With the House and Senate Judiciary Committees already having authorized subpoenas for White House officials in the prosecutor purge scandal, it’s worth noting that we’re not quite at the brink yet.
[M]embers of Congress said they would not issue any subpoenas for at least a week, a move that allows time for negotiations in what had become a rapidly escalating constitutional showdown.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said he would wait until Thursday at the earliest to make a decision on subpoenas.
“Let’s not rush into this,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters, noting that the chamber would adjourn next week for spring recess. “When we get back from our break, a decision will have to be made” on whether to issue subpoenas to Rove and others.
Depending on one’s perspective, the good news is, loose negotiations appear to be already underway. The bad news is, the wrong people appear to be doing the talking. Negotiations reportedly began yesterday between White House Counsel Fred Fielding and the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter. Since Dems are in control perhaps Fielding might want to chat with Leahy? Even if Specter and the White House counsel’s office reached some kind of agreement, Dems may reject it out of hand.
Indeed, Specter made an offer to Fielding that Dems would likely refuse — public hearings with transcriptions, but no oath and a set limit of senators who could ask questions. (I get the sense the oath is a deal-breaker for Dems; Specter should know better.)
The rhetoric seems to have cooled a bit — Tony Snow told reporters that “phone lines are open” — but the Dems’ positions have not. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) told Fielding that House Dems “remain committed to seeking a cooperative resolution” … and added, “In the meantime, we also ask that you ensure the preservation of relevant White House documents.”
In other purge-related news from the last 12 hours:
* Michael Kinsley, who really should know better, seems hopelessly confused about the basic facts of the controversy.
* Why were so many conservatives repeating the silly “Clinton did it, too” argument the last two weeks? Because it was part of the official Justice Department talking-points memo, written to respond to the scandal.
* Mark Kleiman raises a good question: “Karl Rove has already spoken in public, denying that politics had a role in the purge. How can he claim a privilege against speaking about the same matters under oath before the Congress? Does he contend that his false statements at Republican fund-raisers don’t violate the privilege, but his true statements to Congress would?”
* The WaPo has an interesting front-page item detailing the behind-the-scenes machinations in replacing Bud Cummins with Tim Griffin, a Rove protege in Arkansas. Apparently, Griffin lobbied fairly aggressively for the job. “This was a very loyal soldier to the Republicans and the Bush administration, and they wanted to reward him,” said Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.). “They had every right to do this, but it’s the way they handled it, and the way they tried to cover their tracks and mislead Congress, that has turned this into a fiasco for them.”
* The NYT reports that Margaret Chiara, the purged prosecutor from Michigan, is pushing back against the Bush administration’s narrative.
The ousted United States attorney in western Michigan said Thursday that she was told last November that she was being forced out to make way for another lawyer the Bush administration wanted to groom, not because of management problems.
The federal prosecutor, Margaret M. Chiara, 63, speaking publicly for the first time since leaving office last Friday, said in an interview that a senior Justice Department official had told her that her resignation was necessary to create a slot for “an individual they wanted to advance.” The identity of the likely replacement was not disclosed, she said.
Only after Justice Department officials attributed her firing to poor performance as a manager — even though her 2005 evaluation praised her management skills — did she decide to speak out, Ms. Chiara said.
“To say it was about politics may not be pleasant, but at least it is truthful,” she said, echoing an e-mail message she sent to a Justice Department official this month. “Poor performance was not a truthful explanation.”
* And finally, Tony Snow may now believe Congress has no oversight responsibilities when it comes to the White House, but as recently as October, he had a very different approach: “Members of Congress have their own oversight obligations. They may proceed as they wish. They’re a separate and co-equal branch of government and I’m not going to tell them what they can and can’t do.”