NYT : Panel Holds Two Bush Aides in Contempt

Panel Holds Two Bush Aides in Contempt

By DAVID STOUT | July 25, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 25 — The House Judiciary Committee voted today to seek contempt of Congress citations against a top aide to President Bush and a former presidential aide over their refusal to cooperate in an inquiry about the firing of federal prosecutors.

The 22-to-17 vote along party lines escalates the battle between the administration and Congressional Democrats over the dismissals of nine United States attorneys last year, an episode that Democrats say needs airing but that many Republicans say is much ado about nothing.

“It’s not a step that, as chairman, I take easily or lightly,” the head of the panel, Representative John D. Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, said before the committee voted to cite Joshua B. Bolten, the president’s chief of staff, and Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel.

To take effect, the Judiciary Committee’s recommendation must be voted upon by the full House, where Democrats have a 231-to-201 edge, with 3 vacancies. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not said whether she would seek House action before the lawmakers recess in early August, or allow the issue to simmer until the House reconvenes after Labor Day.

Or a compromise could be worked out between the White House and the legislators, despite the hard-edged words on both sides in the months since the controversy over the firings erupted. Recent history offers several examples of disputes between the executive and legislative branches being settled.

The White House has refused, on the grounds of executive privilege, to make Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers available for sworn testimony before Congress. To do so, the White House argues, could stifle frank, confidential advice to the president, and future presidents, by their closest advisers.

Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the judiciary panel, argued that the White House had already offered to provide all the information the committee needs, by making presidential aides available for semi-formal, private interviews in which the aides would not be under oath.

“The majority knows that the president’s assertions of executive privilege go back to George Washington and rest on long-standing and well-reasoned court rulings and bipartisan executive practices,” Mr. Smith said today.

But Democrats have scoffed at what several of them have termed the administration’s arrogant, “take it or leave it” offer. Mr. Conyers said before today’s vote that members of Congress could not tolerate a situation in which “our subpoenas can be readily ignored, where a witness under a duly authorized subpoena doesn’t even have to bother to show up.” Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers refused to even appear before the committee.

In the event that the full House voted contempt citations against Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers, the next legal step would be a referral to the United States attorney for the District of Columbia (a Bush appointee) for prosecution.

But there is a further complication: the White House asserted last week that the law does not permit Congress to require a United States attorney to convene a grand jury or otherwise pursue a prosecution when someone refuses on the basis of executive privilege to testify or turn over documents. That stance was repeated in a Justice Department letter to the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

Contempt of Congress is punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of $100,000, increased from the long-standing $1,000 in 1984, the judiciary panel’s press office said today. But it was by no means clear today that the cases of Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers would ever reach that point.

In 1998, a House investigating committee voted along party lines to charge Attorney General Janet Reno with contempt of Congress in a dispute over whether an independent counsel should be appointed to prosecute campaign finance abuses. The issue never got to the full House. The last time a full chamber of Congress voted on a contempt citation was May 18, 1983. By 413 to 0, the House cited Rita M. Lavelle, a former official of the Environmental Protection Agency, for refusing to appear before a committee investigating hazardous-waste programs. She was acquitted in court of the contempt charge but convicted of perjury in another trial and served several months in prison.

In late 1982, the House voted, 259 to 105, to charge Anne Gorsuch Burford, administrator of the E.P.A. , with contempt, but the case was dropped after lawmakers were given access to the documents they wanted, and the United States attorney for the District of Columbia refused to prosecute in any event.

Earlier in 1982, a House committee voted to cite Interior Secretary James G. Watt for refusing to turn over documents related to energy-related policies. But President Ronald Reagan then gave the committee enough access to the papers to satisfy them.

In 1975, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger was cited by a House committee. That issue was also settled by compromise.