Bush Aides Facing Subpoenas Over Firings
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Wednesday, March 21, 2007; 2:33 AM
WASHINGTON -- Flexing their political muscle against the White House, Democrats in the House and Senate are insisting that President Bush's top aides describe their roles in the firings of eight federal prosecutors on the record and under oath.
A House committee was to vote Wednesday to authorize subpoenas for political director Karl Rove and other administration officials despite Bush's declaration a day earlier that Democrats must accept his offer to allow the officials to talk privately to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, but not under oath and not on the record.
Would he fight Democrats in court to protect his aides against congressional subpoenas?
"Absolutely," Bush declared Tuesday in televised remarks from the White House.
Democrats promptly rejected the offer and announced that they would start authorizing subpoenas within 24 hours.
"Testimony should be on the record and under oath. That's the formula for true accountability," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Bush said he worried that allowing testimony under oath would set a precedent on the separation of powers that would harm the presidency as an institution.
If neither side blinks, the dispute could end in court _ ultimately the Supreme Court _ in a politically messy development that would prolong what Bush called the "public spectacle" of the Justice Department's firings, and public trashings, of the eight U.S. attorneys.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the Senate panel's former chairman, appealed for pragmatism.
"It is more important to get the information promptly than to have months or years of litigation," Specter said.
Bush, in a late-afternoon statement at the White House, decried any attempts by Democrats to engage in "a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants."
"It will be regrettable if they choose to head down the partisan road of issuing subpoenas and demanding show trials when I have agreed to make key White House officials and documents available," the president said.
