House Judiciary holds Bolten, Miers in contempt

The House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to hold White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress, setting up a constitutional showdown between the two branches of government.

The vote followed a heated debate over the facts of an ongoing investigation into the Justice Department’s firing of several U.S. attorneys. Miers and Bolten refused to comply with Judiciary Committee subpoenas for testimony in the matter. Democrats are trying to find out whether politics played an improper role in the prosecutors’ dismissals and what role, if any, White House officials played.

{mosads}“This is not a partisan concern or a partisan exercise,” said Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the chairman of the panel. “I could not voice the important principles at stake in this matter better than did the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee [Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.)] yesterday when he asked, ‘Do you think constitutional government in the United States can survive if the president has the unilateral authority to reject congressional inquiries?’”

Republicans on the panel objected vociferously, repeating that the probe into the U.S. attorneys’ firings is a partisan waste of time. They also expressed concern that the contempt citations would not hold up in court, and because of that, would damage Congress’s ability to seek information from the White House for years to come.

 “I think the White House is going to win in court,” asserted Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), the former chairman of the panel. “If we do bring the case to court and lose, then that is going to be viewed as a blank check by the current president and the future presidents to snub the Congress” in its oversight responsibilities.

The contempt of Congress finding requires a vote on the House floor. If the House passes the motion, it then would be referred to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and, in an ironic twist, the Justice Department would be called on to enforce it.

But the White House indicated last week that it would assert a blanket executive privilege over the material and testimony requested and would direct U.S. attorneys not to act on the contempt motion. Specter said Tuesday he is considering the appointment of a special prosecutor to handle the matter.

Republicans offered two amendments to the underlying resolution recommending the contempt citations, which were defeated along partisan lines.

The first, sponsored by Rep. Chris Cannon (Utah), would have added testimony from Department of Justice officials that Republicans believed contradicted evidence that the White House was involved in the prosecutors’ firings.

The other, sponsored by Rep. Randy Forbes (Va.), would have altered the resolution by emphasizing the other duties of the Judiciary Committee, such as oversight of the government’s efforts to fight terrorism, which Republicans argued Democrats are neglecting by spending so much time on the probe of the U.S. attorneys’ firings and the subsequent contempt citations.