New order by Bush give obscure WH Office regulations

Dems call it a power grab. Bush is going to push the envelope to get everything he can before he's out of office.

From the Washington Post:

President Bush this month is giving an obscure White House office new powers over regulations affecting health, worker safety and the environment.

Calling it a power grab, Democrats running Congress are intent on stopping him.

The House voted last week to prohibit the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from spending federal money on Executive Order 13422, signed by Bush last January and due to take effect July 24.

The order requires federal officials to show that private companies, people or institutions failed to address a problem before agencies can write regulations to tackle it. It also gives political appointees greater authority over how the regulations are written.

The House measure "stops this president or any president from seizing the power to rewrite almost every law that Congress passes, laws that protect public health, the environment, safety, civil rights, privacy and on and on," said Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., its sponsor.

"OIRA has quietly grown into the most powerful regulatory agency in Washington," the House Science investigations subcommittee, chaired by Miller, said in a report in April.

The administration contends Bush's order merely strengthens a similar directive issued by President Clinton in 1993 giving the White House budget office oversight of federal agency rulemaking.

Andrea Wuebker, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget, which manages the White House regulatory affairs office, said the order, along with an OMB good guidance bulletin, "will help increase the quality, accountability and transparency of agency guidance documents."

Bush's executive order:

_Requires agencies to identify "market failures," where the private sector fell short in dealing with a problem, as a factor in proposing a rule. The White House regulatory affairs office is given authority to assess those conclusions.

_States that no rulemaking can go forward without the approval of an agency's Regulatory Policy Office, to be headed by a presidential appointee.

_Directs each agency to provide an estimate of costs and benefits of regulations.

_Requires agencies to inform the White House regulatory affairs office of proposed significant guidance documents on complying with rules. Critics say this will create a new bottleneck delaying the issuance of guidelines needed to comply with federal regulations.

"This can only further delay implementing health, safety and environmental protections," said Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a private watchdog group that joined numerous labor and good-government groups, including the AFL-CIO, Public Citizen and the Union of Concerned Scientists, in opposing Bush's order.

Miller tried unsuccessfully at a hearing in April to persuade the White House regulatory affairs office's former acting administrator, Steven Aitken, to reveal what private groups might have been involved in rewriting the Clinton-era order.

Aitken stressed that the Clinton order also used market failure as a criteria in advancing new rules and directing agencies to appoint regulatory policy officers, many of whom were political appointees. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., backed Aitken up at the hearing.

"The pattern is that we are challenging the president's authority, hoping to find a mistake and then making a lot of political hay about it," Rohrabacher said.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service noted in an analysis last February that President Reagan made the White House regulatory affairs office the central clearinghouse for substantive rulemaking, reviewing 2,000 to 3,000 proposed regulations per year. With Clinton's 1993 order, White House reviews of proposed regulations dropped to between 500 and 700 a year, the researchers said.

Bill Kovacs, vice president for regulatory affairs with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the White House's regulatory affairs office now has about 35 people to keep track of the 4,000 rules federal agencies issue every year. more at link.

The republicans love to say "well Clinton did it". Lets hope that Bush follows Clinton right down the impeachment road!

Fact Sheet on Executive Privilege

From Nancy Pelosi's the Gavel Blog:

Today, House and Senate Judiciary Chairmen John Conyers and Patrick Leahy sent a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding, responding to the President’s executive privilege assertion over documents relating to the US Attorney investigation. The two reiterated their concern that the president’s assertion was unprecedented and over-reaching. They also demanded the White House “immediately provide us with the specific bases for your claims regarding each document withheld via a privilege log…and a copy of any explicit determination by the President with respect to the assertion of privilege.”


See Chairman Conyers’ statement yesterday

See the initial announcement of the subpoeanas



The Committees also released the following fact sheet on Executive Privilege:

The White House’s Broad Claims of Executive Privilege Are Not Supported by Law
Background: President Bush has asserted executive privilege in response to two document subpoenas from the Senate and House Judiciary Committees. The subpoenas requested categories of documents highly relevant to the unprecedented and improper firing of nine United States Attorneys and the politicization of the Department of Justice. The executive privilege is not a broad and sweeping authority the President can hide behind because he does not want to cooperate with congressional oversight — it should not prevent Congress from examining White House documents vitally important to its investigation. While courts have recognized a privilege based in the Constitution, that privilege is not absolute and must be balanced with other constitutional interests, including Congress’s oversight powers.

Courts And Legal Experts Agree Executive Privilege Is Limited:

· The Supreme Court held that the executive privilege is not absolute in United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 706 (1974), writing that “neither the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege … .” The DC Circuit elaborated that “the privilege is qualified, not absolute, and can be overcome by an adequate showing of need.” In re Sealed Case, 121 F.3d 729, 745 (D.C. Cir. 1997).

· The District of Columbia Circuit found that even in the area of national security, there was no absolute executive privilege against congressional demands for information: “The executive would have it that the Constitution confers on the executive absolute discretion in the area of national security. This does not stand up. While the Constitution assigns to the President a number of powers relating to national security, … it confers upon Congress other powers equally inseparable from the national security… .” United States v. AT&T, 567 F.2d121, 128 (D.C. Cir. 1977). [The documents requested by the House and Senate Committees do not implicate any national security concerns.]

· The Congressional Research Service emphasizes the limited nature of the executive privilege. “Executive privilege is not an absolute. It is a qualified privilege and is balanced against the constitutional needs and obligations of other branches.” Congressional Research Service, October 21, 2005.

The Documents Requested By Committees Do Not Fit Into Narrow Executive Privilege:

· The privilege covers communications related to presidential decision-making, which is not at issue here. The DC Circuit has found that the presidential communications privilege applies to communications “intimately connected to his presidential decision-making.” In re Sealed Case, 121 F.3d at 753. However, numerous witnesses before both House and Senate Committees have testified that the President did not decide which U.S. Attorneys should be fired.

· The privilege, even if it does apply, is overcome by real public need — as exists here. Executive privilege is overcome where the subpoenaed materials likely contain important evidence and where that evidence is not available elsewhere. In re Sealed Case, 121 F.3d at 755. Again and again, the evidence the Committee has obtained in this investigation shows significant involvement by Sara Taylor, Harriet Miers, and others in the White House, but the White House has shut down all avenues of obtaining information about that extremely important involvement.

The broader deliberative process privilege does not apply. That privilege does not apply when there is reason to believe government misconduct occurred, as has been clearly established in this matter, and does not apply to full documents – only to specific and relevant passages. Several of the high-ranking officials at the Department of Justice have resigned since this investigation began. In re Sealed Case, 121 F.3d at 745.

The White House’s Claims Of Privilege Are Sweeping And Overly Broad:

· The non-partisan Congressional Research Service has been critical of this White House’s sweeping characterizations of executive privilege. “The current Bush Administration … has articulated a legal view of the breadth and reach of presidential constitutional prerogatives that, if applied to information and documents often sought by congressional committees, would stymie such inquiries.” CRS further notes that the Department of Justice’s “assertions of these broad notions of presidential prerogatives are unaccompanied by any authoritative judicial citations.” CRS Congressional Oversight Manual, January 3, 2007, at 45.

· The White House has not sought in good faith to determine where privilege truly does and does not apply. The White House Counsel asserted privilege and declared that “therefore the White House will not be making any production in response to these subpoenas for documents.” June 28, 2007 Letter from Fred Fielding to Chairmen Leahy and Conyers. A serious assertion of privilege would include a serious effort to determine which documents, and which parts of those documents, are covered by any privilege that may apply; White House officials have provided no such comprehensive review.

The White House Has Not Sought Accommodation:

· Most disputes between Congress and the Executive about access to documents and information are resolved through compromise. CRS Congressional Oversight Manual at 39.

· The White House in this case has made one unacceptable “take it or leave it” offer of extremely limited access to witnesses, off-the-record interviews, without transcripts, and a small number of documents. The White House has refused to negotiate further. The Senate and House Judiciary Committees have sought the kind of compromise solutions which generally accompany this type of investigation, but have been consistently rebuffed by the White House. Even the Department of Justice has made attempts to respond to congressional inquiries.

Emptywheel aka Marcy Wheeler has a great blog post today

She explains Fred Fielding's letter to the Senate re the subpoenas and Paul Clemment's letter about executive privilege:

She explains it much better than I do. The Next Hurrah:

Congresswoman Sanchez is right. Fred Fielding's letter telling Congress to fuck off is not so much a legal notice, but a lecture. It spends two paragraphs saying "no," one paragraph spinning the White House as cooperative, and then seven paragraphs talking about the exalted tradition of executive privilege.

More troubling, however, is what Fielding attaches: an opinion written by Solicitor General Paul Clement, explaining that OLC has reviewed Congress' requests and found that those requests fall squarely within the realm of executive privilege.

Dear Mr. President,

You have requested my legal advice as to whether you may assert executive privilege with respect to the subpoenaed documents and testimony concerning the categories of information described in this letter. It is my considered legal judgment that you may assert executive privilege over the subpoenaed documents and testimony.

Paul Clement, as you'll recall, is the guy currently in charge of any investigation into the US Attorney firings, since Alberto Gonzales recused himself some months ago. He's the one who technically oversees the Office of Special Counsel investigation into whether politics played an improper part in Iglesias' firing or the hiring of career employees in DOJ, he's the one who oversees the joint Office of Professional Responsibility and Inspector General investigations into whether anything improper--including obstruction of justice--occurred in the hiring and firing of USAs. And now, he's the guy who gets to tell the President that he doesn't have to turn over what might amount to evidence of obstruction of justice in the Foggo and Wilkes case, among others.

Of course, to some degree this makes sense. When this goes to court, it is Clement who will have to defend the White House position on refusing to turn over the documents.

But that just demonstrates how hopelessly compromised Clement is. He is--already, even before we hit the courts--in a position where he is simultaneously defending the White House, and investigating it. And all the while, Team Libby is intent on having Libby's conviction thrown out because, they insist, it's perfectly feasible for an investigation into high level Administration officers to report to some of those same high level officers.

snip

Update: Faiz at TP raises an important point. Clement's conflict of interest not only provides a reason for Democrats either to call for a Special Prosecutor or start an impeachment investigation (which are apparently the only ways to avoid the conflicts Clement has), but it also reveals that the White House has been lying.

In his letter, Clement reveals what investigators have suspected from the very beginning — that the White House was intimately involved in the attorney scandal. Upon examination of the White House documents, Clement writes:

Among other things, these communications discuss the wisdom of such a proposal, specific U.S. Attorneys who could be removed, potential replacement candidates, and possible responses to congressional and media inquiries about the dismissals.

The White House had “said that Mr. Bush’s aides approved the list of prosecutors only after it was compiled.” President Bush himself said that “the Justice Department made recommendations, which the White House accepted” regarding the removal of the attorneys.

Gosh, they couldn't have given us a clearer investigation to move this forward in a more formal investigation, could they?

Update 1.1: Oh, this is getting fun. Piggybacking on Faiz' find, above, we have this Clement statement that suggests, as soon as we find WH officials lying, we can raid their drawers as well:

The Department has recognized the Committees' interest in investigating the extent to which Department officials may have provided inaccurate or incomplete information to Congress. This interest does not, however, justify the Committees' demand for White House documents and information about the U.S. Attorney resignations. Officials in the Department, not officials in the White House, presented the challenged statements,

Um, Mr. Solicitor General? I think we're now at the point where "officials in the White House" are the one spewing lies. Now will you give us the documents?

Update 2: Here's another interesting bit from Clement:

These confidentiality interests are particularly strong where, as here, the communications may implicate a "quintessential and nondelegable Presidential power," such as the authority to nominate or to remove U.S. Attorneys.

More here. This is a must read!!

Senate Committee Subpoenas Cheney, Whitehouse

From Think Progress:

Breaking: Domestic Surveillance Docs Subpoenaed
The Senate Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, the Justice Department, and the National Security Council for documents related to President Bush’s warrantless domestic surveillance program. AP reports:

Also named in subpoenas signed by committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., were the Justice Department and the National Security Council.

The committee wants documents that might shed light on internal squabbles within the administration over the legality of the program, said a congressional official speaking on condition of anonymity because the subpoenas had not been made public.

Leahy’s committee authorized the subpoenas previously as part of its sweeping investigation into how much influence the White House exerts over the Justice Department and its chief, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The probe, in its sixth month, began with an investigation into whether administration officials ordered the firings of eight federal prosecutors, for political reasons.

UPDATE: Statement from the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Chairman Leahy issued subpoenas to the Department of Justice, the Office of the White House, the Office of the Vice President and the National Security Council for documents relating to the Committee’s inquiry into the warrantless electronic surveillance program. […]

“Over the past 18 months, this Committee has made no fewer than nine formal requests to the Department of Justice and to the White House, seeking information and documents about the authorization of and legal justification for this program,” Chairman Leahy wrote in letters accompanying the subpoenas to Bush Administration officials. “All requests have been rebuffed. Our attempts to obtain information through testimony of Administration witnesses have been met with a consistent pattern of evasion and misdirection.”

UPDATE II: The committee vote was 13-3, with all Democrats and Sens. Arlen Specter (R-PA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Charles Grassley (R-IA) voting for subpoenas.

Talking Points Memo Video

Did you know that Dick Cheney is so hardcore about secrecy and security that he won't let the White House officials in charge of security into the West Wing? No that's not a Daily Show joke. It's actually true. Maybe that's why he's already had one (now convicted) spy caught working out of his office. And, no, I'm not talking about Scooter Libby.

-- Josh Marshall

Another White House Staff Memeber packing her desk

Sara Taylor, who has been with the Bush WH since the beginning, is leaving for the private sector. Here's the Washington Post article about her, then I'll follow up with more from Think Progress.

Another Top Bush Aide Makes an Exit

By Michael A. Fletcher
Monday, May 28, 2007; Page A15

As the Bush administration inches closer to its concluding months, more top aides are headed out to the private sector. Sara M. Taylor, the White House political director and microtargeting guru who has been with George W. Bush from the outset of his first presidential campaign, is the latest staff member to leave the president's employ.

Taylor, 32, was one of the first people put on the payroll of the Bush campaign, trekking through snowy Washington to interview with Karl Rove and Bush, who was then governor of Texas. Taylor worked on the 2000 campaign, and later became a political aide in the White House.

In 2004, she worked on Bush's reelection campaign, where she helped refine the emerging political art of microtargeting. Working with Alex Gage of TargetPoint Consulting, Taylor was among those who helped use sophisticated analysis of consumer data to enable the Bush campaign to target potential voters even when they resided in Democratic-leaning voting districts.

The campaign developed lists of potentially sympathetic voters, based in part on computer analysis of people's spending habits. Those voters were then targeted for direct mail and other advertising. The data-mining techniques are credited with giving Republicans a decisive turnout advantage in the 2004 election; they are now commonly practiced by Democrats as well.

And now from Think Progress:

Justice Department Officials Confirm White House Instigated Plan To Bypass Senate On U.S. Attorney

Both Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his former chief of staff Kyle Sampson approved a plan to bypass the Senate and install Karl Rove-protege Tim Griffin as U.S. attorney in Arkansas.

But according to Karen Tumulty of Time, private testimony by Sampson reveals that the idea was “instigated” by the White House:

In private testimony that is being released this afternoon by the committee, Alberto Gonzales’s former Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson told investigators that Gonzales himself initially resisted the idea of bypassing the Senators from Arkansas to install Karl Rove protege Tim Griffin as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Pressure to do it, he suggested, was coming from officials at the White House–specifically, White House political director Sara Taylor, her deputy Scott Jennings and Chris Oprison, the associate White House counsel. Sampson described himself and Goodling as “open to the idea,” which is not the same as instigating it.

Taylor reports directly to Rove. In a Dec. 19, 2006 e-mail, Sampson said that getting Griffin “appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc.”

And on another matter:

Rice, RNC subpoenas approved.“By 21-10, the House oversight committee voted to issue a subpoena to Rice to compel her story on the Bush administration’s claim, now discredited, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.” The oversight committee “also issued subpoenas for the Republican National Committee for testimony and documents about White House e-mails on RNC accounts that have apparently gone missing.” In the Senate, the Judiciary Committee “approved - but did not issue - a subpoena on the prosecutors’ matter to Sara Taylor, deputy to presidential adviser Karl Rove.”

So I see another subpoena coming for Sara Taylor and there could be another 5th Amendment invocation, and possibly, just possibly another request for immunity.

By any other name....

Greg Palast says it and Truthdig's Marie Coco is saying it and I've said it! The replacement of US attorneys was a consorted effort to fix the elcetions.

Here's Thruthdig's Marie Coco's article:

Watergate Without the Break-In
Posted on May 16, 2007
By Marie Cocco

WASHINGTON—It is time to stop referring to the “fired U.S attorneys scandal” by that misnomer, and call it what it is: a White House-coordinated effort to use the vast powers of the Justice Department to swing elections to Republicans.

This is no botched personnel switch. It is not even a political spat between the fired U.S. attorneys and Bush administration officials who deemed some of them insufficiently zealous in promoting the department’s law enforcement priorities. Connect the dots and you see an insidious effort to corrupt the American electoral system. It’s Watergate without the break-in or the bagmen.

The emerging picture is one in which widespread Republican claims of “voter fraud”—unsubstantiated in virtually every case examined closely by law enforcement officials, local journalists, state elections officials and academics—were used to stymie Democratic-leaning voter registration groups and create a taint around Democrats. The Justice Department’s own statistics show that only a handful of people were convicted of voting illegally since it began a “voter integrity” initiative in 2002. Its top election crimes official, a career prosecutor, has told the U.S. Election Assistance Commission that the proportion of “legitimate to illegitimate claims of fraud” hasn’t changed.

The “voter fraud” claims that White House political adviser Karl Rove promoted before last year’s congressional elections were in battleground states such as New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin with closely contested races. He also has complained about alleged fraud in hotly competitive states such as Washington, Florida and Missouri. Curiously, states where elections often are decided by wide margins—New York, for instance—don’t turn up on his lists.

According to McClatchy Newspapers, Rove pressed Justice officials about voter fraud probes in October. Complaints from Republican activists wound up in the hands of Kyle Sampson, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and a key figure in the imbroglio. Five of the 12 U.S. attorneys who were canned or targeted for removal were singled out for alleged laxity in pursuing voter-fraud prosecutions, The Washington Post has reported.

The Justice Department’s power to prosecute was expected to be put to use in carrying out a partisan witch hunt. Yet even this picture is incomplete.

The shenanigans involving U.S. attorneys must be seen alongside the parallel campaign to turn the department’s voting-rights section into a rubber stamp for Republican efforts to enhance the voting power of their loyalists while diminishing that of Democrats.

Greg Palast wrote a new chapter for his book "Armed Madhouse" all about this issue. He's called it "The Scheme to Swipe 2008". What does Greg base this statement on? He's got the emails! Karl Rove's emails!!!

Palast: I know because I have Karl Rove’s emails. No kidding. He and his team aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. They sent copies of their plans to GeorgeWBush.ORG instead of GeorgeWBush.COM addresses — and, heh heh, they ended up in my in-box. Who says this job ain’t fun?

Palast goes on to say it is not the voting machines that would lose the election.

A quote from his book:

"Beginning on January 1, 2006, the HAVA (Help America Vote Act) Law gave Secretaries of State the right--in fact, required them--to reject any registering voter whose exact name and "identity numbers" (driver's license, Social Security, Passport numbers) did not match up against a state "verification" list."

He goes on to say that it may sound arcane, but consider this...

"When HAVA gave state politicians this power to reject registration forms nationwide, the official hacks told one in three Americans to 'get lost'".

It was the plan, Rove's plan, to make this a one party system with the Republicans forever running this country.

Now there's a timeline of The President's Secret Program

CNN is covering this all day today! James Comey's testimony that Washington Post called Shocking. Was the President's wireless surveillance used illegally? It was being used way before we even knew about it.

TPM Muckraker has the time line which explains a lot and fills in what you don't know.

There is more coverage at the NY Times also.

This could mean an impeachable offense.

Breaking on CNN: Dem. Senators Schumer and Feinstein call for Gonzales No-Confidence vote.

WaPo Calls Comey's Testimony Shocking

Comey's testimony was shocking. His testimony puts out there what his administration has been doing to change the rules and laws of this nation. And not for the better! It shows the secretive, underhanded way they have bent the rules to take our freedoms away. All in the name of terrorism that this admin has done very little to stop. They've gotten us into a war we should never have started in Iraq, and not really for terrorism but a vendetta against Saddam. And by doing that has raised the level and amount of terrorists.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox for now so here's some of the Washington Post's article on Comey:

Mr. Comey's Tale
A standoff at a hospital bedside speaks volumes about Attorney General Gonzales.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007; Page A14


JAMES B. COMEY, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source. The episode involved a 2004 nighttime visit to the hospital room of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft by Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff. Only the broadest outlines of this visit were previously known: that Mr. Comey, who was acting as attorney general during Mr. Ashcroft's illness, had refused to recertify the legality of the administration's warrantless wiretapping program; that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card had tried to do an end-run around Mr. Comey; that Mr. Ashcroft had rebuffed them.

Mr. Comey's vivid depiction, worthy of a Hollywood script, showed the lengths to which the administration and the man who is now attorney general were willing to go to pursue the surveillance program. First, they tried to coerce a man in intensive care -- a man so sick he had transferred the reins of power to Mr. Comey -- to grant them legal approval. Having failed, they were willing to defy the conclusions of the nation's chief law enforcement officer and pursue the surveillance without Justice's authorization. Only in the face of the prospect of mass resignations -- Mr. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself -- did the president back down.

As Mr. Comey testified, "I couldn't stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis." The crisis was averted only when, the morning after the program was reauthorized without Justice's approval, President Bush agreed to fix whatever problem Justice had with it (the details remain classified). "We had the president's direction to do . . . what the Justice Department believed was necessary to put this matter on a footing where we could certify to its legality," Mr. Comey said.

You can read the rest at the link.

It's good to know there are still people in this government with a consience and a belief in our constitution. Mr. Comey should have alerted someone, the House or Senate, someone to what they were trying to do prior to this, but, at least he's come forward now.

Here's a bit more of the article that says it all:

The dramatic details should not obscure the bottom line: the administration's alarming willingness, championed by, among others, Vice President Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, to ignore its own lawyers.

Mc Nulty Resigns? Horrors!!

By now you have heard that Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty is resigning his position at the DOJ. He's the highest-ranking Bush administration casualty in the furor over the firing of U.S. attorneys.

His reason for resigning, in a letter to Gonzales:

“I intend to step down sometime this summer. The financial realities of college-aged children and two decades of public service lead me to a long-overdue transition in my career.”

Isn't it always for family and kids that is the reason these people give for leaving. It's not that they are embroiled in any controversy, no, it's for my family and kids!! And those are the ones that are half way competent. The incompetent ones don't get the hint and don't leave at all, until they become such a drag to the administration that they are asked to leave (Brownie, Rumsfeld).

Here's what Gonzales said about McNulty:

“Paul is an outstanding public servant and a fine attorney who has been valued here at the Department, by me and so many others, as both a colleague and a friend. He will be missed. On behalf of the Department, I wish him well in his future endeavors.”

So what are the Dems saying about this:

Senator Schumer: “It seems ironic that Paul McNulty who at least tried to level with the committee goes while Gonzales who stonewalled the committee is still in charge. This administration owes us a lot better.”

Rep. John Conyers: “Mr. McNulty’s resignation is a sign that top level administration at the Justice Department may be crumbling under the pressure of ongoing revelations, and what is yet to be disclosed. With this news and as we press on with our investigation, we look forward to his cooperation.”

Senator Leahy was a bit more wordy: "The American people deserve a strong and independent Department of Justice with leaders who enforce the law without fear or favor. Regrettably that is not the Justice Department we have today. Instead, we see a Department rife with scandal and another agency this Administration seeks to manipulate as a political arm of the White House. Our justice system should not be a political arm for this White House or any White House, whether occupied by a Republican or a Democrat. This is not the first resignation from the Department of those involved in the United States Attorney scandal.

We need to restore the Department of Justice to a place deserving of its name and the way we do that is get to the truth about the role the White House played in the replacement of United States Attorneys for political purposes. The Committee has made requests for cooperation from the White House and I hope the information and cooperation requested will finally be forthcoming. If the White House has done nothing improper, then they have nothing to hide. The Administration should come clean so that we can begin the process of reconstituting the leadership of the Justice Department. Then all Americans can renew their faith in its role as our leading law enforcement agency. The obligations of the Justice Department are to the Constitution, the rule of law and to the American people, not to the White House.”

Here's what the NY Times has discovered:

McNulty blamed himself for failing to resist the dismissal plan when Mr. Sampson brought it to him in October 2006, according to associates. He took one prosecutor off the removal list but acquiesced to the removal of seven others, according to Congressional aides’ accounts of his private testimony to Congress on April 27. […]

Friends of Mr. McNulty said he had tried to be candid about what he knew of the removals. In his private Congressional testimony, Mr. McNulty said he did not realize until later the extensive White House involvement in Mr. Griffin’s appointment or Mr. Sampson’s nearly year-long effort to compile a list.

White House aides complained privately that Mr. McNulty’s testimony gave Democrats a significant opening to demand more testimony from the Justice Department and presidential aides. Several aides said he should have been combative in defending the dismissals.

But McNulty wasn't the only one to resign Monday.....from Newsweek's Isikoff:

In a blow to the Bush administration, the deputy attorney general and the only Democrat on the White House's Privacy and Civil Liberties Board have resigned.

The White House was hit by two sudden resignations late Monday when Paul McNulty, a top Justice Department official, and Lanny Davis, the only Democratic member of the president’s civil liberties watchdog board, announced they were stepping down. Both resignations are likely to fuel allegations of White House political meddling in law enforcement and national security issues.

Davis, a former Clinton White House official who had been named by President Bush to serve on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, sent a letter to the White House and his fellow board members protesting the panel’s lack of independence. In recent months, Davis has had numerous clashes with fellow board members and White House officials over what he saw as administration attempts to control the panel’s agenda and edit its public statements, according to board members who asked not to be identified talking about internal matters. He also cited in his letters criticisms by the former co-chairs of the September 11 commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, that the board had interpreted its mandate too narrowly and was refusing to investigate issues such as the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere around the world.

Well now, a twofer! Two in one day! What will the admin do? Let's see how this falls out.

Monica Goodling....Wildcard?

Gonzales seemed very cocky the last time he appearedin front of the House Judicial Committee. So did the republican members of this committee. Although the Dems were pressing for answers to their questions, several of the Repubs were asking him about completly different matters.

I think they forgot about Monica! And now that she has immunity she is compelled to testify.

From Law.com:

All Eyes on Monica Goodling
With Gonzales testimony complete, Capitol Hill probe to shift gears
Jason McLure
Legal Times
May 14, 2007

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales emerged mostly unscathed from last week's face-off with Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee over his role in the U.S. Attorney firings. And with Republicans on the committee offering Gonzales near-universal support, the tone on Capitol Hill shifted from "Gonzales is going" to "Gonzales is staying."

But there's one big wild card that's yet to be thrown into play, and that's Monica Goodling, Gonzales' former White House liaison. Last week, Chief Judge Thomas Hogan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia approved a House request to grant limited immunity to Goodling in exchange for her testimony.

Goodling, who resigned her post April 7, previously told the committee that she would assert her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. She now has the opportunity to shed light on her key role in a firing process that has remained shrouded in mystery, despite the release of thousands of Justice Department e-mails and the testimony of a number of top officials. According to congressional staffers, Democrats hope to have her testify publicly before Memorial Day.

"She's worked very hard," says John Dowd, a lawyer for Goodling at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. "She'll do her level best to be candid and forward in her testimony."

That promise isn't likely to reassure Gonzales or other Bush administration officials involved in the dismissal of at least eight U.S. Attorneys. Democrats contend that the prosecutors were fired to shield Republicans targeted in public corruption probes or to punish those U.S. Attorneys who failed to push voter fraud investigations.

And though there may be a feeling that Gonzales has at last stemmed the tide against him, it looks premature to declare victory before Goodling says what she knows about the attorney general's and the White House's involvement in the firings.

"Before people get too cocky about the attorney general surviving, [they] need to sit back and await that event," says a senior administration official close to the investigation.

Will Monica bring down this White House? Something about that name!!

Gonzales extemely upset with Mc Nulty

Alberto "Fredo" Gonzales was very upset with Mc Nulty for telling Senate Judiciary committee that Bud Cummings of Arkansas was fired to make room for an Aide to Karl Rove. Oooops!

More from Time:

When the Roehrkasse e-mail came to light, he told the press that Gonzales had been upset because he believed that "Bud Cummins' removal involved performance considerations." But on April 15, Congressional sources tell TIME, Gonzales' former chief of staff Kyle Sampson told a different story. During a private interview with Judiciary Committee staffers Sampson said three times in as many minutes that Gonzales was angry with McNulty because he had exposed the White House's involvement in the firings�had put it's role "in the public sphere," as Sampson phrased it, according to Congressional sources familiar with the interview.

If Gonzales was indeed actively trying to protect the White House from charges they were involved in the firings, that will fuel suspicions that something improper was at work in the firings themselves. Most Democrats and Republicans agree that the President has broad authority to replace U.S. attorneys as he sees fit, so why would the Attorney General try to obscure the White House's role in doing so?

Sampson's private testimony comes to light at an inconvenient moment for the Justice Department and the Attorney General. Gonzales testifies before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday. And a new line of inquiry has opened up this week as investigators puruse allegations that two top aides screened career hires for political allegiances.

Read more here.

The White House is involved and Rove is the one that instigated this mess. He wants to create a one party country. Karl, it won't work!!

Rove, White House, Politicizing Fed Agencies

One Party Country? The architect of evil put a plan into action to do just that. He visited all the Federal Agencies along with Ken Mehlman devising this plan that goes directly against the Hatch Act.

It's happening and has been happening since Bush took office. Think Progress has a great post that explains alot. Along with a new book called One Party Country.

Are you ready to believe that Bush wanted to be Emporer? At the least a dictator. He even admited that.

WH say no Rove , no emails

The White House Counsel Fred Fielding sent a letter to Conyers and Leahy saying they won't budge on their decision to not allow Rove and the other WH aides to testify under oath. He's also trying to head off Conyer's attempt to get the emails about the US attorneys firing from the RNC.

Politico has the story:

White House Counsel Fred Fielding, in a letter today, told Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary committees, that the White House has not budged in its refusal to allow the panels to question several White House aides, including Karl Rove, about what they know regarding the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys, moving the two sides closer to a constitutional battle over the scandal.

Fielding also appears to be trying to head off an attempt by Conyers to obtain e-mails and documents from the Republican National Committee regarding the firings. Roughly 50 White House officials, including 22 curent aides, used e-mail accounts controlled by the RNC to send messages, including some related to the prosecutor firings, and Conyers asked RNC Chairman Mike Duncan to turn over those records today.

Fielding also said that "it was and remains our intention to collect e-mails and documents from those [RNC-controlled] accounts as well as the official White House e-mail and document retention systems" as part of a broader deal with the two committees on staffer testimony.

Fielding has offered to allow Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and other Bush aides to be questioned by committee investigators, but only behind closed doors, and not under oath. Fielding also won't allow any transcript of those interviews to be made. Conyers and Leahy have rejected the offer as woefully inadequate, and while both committees have authorized subpoenas for Rove, Miers and the others, only Conyers has issued up until now and those were for documents only.

Conyers immediately countered Fielding's letter, dismissing it as an attempt by Fielding to extend executive-privilege protection to e-mails sent by White House officials on RNC servers, which Conyers suggested was legally suspect.

The utter arrogance of this administration is unbelievable. It seems we do have an emporer and his Richelieu.

Americans overwhelmingly back Subpoenas

From USA Today, a USA Today Gallup poll has shown the people of the US want investigations in the White House and DOJ firings of the 8 US Attorneys! Will they listen to us this time? I doubt it. The WH and the DOJ seem to be making a stance against what the people want. Will someone tell them that the US is not a dictatorship!

Here's the poll info:

WASHINGTON — Americans overwhelmingly support a congressional investigation into White House involvement in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, and they say President Bush and his aides should answer questions about it without invoking executive privilege.
In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday-Sunday, respondents said by nearly 3-to-1 that Congress should issue subpoenas to force White House officials to testify.


POLL: Complete results

There is skepticism about the motives of both the administration and congressional Democrats:

•By 53%-26%, respondents say the U.S. attorneys were dismissed primarily for political reasons, not because they weren't doing their jobs well — as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said.

The poll also reports this:

•By 59%-30%, they say Democrats are investigating the dismissals mostly for political advantage, not because of ethical concerns.

Now I don't totally agree here. I think that there is an ulterior motive, and of course it is partially partisan, however the way this admin has responded to this leads me to believe they are hiding something. It is an insight to how they have been able to steer even elections. And it's another way for an investigation of the Senior Aides of the WH. That's my opinion and I could be wrong, but I am sticking with it til proven wrong.

More from the poll:

Even so, the findings underscore the president's risks. The White House last week offered to allow adviser Karl Rove and other aides to answer questions — but only in private, not under oath, and without a transcript being prepared.

The Senate and House judiciary committees have authorized subpoenas.

The poll finds little sympathy for the administration's claim that White House aides shouldn't have to testify to ensure that a president gets candid advice. By 68%-26%, those surveyed say the president should drop the claim of executive privilege in this case.

The rest of the poll asking if Gonzales should resign is a tie and breaks down on party lines.

Breaking: Gonzales aide to plead the Fifth

Just announced on TV from CNN and here's the article from the AP:

By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
30 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Monica Goodling, a Justice Department official involved in the firings of federal prosecutors, will refuse to answer questions at upcoming Senate hearings, citing Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, her lawyer said Monday.

"The potential for legal jeopardy for Ms. Goodling from even her most truthful and accurate testimony under these circumstances is very real," said the lawyer, John Dowd.

He said that members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees seem already to have made up their minds that wrongdoing has occurred in the firings.

I heard but cannot confirm yet that Kyle Sampson will also invoke the fifth amendment. I will post when this is confirmed. He's to testify on Thursday.

You know this is coming from the White House. The problem these people do not understand is that once they invoke the fifth, it doesn't matter wether they are guilty or not, people will take it as being guilty. This is definately heating up and may be the incident that causes more impeachment talk and a pressure from the people to impeach.

Attorneygate Updates

Right now the Congress vs the White House seems to be at a standoff. There's some interesting information coming out about this whole situation. Let's start with some comedy:

Remember the offer the White House gave the Congress? Rove, Miers and a few others would appear before the committees but only if it was in closed session, with few members present, not under oath, and no transcripts. Jon Stewart of the Daily Show mocks the "generous offer" made by the White House. Raw Story has the video here.

And there have been reams of paper emails released but there are 18 days missing. Conveniently like the 18 minutes lost from the Nixon tapes. But TPM Muckraker reports that:

3000 Pages and Counting
By Paul Kiel - March 23, 2007, 2:21 PM
We hear there's likely to be another document release from the Justice Department sometime today.

And here's Tony Snow's Flip Flop on this from Think Progress:

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow appeared on the morning talk shows on all the major networks and repeated his talking point that Congress “has no oversight responsibility over the White House.” A sampling of his statements:

There’s another principle, which is Congress doesn’t have the legislative — I mean oversight authority over the White House. [CNN, 3/22/07]

First, the White House is under no compulsion to do anything. The legislative branch doesn’t have oversight. [MSNBC, 3/22/07]

Congress doesn’t have any legitimate oversight and responsibilities to the White House. [Fox, 3/22/07]

But back when he was asked whether the conservative-led 109th Congress should be investigating members of the Executive Branch, he was singing a different tune:

QUESTION: What is the president’s opinion of a request by Republican leaders in the House to launch an investigation of Sandy Berger’s involvement in the removal of classified documents from the National Archives?

SNOW: There were questions last week, about investigations involving Republican members. 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. [Briefing, 10/16/06]

Of course one of the Right's talking points on this issue is "Clinton did it"! Here's what really happened from the LA Times:

Three weeks ago, Justice Department officials settled on a "talking point" to rebut the chorus of Democratic accusations that the Bush administration had wrongly injected politics into law enforcement when it dismissed eight U.S. attorneys.

Why not focus on the Clinton administration's having "fired all 93 U.S. attorneys" when Janet Reno became attorney general in March 1993? The idea was introduced in a memo from a Justice Department spokeswoman.

The message has been effective. What's followed has been a surge of complaints on blogs and talk radio that it was the Clinton administration that first politicized the Justice Department.

The facts, it turns out, are more complicated.

But historical data compiled by the Senate show the pattern going back to President Reagan.

Reagan replaced 89 of the 93 U.S. attorneys in his first two years in office. President Clinton had 89 new U.S. attorneys in his first two years, and President Bush had 88 new U.S. attorneys in his first two years.

In a similar vein, the Justice Department recently supplied Congress with a district-by-district listing of U.S. attorneys who served prior to the Bush administration.

The list shows that in 1981, Reagan's first year in office, 71 of 93 districts had new U.S. attorneys. In 1993, Clinton's first year, 80 of 93 districts had new U.S. attorneys.

Here's another Video Link from Raw Story of the interview of Sen. Patrick Leahy by Keith Olbermann:

Thursday night on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee hinted that he might have more "whistleblowers" set to testify on the ongoing US Attorneys scandal, which some have dubbed "Attorneygate."

In the interview with Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Olbermann referred to comments made previously on the show by Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) about "really angry career employees," then asked if the Committee had any "rabbits in hats."

"He said that he hoped that the White House would let Mr. Rove and the others testify on the record," Olbermann related to Leahy. "If they did not, there really were enough really angry career employees, prosecutors in the Justice Department who would ensure that this information, the actual facts of the case would get out anyway."

Bridge, at the Sam Seder Show blog, posted this from the Vanity Fair's Wolcott blog as a reminder: (H/T to bridge)

James Wolcott:

"When Dick Cheney famously told Pat Leahy to go fuck himself, he and the rest of the administration clearly never anticipated the day when Leahy would return to powerful chairmanship; I think they internalized Karl Rove's visionary scheme of a permanent Republican majority and thought the future was in the bag. Now they're holding the bag and it's leaking all over their laps."

And it seems the Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' former Chief of Staff, will testify next Thursday. No subpoena necessary. This from TPM Muckraker:

Sampson: It's A Date!
By Paul Kiel - March 23, 2007, 4:27 PM
Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee extended an invitation for Alberto Gonzales' former chief of staff Kyle Sampson to testify. If he didn't want to come voluntarily, the committee said, he'd be subpoenaed.

Today, via a letter from his lawyer to the committee, he accepted -- no subpoena necessary.

"Mr. Sampson looks forward to answering the Committee's questions," the letter reads. "We trust that his decision to do so will satisfy the need of the Congress to obtain information from him concerning the requested resignations of the United States Attorneys."

The hearing will take place at 10 AM next Thursday.

And the last for now but definatly not the least from McClatchy Newspapers

New U.S. attorneys seem to have partisan records

By Greg Gordon, Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Under President Bush, the Justice Department has backed laws that narrow minority voting rights and pressed U.S. attorneys to investigate voter fraud - policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes.

Bush, his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and other Republican political advisers have highlighted voting rights issues and what Rove has called the "growing problem" of election fraud by Democrats since Bush took power in the tumultuous election of 2000, a race ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's civil rights division when it was rolling back longstanding voting-rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.

Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was a research director for the Republican National Committee. He's denied any wrongdoing.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the four U.S. attorneys weren't chosen only because of their backgrounds in election issues, but "we would expect any U.S. attorney to prosecute voting fraud."

Taken together, critics say, the replacement of the U.S. attorneys, the voter-fraud campaign and the changes in Justice Department voting rights policies suggest that the Bush administration may have been using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes.

The Bush administration's emphasis on voter fraud is drawing scrutiny from the Democratic Congress, which has begun investigating the firings of eight U.S. attorneys - two of whom say that their ousters may have been prompted by the Bush administration's dissatisfaction with their investigations of alleged Democratic voter fraud.

Bush has said he's heard complaints from Republicans about some U.S. attorneys' "lack of vigorous prosecution of election fraud cases," and administration e-mails have shown that Rove and other White House officials were involved in the dismissals and in selecting a Rove aide to replace one of the U.S. attorneys. Nonetheless, Bush has refused to permit congressional investigators to question Rove and others under oath.

Seems to me Bush and the White House has much to hide. Happy reading!!

Who compiled the list of States Attorneys to be fired?

It seems the Department of Justice with help from the White House.

Here's an excerpt from Newsweek:

Justice officials say the dismissals were for "job-performance reasons," as well as for failure to pursue Bush administration policy priorities. But where did the list of particular U.S. attorneys to fire come from? Two senior Justice officials, who didn't want to be named discussing the dismissals, tell NEWSWEEK that Kyle Sampson, Gonzales's chief of staff, developed the list of eight prosecutors to be fired last October—with input from the White House. In a recent statement, the White House said it approved the firings, but didn't sign off on specific names.

And as timing would have it, Gonzales is in more trouble because of this:

Gonzales is now being accused of falling down on the job himself. Even as he struggled last week to calm the outrage over the fired attorneys, another scandal broke out: an investigation by the Justice inspector general showed that the FBI had repeatedly misused a Patriot Act provision to secretly collect personal data—including financial records—from citizens without a judicial warrant. Gonzales said there was "no excuse" for the bureau's actions, and he demanded that FBI Director Robert Mueller find out "what went wrong and who is accountable." Asked by reporters whether Gonzales was considering firing Mueller or other senior officials for the apparent intrusion on civil liberties, the A.G. didn't answer. The issue of "job performance," it seems, is becoming an ever more awkward subject at the Justice Department.

Eventually the crime catch up with you (Gonzales).

Libby Trial, Novak and Newsweek's Mystery Man

Newsweek has a new article on the Libby trial. During Robert Novak's testimony, he mentioned a man that no one in the trial had heard about before. Seems he's very well connected in the White House. Here's an excerpt:

A Man of Mystery
Richard Hohlt is the heavy hitter you've never heard of.

By Michael Isikoff
Newsweek
Feb. 26, 2007 issue - Robert Novak, as usual, had a scoop to unload—only this time, it was from the witness stand. Testifying last week in the trial of Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the conservative columnist gruffly described how he first learned from two top Bush administration officials that Valerie Plame, wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson, was a CIA officer. But then Novak injected a new name into the drama—one that virtually nobody in the courtroom knew.

Asked by one of Libby's lawyers if he had talked about Plame with anybody else before outing her in his column, Novak said he'd discussed her with a lobbyist named Richard Hohlt. Who, the lawyer pressed, is Hohlt? "He's a very good source of mine" whom I talk to "every day," Novak replied. Indeed, Hohlt is such a good source that after Novak finished his column naming Plame, he testified, he did something most journalists rarely do: he gave the lobbyist an advance copy of his column. What Novak didn't tell the jury is what the lobbyist then did with it: Hohlt confirmed to NEWSWEEK that he faxed the forthcoming column to their mutual friend Karl Rove (one of Novak's sources for the Plame leak), thereby giving the White House a heads up on the bombshell to come.

So the plot thickens once again. And it all goes back to the White House. There's more and it's interesting so here's the link.

Today's News and Links

From Think Progress:

CNN: White House Now Blames Briefer For Going Too Far On Iran Intel

Today, CNN reported that the White House is now blaming the anonymous intelligence briefer who presented the information. According to CNN’s Ed Henry, the White House says the anonymous intelligence briefer went “a little too far” in stating the evidence. But, as Henry said, “that begs the question why the administration has taken so long to clarify those comments.” Watch it Here

And from Raw Story, plenty of news. Here are the headlines and the link:

Exclusive: Top Republican aide says leadership won't force members to vote in favor of Bush 'surge'

2008 candidate looks to revoke Bush's 2002 Iraq authority...

Justice Department leaks own talking points to reporters

Cheney ally blasts Pentagon's report on pre-Iraq war intel

Waas: Cheney's 2002 phone call set stage for CIA leak probe

And here's Raw Story's Link