive privilege.
The House Judiciary Committee already has approved a contempt citation against two other Bush confidants, chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers. The full House is expected to vote on the citation in the fall, but the Justice Department has said it won’t prosecute the two.
So every aide, every single one, is immune from the subpoena. That’s just idiotic. No one, absolutely no one, should be immune from the subpoena. I don’t care if they send a subpoena at the president himself, no one can be protected from having to testify under oath. That undermines every intention of our little three branch government setup. Not to mention it simply begs to be abused.
I really do hope Congress keeps a hold of its balls and pursues this to the end. The hell with all those claims of “partisan anger” or accusations of being “more interested in investigations than progress.” This is the integrity of our nation, there’s nothing more important to fight for than that.
By Hanlon, on July 17th, 2007 at 08:36 PM
 Apparently eager to reinforce her and her superiors’ complete and total lack of regard for the law, Harriet Miers repeated her rejection of a Congressional subpoena. The Raw Story has a copy of the letter sent from Miers’ attorney, to boot.
“In light of the continuing directives to Ms. Miers and as previously indicated to your Committee, I must respectfully inform you that, directed as she has been to honor the Executive privileges and immunities asserted in this matter, Ms. Miers will not appear before the Committee or otherwise produce documents or provide testimony as set forth in the Committee’s subpoena,” wrote Miers’ attorney, George Manning, in a letter delivered Tuesday to Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
“The subcommittee has overruled Ms. Miers’ claims of immunity and privilege,” [Rep John Conyers, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee,] said. “Her failure to comply with our subpoena is a serious affront to this committee and our constitutional system of checks and balances. We are carefully planning our next steps.”
The sad part is that I can just imagine poor Harriet Miers getting the orders from her higher ups that she has to refuse, not just because she can’t go and reveal whatever it is that she knows, but because that any evidence of changing positions would be seen as that oh-so-feared “flip flopping.”
I hope that Conyers and the rest take a page from Give ‘Em Hell Harry Reid and slap Miers and everyone else involved with contempt of Congress charges. Miers may just be following orders, but the people ordering her to reject the subpoenas are in serious contempt of Congress and the laws of this nation. This has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with “presidential ass” security.
By Hanlon, on July 12th, 2007 at 03:43 PM
 So by now Harriet Miers’ refusal to comply with a subpoena due to “executive privilege” is fairly well established. So the claim goes, she isn’t bound to show up in court and testify because the President says he has that wacky privilege. And it seems that, amazingly, Congress is going to do something about it.
Over the strenuous objections of Republicans, a subcommittee cleared the way for contempt proceedings by voting 7-5 to reject Bush’s claim of executive privilege. He says his top advisers, whether current or former, cannot be summoned by Congress.
“Those claims are not legally valid,” Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., said of Bush’s declaration. “Ms. Miers is required pursuant to the subpoena to be here now.”
And then Mr. Stupid shows up.
“If the House Judiciary Committee wants to avoid confrontation, it should withdraw its subpoenas,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. “The committee is rejecting accommodation because they prefer just the kind of political spectacle they’re engaged in now.”
See, here’s the thing. A subpoena is not something that can be rejected or accepted, even by the president. If Congress issues a subpoena, it is binding. You don’t have a choice, you have to show up. As Hunter over on DailyKos noted, executive privilege may be invoked in order to avoid answering certain questions, but Miers is legally required to show up, period, no debate.
The only way for this claim to hold water would be if Bush et al truly believe that his “executive privilege” extends to, well, everything. There is no legal precedent for this, and in fact there have been multiple cases of people being held in contempt of Congress over such refusals (though the subjects eventually complied). In order to believe that this is valid, then we would have to believe that the president can order things on the fly and his various privileges allow him to do so.
As Hunter noted, Miers can refuse to answer certain questions, but she can in no way refuse to show up at all. Yet the debate plugs along…
Rep. Chris Cannon of Utah, the ranking Republican on Sanchez’ subcommittee on commercial and administrative law, warned Democrats that a contempt citation would fail evidentiary standards in court.
“You can’t go to the courts essentially and say, ‘We don’t know what we don’t know, therefore give us a subpoena so we can find out,’” Cannon said.
“There is no proof whatsoever that Harriet Miers likely holds some smoking gun with respect to the U.S. attorney situation,” added Rep. Ric Keller, R-Fla.
Unfortunately, Cannon’s point is stupid and Keller’s is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what Miers does or doesn’t know, what matters is that her testimony is pertinent to an investigation, thus the subpoena is valid, and the subpoena has been issued and so she is now obligated to appear in court. She doesn’t need to have a smoking gun, court appearances aren’t mandatory only when the person in question has something really important to say. As far as I know, I can’t just not show up when subpoenaed because I didn’t have anything particularly groundbreaking to say on the matter.
This debate should not exist. We can argue what Miers does and doesn’t have to say while on the stand, but we cannot argue about whether or not she has to get up there at all. She does, and we are left with one of two options:
- The president, his administration, and the GOP in Congress are completely oblivious of the law.
- They are perfectly aware of the law but are willfully defying it.
Pick your poison, I suppose. Either way, these people should not be running our country. And by the way, a TPM reader did note that this seems fairly cut and dry…
Invoking a privilege is one thing, but telling a person not to show up in response to a subpoena — if only to actually invoke the privilege — is quite another. It’s not just worse, it’s a felony under federal criminal law. See for yourself.
18 U.S.C. Sec. 1505 : … Whoever corruptly … influences, obstructs, or impedes … the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress … [s]hall be fined under this title, [or] imprisoned not more than 5 years … or both.
18 U.S.C. Sec. 1515(b): As used in section 1505, the term “corruptly” means acting with an improper purpose, personally or by influencing another, including … withholding, [or] concealing … information.
By Hanlon, on July 11th, 2007 at 10:20 PM
 You know, I feel redundant at this point, but indulge me. As I’ve said, the firing of the attorneys was a problem, but one I don’t care about. It’s the reaction, though, that really gets me. Sometimes it just feels like we’re getting a middle finger. Take, for example, Harriet Miers saying she ain’t gonna testify.
Several hours after Taylor concluded her appearance, the House Judiciary Committee announced that Miers was set to refuse to appear at a hearing today. Miers’s attorney, George T. Manning of Atlanta, said in a letter to the committee that the administration’s assertion of executive privilege gives her “absolute immunity” from being forced to testify on Capitol Hill.
Let me ruminate a bit on the Constitution and the idea of “the spirit of the law”. I do believe in following the letter of the law, but as anyone can tell you the framers of the Constitution couldn’t have foreseen every possible situation that would come about over the next few hundred years. However, any basic reading will tell you that the three branches are intended to have a neat little “check and balance” thing going on to prevent any one branch from being unaccountable by the others.
Yet, somehow, that’s slipped by the wayside now. I cannot fathom for the life of me how anyone could think that there’s no problem with this “executive privilege” shit precluding Congress from knowing what the President is up to. I don’t think the public needs to know every little thing that goes on, but damn it the government is a unit. The whole point of the branched government is to avoid things like this, and Congress should know what the President is doing.
By the way, speaking of that…
“Your answer that you did not discuss these matters with the president and, to the best of your knowledge, he was not involved is going to make some nervous at the White House,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told Taylor. “It seriously undercuts his claim of executive privilege if he was not involved.”
Sarah Taylor didn’t answer a whole lot, but that’s dang revealing. Hard to claim executive privilege if the executive didn’t do anything. Once again, I get the feeling that Bush is a guy who is saddled with trying to continually defend things he was not a part of if not completely ignorant of. I have this image of Bush reading in the paper about the firings and going “ah, shit.”
By Hanlon, on July 8th, 2007 at 02:12 PM
I’ve said in the past that the attorney firing scandal doesn’t exactly thrill me, and that’s still true. However, the political wrangling between the White House and the Congress is like a soap opera, and with the administration still refusing to play ball, it’s just escalating.
Senate and House committees have directed President Bush to provide by tomorrow a detailed justification of his executive privilege claims and a full accounting of the documents he is withholding. But White House counsel Fred F. Fielding plans to tell lawmakers that he has already provided the legal basis for the claims and will not provide a log of the documents, the sources said.
The standoff suggests that neither side is prepared to budge in the fight over documents and testimony in the widening U.S. attorney investigation. Officials in both camps said no serious negotiations are taking place to resolve the dispute. Fielding plans to follow up his letter by further asserting executive privilege later this week, the sources said, directing former White House aides Harriet E. Miers and Sara M. Taylor not to testify in response to congressional subpoenas.
No documents, no justification of this “executive privilege” business, no one’s going to testify. So basically Fielding has taken the standpoint that however much the administration wants to give up is plenty, deal with it. Fortunately, Pat Leahy isn’t as cynical or pessimistic about all of this as I am, as he expects Taylor to testify, if not Miers.
Taylor’s lawyer said she is willing to talk but does not want to defy President Bush, who has rejected subpoenas for documents from Taylor and for her testimony. Lawyer W. Neil Eggleston said Taylor expects a letter from White House lawyer Fred Fielding directing her not to comply on the basis of executive privilege.
This is where we are, folks. People won’t testify in court because Bush says they won’t, and there’s nothing we can do about it, so he claims. It must be part of that executive privilege he will neither elaborate upon nor defend.
By Hanlon, on July 1st, 2007 at 10:16 PM
 You know, stories like these are starting to feel old as hell. Once again there is evidence of administrative wrongdoing, and someone in another branch wants the White House to give up pertinent information, and the administration claims that group is interfering and they’ve helped plenty. Fortunately, Patrick Leahy isn’t ready to give up so easy.
“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.”
Once again we have Tony Snow coming out with more idiocy, saying that this is an overreach, that the president has cooperated enough and that this is all some big ol’ liberal conspiracy to bring down our virtuous leader. Of course, what they won’t explain is what’s so sensitive about these documents that they can’t be handed over.
They lose emails and won’t hand over documents in this case, they refuse to give up visitor information during the Abramoff scandal, they hide information during the wiretap fiasco, the list goes on. There has yet to be a situation where the administration stonewalls information for a reason other than direct hiding.
By Hanlon, on June 11th, 2007 at 10:58 PM
Despite my last post being about Gonzales, I want to stress that it had nothing to do with why the Senate vote was happening. My frustration wasn’t that the Senate wasn’t going to be able to show ol’ Berty that we don’t think he’s competent, it was the principle of the thing. I don’t really care about the attorney firing scandal, so that issue had no bearing on the situation to me. Let me repeat that.
I don’t care about the attorney firing scandal.
There, I said it. The attorney firing scandal is boring to me. It’s dealing with such a generally inane event that I just can’t rouse myself to get worked up over it and act like I’m furious at yet another example of Bush Clan corruption. I suppose there are a lot of people who are just happy that this time around there’s something that will take down Gonzales and start up the wave against the White House, but I just don’t see it that way. A quick history lesson on this site.
I’ve said recently that my motivation just isn’t what it used to be. I felt lazy for a while, but then I realized that part of it was that the news items just plain didn’t catch my attention. You see, this site started in December of 2005. At the time, the NSA wiretapping scandal had just come out. It was revealed that the president was authorizing an agency to illegally spy on millions of American citizens in blatant breach of the FISA statute. The revelation was shocking, and infuriated me enough to start this site and spend my own money on its upkeep.
Next came Abramoff. Not a huge scandal, but a big one for the GOP in general. So many within Congress taking money from the Indian scammer. Meh.
Abu Ghraib and the Gitmo accusations now. Torture being liberally used on suspects in our prisons. Worse still, it turned out that many of them were innocent. In fact, most. Our government, via our military, brutalizing innocents and keeping them from having even the most basic rights. Over time we found out that there were multiple secret prisons littered about, worse by far than even Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.
The CIA scandal. The outing of Valerie Plame as an undercover agent was reaching up into the White House, possibly directly from Dick Cheney or Karl Rove.
Bush ordered a CIA group specifically formed to hunt down Osama Bin Laden to be disbanded.
In late 2002, Bush ordered troops and officials in Afghanistan to leave, even though they had Bin Laden on the ropes, in order to get into Iraq a full 8 months before the war resolution was even on the table.
At every turn, it seemed as though there was another disaster going on in the bowels of the Bush Administration. And these weren’t little “LewinskiGate” type scandals, these involved torture, spying, deception, and putting our nation in greater danger. Each story was of great national import, each one was evidence that this president and those around him were unmitigated horror shows and stood to not only wreck the nation but inflame anti-American sentiment, the cause of terrorism no less, worldwide.
Now, it’s the attorney firing scandal. Alberto Gonzales may have ordered that a few attorneys be dismissed and replaced based almost solely on political leanings. Thanks to the PATRIOT Act, the AG (did he get the job just because his initials match?) can appoint “interim” attorneys for as long as they want to be there, effectively removing their status as “interim”. From there the issue spiders, involving DoJ attempts to get attorneys to indict Democrats shortly before elections and such. Then there’s the severely contradictory statements made by the various people involved.
Important? Sure. But this is far from the earth-shattering revelations of the others. Tell someone that the president got a few attorneys fired over political interests and they might get briefly interested. Tell them that innocent people are being tortured or that their phone lines are being illegally tapped and now you have their attention.
I’m glad that Alberto Gonzales may get his just due, but this is not headline day by day news. The fact that the other issues have not been resolved, and yet they are not at the forefront of our discourse is discouraging. Just because it’s “old” means nothing. The innocent Iraqis tortured in CIA prisons don’t get to move onto the next thing when people stop being interested. Those taps on your phone and internet line don’t disconnect after the story gets boring.
This isn’t going to rally the forces against Bush, and the issue isn’t major enough to actually cause a problem. Meanwhile, far more important stories are getting lost. So you know, I don’t really care about the attorney firing scandal.
By Hanlon, on April 10th, 2007 at 04:59 PM
Yanking this one from Talking Points Memo, but here it is. A slew of subpoenas have been thrown around, including this one sent to the Attorney General himself.
I’ll try and get more real updates soon. I’ll also be putting up a preview of what I’ve been working on in the interim.
By Hanlon, on March 27th, 2007 at 04:49 PM
Once again, sorry about the absence. I’m trying to get more on top of things. But regardless, things are getting pretty bad for our friend Alberto Gonzales. Now if you’ll recall, a while ago I wrote about the Attorney General’s crusade against child pornography. Although I mocked him for grandstanding over such an obvious target, at least it was a good target, as opposed to the peaceful anti-war activists the FBI spied on thanks to the PATRIOT Act.
Here’s where things go terribly awry, though. Apparently while all this was going on, ol’ Berty was actively not pursuing a Texas case involving sexual abuse of young boys. Now I never link to WorldNetDaily, so the fact that I am tells you this is serious.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, both already under siege for other matters, are now being accused of failing to prosecute officers of the Texas Youth Commission after a Texas Ranger investigation documented that guards and administrators were sexually abusing the institution’s teenage boy inmates.
…
Burzynski presented his findings to the attorney general in Texas, to the U.S. Attorney Sutton, and to the Department of Justice civil rights division. From all three, Burzynski received no interest in prosecuting the alleged sexual offenses.
Ouch. So the Attorney General goes on and on about saving the children, but at the same time he’s not investigating a case of clear sexual abuse of children. I don’t think the significance of that can be easily overstated.
And moving along, we find that his top aide is going to use the fifth amendment and refusing to testify over the attorney firing scandal.
Monica Goodling, who serves as the Justice Department’s liaison to the White House and counselor to the attorney general, notified the committee Monday that she will not be testifying about the scandal.
Justice Department documents show that Goodling helped determine which prosecutors should be fired. The documents also showed that she worked closely with White House political operative Karl Rove to remove the United States attorney in Arkansas so that one of Rove’s aides could take the job.
This is absurd. Don’t get me wrong, I support the concept of the 5th amendment, but at the same time it does cast an undeniable shadow depending on when it’s used.
Will Gonzales keep his job? I can only wonder. I would hope he doesn’t, but then I suppose there isn’t much precedent for otherwise except in extreme cases like Heckuvajob Brownie.
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