The Next Bush Scandal?

In my March 26 column, I linked to the relevant Abramoff e-mails and published excerpts of Simendinger's fruitless attempt to get some answers from spokesman Tony Snow at a March 23 press briefing.

In my March 28 column, I noted an item by Paul Bedard for U.S. News, to the effect that some Bush aides were responding to the news reports by scurrying to put more of their communications (not less) on non-official servers.

I excerpted from spokeswoman Dana Perino's successful ducking of the issue at a March 27 press briefing. And I linked to a letter from CREW pointing out that a Clinton-era White House staff manual explicitly required aides to use White House e-mail accounts for "all official communications."

In my April 5 column, I linked to R. Jeffrey Smith's story in The Washington Post, which reported that "House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) told the Republican National Committee yesterday to turn over copies of any electronic messages from White House officials that relate to the use of federal resources or agencies for partisan Republican purposes." (Here is the Waxman letter.)

And in yesterday's column, I linked to the second significant major-media story on this important issue -- fully four weeks after it first came to light -- this one by Tom Hamburger in the Los Angeles Times describing the genesis of a "back-channel e-mail and paging system, paid for and maintained by the RNC" that is now "creating new embarrassment and legal headaches for the White House, the Republican Party and Rove's once-vaunted White House operation."

Slowly but surely, the storm is gathering.

Attorney Watch

Richard A. Serrano writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, indicating they think there is more to learn about the firings of eight federal prosecutors last year, asked Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales on Monday to turn over additional documents on the terminations and threatened to issue subpoenas if the materials were not forthcoming.

"Specifically, the four senators want the internal rankings that the Justice Department made of all 93 U.S. attorneys over the years, as well as employment charts that Monica M. Goodling, a top aide to Gonzales, provided to Justice officials as they decided which prosecutors to fire."

Adam Cohen writes about executive privilege in a New York Times opinion piece. "[T]he Bush administration is threatening to invoke executive privilege to hobble Congress's investigation into the purge of United States attorneys. President Bush has said that Karl Rove, his closest adviser, and Harriet Miers, his former White House counsel, among others, do not have to comply with Congressional subpoenas because 'the president relies upon his staff to give him candid advice.'"

But, Cohen concludes: "Congress has a right, and an obligation, to examine all of the evidence, which increasingly suggests that the Bush administration fired eight or more federal prosecutors either because they were investigating Republicans, or refusing to bring baseless charges against Democrats. The Supreme Court's ruling in the Watergate tapes case, and other legal and historical precedents, make it clear that executive privilege should not keep Congress from getting the testimony it needs.....

"If Mr. Bush battles Congress in court, he will be fighting not only legal precedents, but the nation's collective memory about the last president to take this stand."

Blogger Josh Marshall, who was the first to see a scandal in the firings of the attorneys, now writes that "another chapter of the story is unfolding."