to the pertinent issues of transparency, the rule of law in the US including international law.
I am posting from 2009, as we can see looking back how dismal our state of affairs
are today..it should be of no surprise why Sanders captured the heart and soul of
milennials.
Obama to Face Test on Executive Privilege After Rove Subpoenaed Again Over Attorney Firings, Siegelman Prosecution
January 28, 2009
AMY GOODMAN: The chair of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers, has subpoenaed former White House adviser Karl Rove to testify next week about the Bush administration’s firing of nine US attorneys and the prosecution of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman. This marks the second time Conyers has tried to get Rove to appear in connection with what he calls the Bush administration’s politicization of the Justice Department. But it remains unclear if Rove will be compelled to appear before the panel next week.
Rove previously refused to appear before the committee, contending that former presidential advisers cannot be compelled to testify before Congress. For more than a year, former president George W. Bush upheld Rove’s legal position. The White House’s assertion of executive privilege prompted Rove and other Bush aides to refuse even to show up for a hearing. A federal judge has since rejected that position. Karl Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, said he would consult with President Obama’s White House counsel to determine the Obama administration’s stance.
In a press release announcing the subpoena, Conyers was hopeful, saying, “Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it. After two years of stonewalling, it’s time for him to talk."
Scott Horton has been closely following this story. He is a New York attorney specializing in international law and human rights and the legal affairs contributor to Harper’s Magazine, where he blogs at “No Comment.” He joins us in the firehouse studio.
We’re also joined by former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, whose case is at the heart of the controversy. He was convicted of corruption and bribery and served nine months in prison before an appeals court ordered his release last year after finding substantial problems with the case. He joins us from Birmingham, Alabama.
Scott, let’s begin with you. Talk about the significance of Karl Rove being subpoenaed, to begin with, and then lay out the issues that Chairman Conyers has issued the subpoena around.
SCOTT HORTON: Well, I think it’s a test at the beginning of the new administration of its commitment to transparency, and it also presents a challenge to them about what to do with the pervasive claims of privilege that were used by the Bush administration to block congressional probes. And during the campaign and afterwards, President Obama stated that he was going to adopt transparency as a keynote. He criticized the positions the Bush administration took, and I think that will be put to the test right now.
In fact, Bob Luskin has already stated that he will contact Greg Craig, and he will ask for guidance as to what posture should be taken with respect to executive privilege. Now, there’s sort of a wrinkle here that’s interesting, and that is that Greg Craig, who is Barack Obama’s White House counsel, is also a friend of Karl Rove, something he’s talked about openly, and his law firm, Williams & Connolly — his former law firm, I should say —- represented Karl Rove with respect to some publication deals. So that presents a bit of a complication. But I think what -—
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think he should recuse himself?
SCOTT HORTON: I think it’s quite problematic for him to involve himself in this, given that relationship, so probably other lawyers in the President’s staff should be addressing this.
But I think the threshold issue is very clear, and that is whether or not the White House is going to say, “No, you don’t even have to answer this subpoena.” We have a district court judge saying that was an absurd position. Indeed, I’d say that’s pretty much the uniform position in the legal community. It was an absurd position. So he will have to respond to the subpoena. He will have to sit in the hearings, and he’ll have to respond to questions.
That still leaves open the issue of whether or not he can invoke the privilege with respect to specific questions. And, you know, the implication of the privilege suggests — it implies very strongly, because the privilege covers his communications with the President — it suggests that Karl Rove had discussions about these matters, the US attorney firing and also the prosecution of Governor Siegelman, with President Bush directly. And if so, there’s no doubt but that these things, all these things, would have been improper, potentially even criminal.
AMY GOODMAN: Start with the US attorney firings. Remind people what this is about and what it’s believed Karl Rove’s role was in this.
SCOTT HORTON: On December 6, 2006, a decision was taken to fire a group of US attorneys — it’s either seven, eight or nine, depending on how you count them up — and it became clear very quickly that this decision was taken by political operatives in the White House for very, very suspicious reasons. The US attorneys involved were all either involved with criminal investigations of prominent Republican political figures, or they had refused to proceed with criminal investigations of Democrats. So it all seems to relate to politically oriented prosecutions.
And we since had investigations both on the House and Senate side, and these investigations concluded that Karl Rove clearly was in the middle of all these decisions, seemed to have been pulling the strings. The Department of Justice conducted its own internal investigation, and Karl Rove, as well as Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten, refused to participate with that investigation, refused to testify, withheld documents and so forth. But the investigation itself, very, very detailed report, strongly supports the suspicions that Rove and others in his office were deeply involved and improperly involved in this process, in fact documents their involvement through interviews with people in the Justice Department. And because of that, Attorney General Mukasey has appointed a special prosecutor to complete the investigation using subpoena power and, if appropriate, bring criminal charges.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn for a minute to David Iglesias, the former New Mexico prosecutor, one of the nine fired US attorneys at the heart of the scandal. I interviewed him last June and asked him to talk about the time he met Karl Rove.
DAVID IGLESIAS: I only met Karl Rove one time. He was at a luncheon in Albuquerque. He came over and introduced himself. But, you know, he was looking to broaden the base of the party, and as an evangelical Christian, as a military veteran, and as a Hispanic, I represented the future of the party, and that was all in one package. I had run for office. I’m typically conservative on lots of social issues. And I think Rove saw that I represented the future of the party.
But I think he also thought I was the kind of person who would file bogus voter fraud prosecutions, I would — was the kind of US attorney that would rush an indictment if it would help a fellow conservative. And, you know, I wasn’t that — I didn’t do that. And I don’t want to paint myself as the only one, because John McKay in Seattle also refused to file bogus election fraud cases in the Washington state, and Todd Graves in Missouri refused to file bogus voter fraud prosecutions after looking at the evidence. I mean, they thought they had political operatives, and what they had were principled law enforcement officials.
AMY GOODMAN: You were a loyal member of the Republican Party and the Bush administration. What ultimately pushed you to break ranks? Was it your firing?
DAVID IGLESIAS: Well, it was a combination of things. They slandered our reputation when the deputy attorney general testified that we had performance-related problems. We knew he knew better. We knew he had seen our evaluations. And also I knew that John McKay and Carol Lam and Charlton and Bogden and Chiara represented some of the best US attorneys out there. These were very forward-thinking, smart, principled people.
So I think I wrote in the New York Times last year something to the effect that I knew I could be fired for doing the wrong thing, I didn’t know I could be fired for doing the right thing. And the right thing was upholding the rule of law. I mean, this is not about us losing our jobs. This is a matter of us enforcing the rule of law and separation of powers and doing what prosecutors have traditionally done in prior administrations, which was be independent and autonomous of elected officials.
AMY GOODMAN: Former New Mexico US attorney David Iglesias, interviewed on Democracy Now!. Explain, Scott Horton, the context of these voter fraud cases.
SCOTT HORTON: Well, in fact, this was being raised by the Republicans consistently and all over the country. They would talk about voter fraud, and they would bring prosecutions and commence criminal investigations. And as, in fact, one senior Republican operative explained, this was a voter suppression operation. By having this in newspapers and having it discussed, they believed they could reliably suppress Democratic turnout by two to three percent, which in marginal cases would produce a Republican win. It was fully understood that way. And they got cooperation from a large number of US attorneys, including Mr. Iglesias. He appointed a task force. He pursued it. And after fully investigating it, he concluded there’s no there there; there really isn’t any voter fraud.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re about to go to former governor Don Siegelman, but lay it out in brief. This was a case that you championed for a long time while Governor Siegelman was in jail.
SCOTT HORTON: It’s a very complex case, but in the bottom line it’s also like Oakland: “There’s no there there.” There were a great number of charges brought of petty things, and they were all the sorts of charges that historically have not been brought against political figures. The key thing in the center of it is an accusation that money was paid to a campaign fund of his by an individual who was appointed to public office. And if that’s a crime, then, of course, Mr. Rove and President Bush were guilty of it big time, since they had 146 major campaign donors appointed to public office.
But in the parameters of this case, all around it, we find the fingerprints of Karl Rove at every turn. He’s involved. He has close relations with both of the US attorneys who were involved. One of his close business confederates is in fact the husband of the US attorney who brought this case. In the end, he was also involved pushing the campaign of Don Siegelman’s opponent for the governorship in Alabama. It seems quite clear that this prosecution was brought as a political weapon to take out a successful Democratic candidate for a state house that Karl Rove coveted.
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/28/obama_to_face_test_on_executive
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