Senate panel OKs subpoenas
WASHINGTON – Escalating a potential legal showdown with President Bush, a Senate committee on Thursday approved three subpoenas to top administration officials, including White House adviser Karl Rove, demanding sworn testimony about what they knew of plans to fire eight U.S. attorneys.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, following similar action from a House panel Wednesday, issued subpoenas for the testimony of Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and White House deputy counsel William Kelley. Each of them has been mentioned in e-mails retrieved from the Justice Department regarding the planning to dismiss federal prosecutors.
Democrats rejected Bush’s offer earlier this week to have Rove and other advisers testify behind closed doors, not under oath and with no transcript of the meeting, an offer administration officials called “extraordinarily generous.” They said the move would give Congress information while protecting the president’s ability to obtain unfettered advice without its public airing.
“What we’re told we can get is nothing, nothing, nothing,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Judiciary chairman. He said it was essential to hear from Rove: “I know he’s the decider for the White House – he’s not the decider for the United States Senate.”
The subpoenas will not be served to Rove and others until the committee determines there is no hope of reaching a voluntary accommodation with the White House. Sen. Arlen Specter, Pa., the committee’s ranking Republican, predicted Bush would stand firm against his aides testifying under oath, creating a legal showdown that could take years to settle and leave the committee with no new information.
“If we have the confrontation, we’re not going to get this information for a very long time,” Specter said.
White House officials refused Thursday to budge from the president’s original offer, which also included giving the committees e-mails sent externally to the Justice Department, Congress and other third parties about the U.S. attorney issue. They said that would be more than sufficient to establish the White House rationale behind the dismissals.
“We’re not going to negotiate with ourselves or with members of Congress who seem intent on having a political trial, not a basic inquiry into the facts,” said presidential counselor Dan Bartlett, one of Bush’s closest aides. “Democrats have yet to demonstrate any wrongdoing by the White House, yet they want to haul high-ranking White House aides before their committees and treat them as if they did something wrong.”
Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have rejected Democratic insinuations that the firings were connected to high-profile public corruption cases a number of the prosecutors were taking up against prominent Republicans.
In another important move, Leahy and Specter announced a hearing next Thursday with just one witness: Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’ former chief of staff, whose e-mails documented that the plan to oust the U.S. attorneys came from the White House as far back as December 2004.
Sampson and his lawyer, Bradford Berenson, still are negotiating the terms of his testimony before the panel. Berenson was trying to delay the hearing into next month because of his personal travel plans.