House panel wants to hold aides in contempt

updated 5:59 p.m. ET Nov. 5, 2007

WASHINGTON - House Democrats threatened Monday to hold President Bush’s key confidants in contempt of Congress unless they comply with subpoenas for information on the Justice Department’s purge of federal prosecutors last winter.

The White House shrugged off the ultimatum, saying the information is off-limits under executive privilege and that the aides in question — White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former presidential counselor Harriet Miers — are immune from prosecution.

“It won’t go anywhere,” predicted White House press secretary Dana Perino.

Congressional Democrats nonetheless submitted their 102-page report, and a Republican rebuttal, to the House clerk on Monday afternoon. The report accused Miers of contempt for failing to appear and testify as subpoenaed. She and Bolten were charged with failing to produce documents on whether the prosecutors were fired at the White House’s behest.

Also in the sights of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich.: Karl Rove, the architect of Bush’s rise to the White House and a top political adviser who left last summer.

House Democrats were trying to round up a majority to pass the citation, said two House officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process was ongoing.

In a separate letter, Conyers urged White House Counsel Fred Fielding to comply.

“As we submit the committee’s contempt report to the full House, I am writing one more time to seek to resolve this issue on a cooperative basis,” Conyers said in a letter to Fielding.

The Congressional Research Service, Conyers added, reported that in at least 74 instances, sitting White House advisers have testified before Congress once there was a committee contempt vote.

“I very much hope that we can similarly avoid a constitutional confrontation in this case,” Conyers said.

If the report is passed, the House would forward the citation to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia for prosecution.

Bush official: Congress wants headlines
The White House showed no signs of budging, maintaining that the law does not require a U.S. attorney to prosecute someone carrying out a president’s invocation of executive privilege.

“This Congress is proving to be the all time champion of investigations,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. “If the Judiciary Committee really wanted facts instead of headlines, they should have accepted the president’s offer of accommodation to interview current and former advisers.”

Under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Justice Department officials consulted with the White House, fired at least nine federal prosecutors and kindled a political furor that found a Justice Department hiring process that favored Republican loyalists.

Fielding has offered to make officials and documents available to the committee behind closed doors — not under oath and off the record. Lawmakers demanded a transcript and the negotiations stalled.

In their own section of the report, committee Republicans said Conyers’ probe has uncovered no wrongdoing regarding the firings and pointed out that letting a judge referee the dispute could shut down the checks and balances of congressional oversight.

“What the majority actually seeks is not the truth, but political confrontation,” they said. “No good purpose would be served by the spectacle of holding either Harriet Miers of Joshua Bolten in contempt of Congress so that the committee may recklessly pursue a myth.”

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