Apparently, the emails released last night convinced congressional Dems that it’s time for the White House to stop playing games, end the delay tactics, and start answering questions.
Two congressional committees are issuing subpoenas for testimony from former White House counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor on their roles in the firings of eight federal prosecutors, according to two officials familiar with the investigation.
Democrats probing whether the White House improperly dictated which prosecutors the Justice Department should fire also are subpoenaing the White House for all relevant documents, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not yet been made public.
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s subpoena for Taylor compels her to testify on July 11, while the House Judiciary Committee’s subpoena for Miers compels her testimony the next day.
Frankly, this seems like a no-brainer. Last night’s revelations furtherer substantiated Taylor’s and Miers’ role in managing the U.S. Attorney purge, and it’s clear that the investigation needs their “input.”
You’ll notice, of course, that Rove was not listed among those who will receive subpoenas today. Given what we’ve seen, that seems preliminary — the new evidence released last night bring Taylor and Miers into the controversy, so Dems are subpoenaing Taylor and Miers. Should their testimony further implicate Rove, one suspects Rove will be the next to get a subpoena. It’s incrementalism at its finest.
That is, if there’s actual testimony. As I understand it, CNN reported that the White House will invoke executive privilege for both Taylor and Miers, even though both have already left their positions at the White House and are no longer part of the administration.
CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin reports, “The White House has made clear it will cite executive privilege for conversations that took place within the White House on the U.S. attorney matter, and if the people with those conversations happen to have subsequently left the White House, that doesn’t matter. They’re still going to cite executive privilege, and these people are not going to be allowed to testify anytime soon, it appears, if the White House remains as it has been…. Even if they want to testify.”
The fight over this is likely to get fierce.
And Paul Kiel explains the many gaps these White House aides can help fill.
The Justice Department, in a letter vetted by the White House, wrote Congress back in February that Karl Rove didn’t play “any role” in Griffin’s nomination — a statement the Department has since admitted was false. And how: emails have shown that Rove’s aides worked closely with Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson at the Justice Department to get Griffin in the spot, and that Sampson, working with Rove’s aides, plotted to keep Griffin in place despite objections from Arkansas’ senators, stringing them along with the promise that another nomination would be made if Sens. Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) objected. A little-noticed provision in the USA PATRIOT Act enabled the attorney general to appoint U.S. attorneys for indefinite terms without Senate confirmation.
Sampson testified to congressional investigators that Taylor, formerly Rove’s top aide (she resigned last month), was “upset” when Alberto Gonzales finally decided not to follow Sampson’s plan in January. From a January 25th email, it appears that Taylor was still committed to Sampson’s plan of stringing the senator’s along at that late date. Reacting to a draft of a Justice Department letter to Sen. Pryor, Taylor wrote “I’m concerned we imply that we’ll pull down Griffin’s nomination should Pryor object.”
The emails released last night show how worked up Taylor was about Griffin’s nomination.
This is going to keep a lot of lawyers very busy for a while.
In either case, Dems just ratcheted up the seriousness of this scandal, and are making it clear that White House intransigence isn’t acceptable.
Stay tuned.