Dems reject Bush offer on Karl Rove

Dissatisfied by the White House’s offer to grant congressmen private interviews with administration officials, conducted with neither oaths nor transcripts, Democrats yesterday vowed to move forward on subpoenas of Karl Rove and other senior aides linked to the firings of eight U.S. attorneys.

White House Counsel Fred Fielding met with Judiciary Committee members from both chambers, who said they would take the private-interview proposal to their panels for consideration. But Democrats appeared suspicious of Fielding’s terms, particularly the withholding of requested transcripts and internal White House e-mails.

{mosads}“He said he wanted this to be a conversation … let’s have a conversation under oath and with a transcript,” Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the Democratic caucus vice chairman, told reporters after the sit-down.

In televised remarks yesterday evening, Bush said he would fight Democratic efforts to subpoena the testimony of White House and Department of Justice officials and would take the matter to court if Democrats do not back down.

Bush also said the White House and Justice Department planned another document release involving contacts between members of Congress and their staffs and White House and Department of Justice officials about the U.S. attorneys who were fired. He did not indicate when that release would occur.

The House Judiciary subcommittee with jurisdiction over U.S. attorneys is slated to vote today on whether to subpoena Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and two of their deputies, while the Senate Judiciary panel has scheduled its vote for tomorrow. Subpoena authorizations allow the Judiciary chairmen, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), to hold off on issuing the summonses until their standoff with the White House reaches a point of no return.

“There is absolutely no reason or precedent I’ve ever heard of that the persons we’ve asked for could not be interviewed [freely],” Conyers said, adding that calling Democrats disappointed by the offer “may be an understatement.”

Fielding’s terms, laid out in a letter to lawmakers, resemble the administration’s 2004 proposal for President Bush to meet privately with members of the 9/11 Commission, although congressional staffers would be able to join “a member or limited number of members” during the U.S. attorneys interviews.

Meanwhile, neither the Fielding offer nor the Justice Department’s late-night release of nearly 3,000 pages of documents related to the prosecutors purge could silence the bipartisan chorus of lawmakers calling for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to step down in the wake of the scandal. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) — both 2008 presidential hopefuls — urged his immediate replacement.

Leahy and Conyers were openly frustrated at the amount of redactions in the documents, signaling a fight for the unexpurgated memo from Gonzales’s former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, which ranked every U.S. attorney based on perceived alignment with the White House.

“The redaction raises suspicion, doesn’t it?” Conyers said. Leahy called for full disclosure, “not this baloney that we saw here with huge white-outs.”

A senior House Republican also told reporters yesterday that Gonzales’s “days are numbered” and that he should consider stepping down.

“He is rapidly reaching the point where he cannot effectively serve the president or lead the Department of Justice with the cloud that’s out there,” the lawmaker said, speaking on the condition of anonymity and describing Justice’s support in the House as “not a deep well.”

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), while emphasizing that he has not lost confidence in Gonzales, echoed the growing sentiment that Gonzales’s departure may be inevitable.

“People have raised some very serious objections,” Stevens said. “I don’t know if they’re going to let up.”

Instead of resisting Senate legislation to return the power of interim U.S. attorney appointment to the courts, which passed overwhelmingly yesterday, Republicans — who largely acknowledge that the department mishandled the prosecutors scandal — have homed in on Schumer’s role in the flap.

Two GOP leaders, Minority Whip Trent Lott (Miss.) and Conference Vice Chairman John Cornyn (Texas), continued to take aim at Schumer yesterday for leading the attorneys probe while chairing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC). The DSCC has used the pending ethics inquiry into Sen. Pete Domenici’s (R-N.M.) calls to his state’s ousted prosecutor for fundraising purposes.

“The investigation is directed solely at the executive branch,” Schumer told reporters by way of answer to his critics. “If the name of a fellow senator comes up, that’s the province of the ethics committee.”

Senators from both parties urged the White House to be as forthcoming as possible with the investigation, Republicans hoping that openness will clear the cloud over Justice and Democrats seeking the answers they believe were not given earlier this year.

“I would urge the White House just to let people come and tell what happened,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said.
“The Bush administration is not entitled to the benefit of the doubt,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a statement. “If Karl Rove plans to tell the truth, he has nothing to fear from being under oath like any other witness.”

The White House yesterday denied reports that a search for a new attorney general had begun, and Bush called Gonzales in an expression of confidence. Yet Democrats did not shy away from discussing the qualifications a replacement nominee would need to win their votes.

“If it comes to that, we’ll take our responsibility very seriously,” Durbin said, giving Bush kudos for his selection of Robert Gates to lead the Pentagon. As for suggested replacements, he added, “I’d start with the U.S. attorney for the northern district of Illinois” — Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the Scooter Libby case who earned a lackluster rating in Sampson’s Justice memo.

“We’re going to be looking for someone who’d be an independent voice, prepared to challenge even the president of the United States,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said, declining to offer names and urging no decision on Gonzales’s fate until after the committee completes its work.

Jackie Kucinich contributed to this report.