Dems sue on contempt

The House Judiciary Committee Monday went to court to enforce its contempt citations against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers, arguing that the Bush administration has no right to block them from testifying about the firing of U.S. attorneys.

Lawyers for the committee said they hope to have the matter resolved by the fall, but there’s no guarantee that will happen, and the court’s decision can be appealed.

{mosads}If it is not resolved before President Bush leaves office, the issue will likely be politically moot. But lawyers for the panel stressed that it will remain important to resolve what power Congress has to compel testimony from top White House aides.

“There has to be a way for Congress to get resolution on its subpoenas,” said Stan Brand, a former House general counsel who spoke by telephone at a briefing put on by the Judiciary Committee.
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino called the lawsuit “partisan theater.”

“The confidentiality that the president receives from his senior advisers and the constitutional principle of separation of powers must be protected from overreaching, and we are confident that the courts will agree with us,” Perino said during Monday’s White House briefing.

But House officials say the dispute isn’t about advice given to the president because the White House has maintained that Bush himself wasn’t involved in the U.S. attorney firings.

Former Rep. Mickey Edwards (R-Okla.), who served in the lower chamber from 1977-1993, called it an “embarrassment” that his party is not standing up for the right of Congress to subpoena executive branch witnesses.

“In the past this was something very important to Republicans,” Edwards said at the Judiciary Committee briefing. “As conservatives, we used to talk about ‘strict construction’ and ‘upholding the Constitution.’ ”

The 36-page lawsuit was filed against Bolten and Miers themselves in the U.S. District Court in Washington. Miers, under orders from the White House, refused to appear before the committee to answer questions about the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. Bolten refused to provide records.{mospagebreak}

They were cited for contempt in a House vote last month that fell mostly along party lines as Republicans walked out of the chamber in protest of the measure.

In their lawsuit, House leaders asked the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to convene a grand jury to investigate the contempt charges, but Attorney General Michael Mukasey instructed him not to do so, precipitating Monday’s lawsuit.

{mosads}The lawsuit asks that a federal judge declare that Miers is not immune from having to testify before Congress, require the administration to list all the documents it considers to be privileged, and order the White House to produce all documents that are not properly considered privileged.

Lawyers for the committee say that the administration is stretching “executive privilege” past its accepted legal boundaries by claiming that executive branch officials can assert it even when they were not advising the president on a decision. And they say the administration has gone even further by claiming that Miers has immunity from the powers of Congress.

“We will not allow the administration to steamroll Congress,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said in a statement. “Under our system of checks and balances, Congress provides oversight of the executive branch to make sure that government power is not abused. The administration’s extreme claims to be immune from the oversight process are at odds with our constitutional principles on which this country was founded, and I am confident the federal courts will agree.”

Lawyers for the committee, speaking not for attribution, noted that courts ordered President Bill Clinton himself to answer questions in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case while in office.
Justice Department officials released a statement Monday saying the decisions to order Miers not to testify and Bolten not to release documents were “legally proper.”

The next step in the suit will be the response from the Justice Department.