Dems threaten a ‘compulsory process’

May 22, 2007

Almost immediately after it became obvious that Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and other Bush confidants needed to testify in the prosecutor purge investigation, there was a standoff. Congressional Dems wanted Rove & Co. to appear before the Judiciary Committee(s), to answer questions. The White House wanted them to be “interviewed,” in private, with no transcript and no oath.

That was in March. Dems have shown some willingness to budge, but the president’s team has not — so nothing’s happened. About a month ago, NPR reported that White House Counsel Fred Fielding was quietly urging the Bush gang to make some concessions, but the president reportedly refused to even consider it.

As far as Dems on the Hill are concerned, their patience is just about gone.

The House Judiciary Committee is prepared to use subpoenas to compel the testimony of Karl Rove and other White House officials, Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sanchez (D-CA) warned White House counsel Fred Fielding [yesterday].

“We are today writing to express our extreme disappointment in the White House’s rebuff of efforts by the Judiciary Committee to obtain voluntary cooperation with our investigation concerning the firing of at least nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006 and related matters,” they wrote. “We write to make one last appeal for such voluntary cooperation.” […]

“If the White House persists in refusing to provide information to the House Judiciary Committee, or even to discuss providing such information, on a voluntary basis, we will have no alternative but to begin to resort to compulsory process in order to carry out our oversight responsibilities.”

It’s worth noting that since late March, Conyers and Sanchez have written repeatedly to the White House in the hopes of striking some kind of deal. All of their proposals have been ignored. (The counsel’s office seems to believe, “Maybe if we ignore them, they’ll go away.”)

It’s possible the Bush gang thinks Dems are bluffing, and they won’t have the guts to issue subpoenas. Or just as likely, the White House just doesn’t care. Either way, subpoenas appear all but inevitable now.

On a related note, about the same time Conyers and Sanchez were telling the White House about resorting to “compulsory process,” Bush’s Justice Department offered the latest in a series of document dumps. (I’d like to congratulate the DoJ for doing this on a Monday afternoon, instead of a Friday afternoon.)

I haven’t had a chance to delve into the docs in any real detail, but Tim Grieve noticed a couple of interesting emails.

On Feb. 26, [Christopher Oprison at the White House Counsel’s Office] sent a message to Goodling in which he said he needed “to chat about the ‘performance evaluations’ for the departing U.S. attorneys.” He asked her to call him — some things are better handled outside the White House e-mail system, apparently — and said that it’s a “time sensitive issue for Tony.” Tony? Tony? The first Tony that comes to our mind is White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, who might indeed have been expecting, at that point, to be facing questions about the purge.

That’s certainly likely, but why were the words “performance evaluations” in quotes?

Also, this was an amusing one.

On Dec. 18, 2006, the Justice Department’s Rebecca Seidel sent an e-mail to several of her colleagues warning them that Republican Sen. Jon Kyl was “significantly disturbed” over the firing of U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton and might raise the matter at an upcoming hearing. “We should ensure that the AG is adequately prepared to deal with a question over the firings of the USAs,” she wote. “Do we need a paper on it, or is the AG prepared?”

I think we now know that when it comes to this AG and answering questions, he’s never prepared.

We haven’t moved an inch from when this thing started. Subpoena the Rove & Miers respective asses already; they’ll ignore subpoenas anyway and that should begin Comtempt of Congress etc etc. Now that would be what I would call newsworthy.

But warning letters about potential subpoenas? Conyers, we love you and all that, but my friend, the time for letters was April.

  • My guess is that when subpoenas are issued, they will be ignored, much as Condi Rice has ignored and refused to comply with Waxman’s subpoena to appear and answer questions about the Niger yellowcake uranium story.

    And then what? What’s the next move after that?

    You’ve got Gonzales who has lied to Congress when he has offered answers to questions, and stonewalled Congress with 60 ways to say “I don’t recall” as an alternative to outright lying.

    You’ve got the RNC which has acceded to the WH’s demand that any e-mails in their possession first be given to the WH for their review, and you have the WH refusing to allow Rove and Miers and Card to appear under oath, in public, with a transcript.

    We have Goodling scheduled to testify tomorrow, and I’m not optimistic that any bombshells are going to come out of that testimony.

    So, we’re pretty much where we always seem to be with this administration – we know they’ve lied, we know they’ve manipulated, we know they’ve politicized areas of the government that should not be, we know they’ve probably done more, and done worse, but, so what? What good is knowing if there isn’t any consequence? Falling approval ratings are not, in my mind, sufficient consequence for running the government into the ground and waging a multi-billion dollar unnecessary war that has cost almost 3,500 American lives and injured tens of thousands more.

  • At some point there has to be some action on our part.

    If Bush wants to act like Congress doesn’t matter, let’s see how he operates if Congress cuts off the funding for all their peripheral offices. Each week, cut off the funding for another ring, until the whitehouse is all that’s left.

    If that’s not an acceptable course, then impeach whoever is responsible.

    Time to quit playing games, Dems. We didn’t hire you to write letters and then sit there while BushCo flips us the bird.

  • Whether the Bushies, or Bush himself, dismiss the House Judiciary Committee as irrelevant, a minor annoyance to be ignored, or they really believe in no accountability other than a quadrenial election (which they can steal at will), it should now be obvious to everyone that our system of government has been hollowed out by the past six years of this frightening imperial presidency.

    The spineless, risk-averse, Democrats, and a credulous media are feeding the fire under the Constitution, and the true patriots in this benighted country must take a stand. But we’re all too comfortable, lazy and ignorant. The comppulsory process has to be impeachment of Bush, Cheney and Gonzales not a lengthy, and probably losing court battle with the right wing judiciary over subpoenas. The rule of law in this country is largely history, and no one seems to care.

    I fully expect the French will be in the streets, and probably mount a general strike, when Sarkozy gets going with his Thatcherite reprise as well they should be. What would it take for a grassroots rebellion here? Closing down the mall? Taking football off TV? $6.00 a gallon gas? A universal military draft? Bush getting a blowjob from Condi on live TV?

  • People understand subpoenas. They may not know the phrase ‘compulsory process’, but they know the idea.
    People understand ‘Contempt of Court” and “Contempt of Congress”. It was the part of Nixon’s downfall that took the least explaining to political non-junkies.

    Once you establish in the public mind that the askee is hiding something, and the asker isn’t on a fishing expedition, it’s all over.

    Nixon went from unpopular-but-fireproof to ex-President in six weeks — and that was over a year after the existence of the tapes was revealed.

    No movement, no movement, no movement — and then the landslide.

  • …why were the words “performance evaluations” in quotes?

    Oh, you know how people write. It’s like Jay Leno’s Headlines, where a “great” restaurant advertises its “food.”

  • This foot dragging by Dems has taken so long, I’ve begun to believe it’s deliberate. Just like they REALLY didn’t get on board with the anti-war sentiment of their party until October 2006.

    They wanted voter fury unleashed in time for an election.
    If they nail Gonzales and friends to the wall in July, the puzzle pieces to Cheney or Bush fall into place in December and Dems don’t want things to climax in March 2008. They’re aiming for October again.

    They may even be building things so as to NOT impeach Bush but make it obvious that he WOULD have been if his term hadn’t ended.

    Chicken shit, but it’s hard to argue with the results they got, politically. It’s a bit Machiavellian for my taste and I’m a little concerned that we’re selling a bit of our souls.

    When Democrats play games with soldiers’ lives and the cause of justice in order to get power… is it implausible they’ll slip back to the old DLC model that led to the decay of our sense of duty to the masses? Democrats became pro-business when they were convinced that Democrats could win if only they got big donations from business interests. Will they embrace those same corrupting influences again once they have the Executive office?

    Let us be mindful of the dark side of this strategy that may be in use even now.

  • …why were the words “performance evaluations” in quotes?

    It’s used in the same sense a headline reads: Senator caught with “model.” Wink,wink.

  • “It’s possible the Bush gang thinks Dems are bluffing, and they won’t have the guts to issue subpoenas.”

    Gosh, what could make them think that?

    The fact that it’s taken us *months* to gin up the courage to *threaten* to do things that are *entirely* within our power?

    The fact that we keep negotiating with ourselves in a bid to avoid an awkward confrontation?

    The fact that we’re helping Bush run out the clock by taking our sweet time playing snail-mail tag and extending deadlines for voluntary compliance? (don’t Democrats even remember their own arguments about “voluntary compliance” from *business*-related regulation? Or the lesson, that people don’t comply when they don’t have to?)

    The fact that we “took impeachment off the table” and wholesale violations of the Constitution, disregard for coequal branches of government, and flagrant repeated lies/legal/political lawlessness have all been insufficient to put it back on?

    And we think this *might* give them the idea that Democrats are bluffing? What, the way centuries of scientific research might have given us the idea that the earth revolves around the sun?

    “Or just as likely, the White House just doesn’t care.”

    Well, why the fuck should they? What are the odds that Democrats will actually *enforce* any of this stuff?

  • Anne (#2) is dead on. And that answers the question as to why Congress has been slow to issue subpoenas. Because at the core, once they are issued and soundly ignored, Congress will have exposed itself as irrelevant and Bushco will have won the war of a ‘unified executive’.

    There are no repercussions for the President and his minions because while Congress continues to play by the Constitution, the President does not. There is no accountability for the Executive branch built into our system of government that he cannot avoid by just ignoring. There are only two mechanisms that can reign in a rogue President: Elections (which are ancient history) and Impeachment (which will never fly in this Congress without a huge uprising of the citizenry, and even then, I’m not sure the Republican’t party would comply with their constituents request).

    And with Fox cheerleading this administration and the American citizenry distracted with the stock market going up, Paris going to jail and American Idol finals, I don’t see the citizenry jumping out of their seats calling for Bush’s head.

    Sit back and wait for 2009 and hope we still have some semblance of this country and Constitution left when it arrives.

    Sorry for being so cynical.

  • I also agree with Anne that subpoenas will be ignored. Not sure if the mechanics of it are even possible, but a variation of racerx’s solution would be dramatic – stop the paycheck of every political appointee in the Bush administration (including the cabinet) until all subpoenas are honored.

  • This is the showdown…When the Executive branch teams up with the Judicial branch it renders the Legislative branch powerless. Who would even be able to enforce their subpoenas. The DoJ just backs up the Executive and vice versa. What I would like to see is the Capitol police arresting Gonzales as a start to getting the DoJ back for the American people. Then for the Capitol police to confiscate documents from DoJ. Then for the Capitol police to forcibly escort Miers and Rove to the congressional hearings room for public testimonies and interviews.
    Yes, bringing integrity back to government….I wish.
    But how do you bring accountability to those who feel they are above the rule of law and have the power to prove it? Somehow the legislature needs to level out the playing field and it starts by getting a DoJ independent of the WH.

  • We’ll only be safe when Bush and his whole gang are behind bars.

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