‘Directing’ Taylor to ignore a congressional subpoena

July 8, 2007

In light of the letter from Sara Taylor’s lawyer to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Atrios asks a question I’ve been mulling over myself.

What possible authority does the White House have to try to prevent a former employee from testifying about something? How can they White House “not let her” testify?

Obviously if she doesn’t want to testify they can play legal games to try to prevent her from being compelled to testify, but she’s said she’s willing. How can they stop her?

I suppose the natural White House response is that Bush is concerned about the ability of presidents to get unvarnished advice from his aides, and if a president’s team has to worry about discussing internal Oval Office deliberations, aides might hold back. Or something. It’s never been entirely clear to me.

But with Taylor, the argument is not only flawed for the reasons Atrios explained, but also because it defies the White House’s own defense: the president, the Bush gang says, was not integrally involved with the U.S. Attorney purge. There were no internal Oval Office deliberations, because Bush was out of the loop, according to the White House line.

This makes the tack on Taylor even more confusing. The White House is effectively claiming that a former aide, who no longer works for the administration and is willing to testify, can’t talk about conversations with the president she didn’t have.

I’d only add that there also seems to be some confusion about what, exactly, the White House is telling Taylor and her lawyer. The AP reported today that the administration is “urging” Taylor to ignore a subpoena. The letter from Taylor’s lawyer to the Senate Judiciary Committee, however, explains that the White House Counsel’s office is “directing her not to comply.” The letter goes on to say that Taylor would “testify without hesitation,” were it not for the White House’s “direction.”

The difference is not just semantics. The AP piece suggests the White House simply prefers that Taylor ignore a congressional subpoena. The letter from Taylor’s lawyer explains that the White House has effectively given her an order not to cooperate.

Predictably, some of the more hackish GOP lawmakers are defending the White House line.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, a senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, defended the White House.

“There comes a point where the White House to say, ‘Hey look there are certain confidential things in the White House that we’re not going to share with Congress just like there are certain confidential things in Congress that we’re not going to share with the White House,'” said Hatch, R-Utah.

But doesn’t this step on the Bush gang’s defense? The purge of the U.S. Attorneys isn’t supposed to be a “confidential thing in the White House”; it’s not supposed to connect to the White House at all.

Is this a new argument we’re hearing?

Old line: the White House wasn’t involved in the scandalous firings.

New line: the White House was involved, but Team Bush no longer wants to talk about it.

Hatch may think that’s fine, but I have a hunch the Senate majority will disagree.

Time for those implied contempt charges.

Against Taylor.

She is not obligated to obey an illegal order.

Even if it’s from the WH.

Lock her up, and let the WH argue why she should be freed.

Then we can ask THEM some nifty questions while we’re at it.

  • What a tangled, web, huh? Getting pretty hard for them to keep track of who knew what when, what might have been said or e-mailed to whom, and how it all conflicts with public statements and testimony. I think the nexus is Gonzales and Rove, and I think Bush has taken the position that he will not risk the exposure of these two loyalists, and that is what all this maneuvering is all about.

    If Bush is not exerting a claim of privilege, he is as much sending a message to Taylor as anyone else – testify and we will ruin you.

    And I still think that someone in the WH forgot, in all the planning and plotting, that Bush was the only one who could fire these attorneys, and I think they are not only protecting the players, but the revelation that there was usurpation of a presidential authority and that Bush was not aware of what had been done until after the fact. Perhaps long after.

    What a mess.

  • Once again the Bush team is encouraging others to ignore the rule of law. How can Hatch expect anyone to believe this confidentiality should not be questioned by Congress based on the failure of the WH to cooperate in any way with this investigation. Their past actions make everything suspicious. The WH gives up nothing by cooperating unless they are hiding something. It seems they want to keep from congress anything that might incriminate them.
    Why should the WH go out of its way to keep a cooperative witness from honoring a subpoena? They could just object rather than direct her not to cooperate. Something is suspicious with that direction.

  • Let’s see how we can work this. Bush or Cheney declares all conversations were Top Secret. They then declare Taylor no longer has the security clearance to talk about Top Secret conversations. They refuse to clear her. Congresse’s only recourse is closed session testimony to one of the security committees, which will also be secret and not allowed to be shared with anyone outside of said committees.

    Think it will work?

  • And what could they possibly do if she did decide to testify?

    File suit against her for defying a personal order from Bush?

  • The letter from Taylor’s lawyer explains that the White House has effectively given her an order not to cooperate.

    Maybe, but how does it matter? The White House could give Steve an order not to blog any more, and Steve would know precisely where to tell them (very politely, of course) to put it.

    Taylor doesn’t work for the WH anymore. The WH can’t give her orders.

    The letter from Taylor’s lawyer seems to indicate that they are fully aware of this. Taylor’s choice is presented as “do her legal duty and honor the subpoena” or do what the President asks (because that’s all he can do, ask) because she admires him so much and has worked for him so tirelessly for so many years.

    She can follow the President’s direction and face the possibility of a contempt sanction by the Senate, with enforcement through the criminal courts, an action that regardless of the outcome, will follow her for life. Or, she can attempt to work out an accommodation with the Senate, which will put her at odds with the President, a person whom she admires and for whom she has worked tirelessly for years.

    Admiring someone, even the unindicted-co-conspirator-in-chief, doesn’t exempt anyone from the legal obligation to respond to a subpoena.

    Shouldn’t someone just tell Taylor that, in response?

  • As I mentioned yesterday, the president/WH can move to quash the subpoena of Taylor. If they don’t, Congress should enforce the subpoena. The calculus that may be going on is whether Congress wants to force the constitutional showdown by forcing the WH to move to quash the subpoena. Sadly, I anticipate the Dems will back down as they usually do whenever the WH threatens something.

  • I’m not sure that it’s not something much simpler. Take this quote (from the previous thread):

    “These days, the only time he gets support is when Democrats attack him,” says one Washington-based GOP strategist.

    and it’s possible that what Bush is doing is simply cranking up his support by getting the Dems to attack him. He’s been acting like a 2yr old with a case of “goat-itis” recently. He yells, stubbornly, “No, no, no! I will not! I will NOT!”, to *whatever* the adults say, whether it’s something important or not. The adults say: “stop it”, and the base responds, as expected: “*you* stop mistreating this dear child”.

  • I suppose the natural White House response is that Bush is concerned about the ability of presidents to get unvarnished advice from his aides….

    As if Bush EVER got any unvarnished advice from anyone. What at crock.

  • I must be missing something here. Is this young woman, an aide to an aide, so involved in giving the president of the United States such important advice that it can’t possibly be revealed? Or are we now in the position where anyone who’s ever had a tour of the White House or cleaned a toilet in one of the bathrooms is so vital to the national security that they never can testify about anything or any subject ever again?

  • Confidentiality orders from the Office of the Presidency are equally binding both on both current as well as on former members of the executive branch. If necessary they can be preventatively detained as potential material witnesses.

  • What are the grounds of the “direction,” executive privilege?

    If so, I guess this would apply to former as well as present aides; but didn’t the SC say during Watergate that the privilege applies only to conversations between the president *himself*, and someone else, not, say, just between two presidential staffers? And isn’t the WH maintaining that the Pres. himself was not involved in any discussion of the US attorneys issue?

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