Late last week, U.S. News’ Paul Bedard noted that key congressional committees, in both chambers, have begun “hiring lawyer-investigators whose job will be to probe the administration.” Issues reportedly on top of the oversight agenda include the war in Iraq and energy policy. This isn’t about witch-hunts, of course, it’s about checks and balances — Bedard quoted a Democratic leadership official who said that “the planned hearings and investigations into the war and other issues the lawyer-investigators are being hired to look into will be ‘very focused.'”
With this in mind, the Bush White House is probably doing the right thing by lawyering-up. (via Justin Rood)
President Bush is bracing for what could be an onslaught of investigations by the new Democratic-led Congress by hiring lawyers to fill key White House posts and preparing to play defense on countless document requests and possible subpoenas.
Bush is moving quickly to fill vacancies within his stable of lawyers, though White House officials say there are no plans to drastically expand the legal staff to deal with a flood of oversight. […]
[I]n the days after the elections, the White House announced that Bush had hired two replacements to plug holes in his counsel’s office, including one lawyer, Christopher G. Oprison, who is a specialist in handling white-collar investigations. A third hire was securities law specialist Paul R. Eckert, whose duties include dealing with the Office of the Special Counsel. Bush is in the process of hiring a fourth associate counsel, said Emily A. Lawrimore, a White House spokeswoman.
Charles Black, a strategist with close ties to the White House, said the Bush gang isn’t panicking, just getting prepared. “They don’t think they have anything to hide,” Black said.
The Bush gang? Nothing to hide? Of all the talking points to offer, that’s the wrong one.
Two other quick points. First, while one White House aide said these hires are “nothing special,” some legal observers seem to believe otherwise.
“At a time like this, the experienced people in the White House view themselves as in a race they hope to win, of organizing and coordinating their defenses to have them in place in time to slow down or resist oversight before the oversight can get organized,” said Charles Tiefer of the University of Baltimore Law School, a former House counsel and veteran of congressional investigations.
And second, the Baltimore Sun raised the prospect of the Bush gang starting their own internal probes.
The president might want to launch internal investigations of his own, legal experts and analysts say, to turn up anything untoward before Democrats do.
“It’s quite common that a White House, anticipating congressional investigations, will prefer to let previously blocked internal administrative investigations go ahead as a preferred alternative way of trying to deprive the upcoming congressional investigation of exciting things to discover,” Tiefer said.
Historically, this may have been the case, and there’s certainly a reasonable logic to this, but can anyone, anywhere, seriously imagine the Bush White House conducting an objective, impartial investigation of itself?