House Judiciary vs. Bush, Mukasey Over Contempt

[babylonsister]

I don't know that we're going to get anywhere with this 'honorable' man. Maybe that was the point?


http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110607J.shtml

House Judiciary vs. Bush, Mukasey Over Contempt
By Matt Renner
t r u t h o u t | Report

Tuesday 06 November 2007

In a detailed report filed Monday, the House Judiciary Committee pushed forward contempt citations for Bush administration officials who, under orders from the president, have refused to cooperate in the ongoing Congressional investigation into the firing of nine US attorneys in 2006.

The report was filed with the House Office of Administration, the last procedural step before it can be voted on by the full House. The speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, will decide if and when the contempt citation will be voted on. An October 17 article in Roll Call Newspaper cited an unnamed Democratic aide who claimed that the full House would vote on the contempt citations during the month of November.

White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolton and former counsel to the president, Harriet Miers, have failed to comply with Congressional subpoenas for their cooperation in the US attorney firing investigation. Both officials have acted under instruction from the president, who has invoked blanket claims of executive privilege to try and keep investigations from reaching his office. Congressional investigators have been probing the firings since January but have not been able to answer the core questions of the investigation: Who decided which US attorneys to fire, and what was the reason for their firing?

Former general counsel to the House of Representatives, Charles Tiefer, a University of Baltimore Law professor experienced in contempt and executive privilege cases, called the 858-page report "thoroughly meritorious," in a letter to the Judiciary Committee. "This document, like the reports of the Watergate era, will go down in history as the basis for subsequent and substantial legislative reforms," Teifer told Truthout.

snip//

Tiefer sees the Mukasey appointment as a possible solution to the situation. According to Tiefer, as attorney general, Mukasey could appoint a special prosecutor to the case to reassert the Department of Justice's commitment to the rule of law and to counter the perception the Department of Justice has become a political tool of the Bush administration. "The fact that {Mukasey} is a respected former Judge who has presented himself as determined to make the DOJ independent of the politics of this administration, increases the likelihood that he will take action in this matter," Tiefer said.

However, when asked about this issue during his Senate confirmation hearings, Mukasey seemed to indicate that, as attorney general, he would do exactly what the president wants by preventing the Congressional contempt citation from making it to court.

If the contempt citation is brought to a vote and passes the full House, it becomes the responsibility of the Department of Justice to enforce. Mukasey was asked whether he would be willing to enforce Congressional contempt charges against Bush administration officials. "Unless the US attorney can say that it was unreasonable for the person that is proposed to be held in contempt to have relied on a privilege or an order of the president, that person cited for contempt can't be found to have had the state of mind necessary to warrant charging her or him with criminal contempt," Mukasey said, adding, "I hope and pray for a lot of things. One of them is that I don't ever have to make that decision."

[Solly Mack]

1. With honor like that....

it's the same old shit