Mukasey the Obstructionist

"'Creative is a good word to describe it,' said Mark Rozell, another executive-privilege expert who is a professor at George Mason University's School of Public Policy, about the attorney general's contention. 'This is really an argument to protect the White House's own political interests and save it from embarrassment.'

"As a practical matter, White House officials -- including presidents and vice presidents -- must cooperate with Justice Department criminal investigations involving their administrations, noted Michael Bromwich, a former federal prosecutor who investigated White House wrongdoing during the Iran-contra affair and later served as the Justice Department's inspector general. The alternative to submitting voluntarily to FBI interviews is simple: officials would invariably receive grand-jury subpoenas -- and pay a rather high political, if not legal cost -- if they refused to cooperate. 'In the real world, high-level White House officials don't have the choice of not submitting to FBI interviews,' Bromwich said."

Here's Jonathan Turley talking to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann last night: "You know, reading this letter from Attorney General Mukasey to the president is extraordinary. He doesn't just claim presidential privilege, he claims deliberative process privilege, he claims law enforcement privilege, he claims anything short of a copyright infringement to keep the documents away from Congress. His position apparently is, 'I recognize,' and he says this, 'that you, that Congress, has an oversight right to look into this area. You just can't see any of the evidence you need to do it.'

"And, unfortunately, this is more of the same. We've seen this in other area where Mukasey is treating the White House as off the constitutional grid. That anything that happens in that building, in his view, is simply not accessible to Congress."

The Documents in the Case

Here are the various documents released by the Oversight Committee yesterday.

In Mukasey's letter to Bush, he writes: "Many of the subpoenaed materials reflect frank and candid deliberations among senior presidential advisers, including the Vice President, the White House Chief of Staff, the National Security Advisor, and the White House Press Secretary. The deliberations concern a number of sensitive issues, including the preparation of your January 2003 State of the Union Address, possible responses to public assertions challenging the accuracy of a statement in the address, and the decision to send Ms. Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger in 2002 to investigate Iraqi efforts to acquire yellowcake uranium. Some of the subpoenaed documents also contain information about communications between you and senior White House officials."

From Waxman's response: "For the last five years -- first in the minority and now in the majority -- I have tried to investigate what really happened. And the White House has resisted oversight every step of the way.

"Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation brought new facts to light. We learned from his work that both the Vice President's top advisor, Scooter Libby, and the President's top advisor, Karl Rove, repeatedly leaked Ms. Wilson's identity to the media.

"But there were questions that Mr. Fitzgerald could not answer. One was the role of Vice President Cheney. . . .

"The Committee's inquiry has tried to penetrate the cloud surrounding Vice President Cheney's conduct. But today, the President has asserted executive privilege and is withholding from the Committee and the American people key evidence about Vice President Cheney's actions.

"During our investigation, we have learned that Mr. Libby told the FBI that it was 'possible' that the Vice President instructed him to leak Ms. Wilson's identity. That would be an extraordinary breach of the public trust.

"There is a key document that could explain what the Vice President knew and what he did: the report of the Vice President's interview with FBI officials working for Mr. Fitzgerald. If there is one document that could pierce the cloud hanging over the Vice President, this is it. . . .