McCain's appalling reason for withholding Robert’s Solicitor General docs

[pat_k]

On This Week, McCain argued for withholding material Roberts generated in his work at the Office of the Solicitor General.

Unfortunately, the transcript is not available, but it went something like this:

…When he was working for the Solicitor General's Office -- working for the President -- the President of the United States was his client. Releasing the documents would be a violation of attorney client privilege…

I find this reasoning appalling.

The mission of the Office of the Solicitor General is to represent the interests of the United States before the Supreme Court.
--Organization, Mission and Functions Manual, September 2004

The Solicitor General represents the United States – that means the whole kit and caboodle. The United States is not the same as the President of the United States. The Bush regime may regard the Solicitor General as their own personal attorney, but doing so is an abuse of the office.

I have little doubt that McCain got this "talking point" from some minion of the Bush Regime. Whatever its source, it's just another example of their adherence to an autocratic, not democratic, system of government. They apparently feel so secure that they aren't even bothering to pretend they believe in "We the People."

[eleny]

1. Sounds like McCain also likes consolidation of power in the executive

Since he wants to run for the presidency, I guess he needs to curry the favor of the right and would enjoy such executive power if he won the nomination and election.

[acmavm]

2. McCain is showing more and more everyday that he only go elected

to public office out of sympathy for being a POW.

It sure as hell isn't his smarts, honesty, or integrity.

[carnie_sf]

12. He lost

any respect I had for him when he got all huggy with * on the campaign trail.

[kentuck]

3. Exactly ! He was not representing the president of the US....

He was representing the people of the United States. The President was not his "client". where does this shit come from?

[JDPriestly]

4. The client can waive the attorney-client privilege

and it should in this case.

[aquart]

7. There is no privilege here. NONE.

[wtmusic]

5. Interesting

and good catch. It doesn't appear that that objection could stand.

[pinkpops]

6. Agreed - and it seems that McCain can rationalize anything these days.

[ellenfl]

8. it doesn't matter because leahy straightened that out

on the next show and stephanopolis (i think) showed both clips on his show. leahy made it very clear that the solicitor general works for the american people . . . NOT the president.

ellen fl

[1monster]

9. The argument is bogus. In both the Nixon Watergate hearings and the

Clinton/Lewinsky bruhaha, the courts rules that the lawyers who worked for the White House were government employees, and no attorney/client privilege existed between the President and the lawyer. The same would be true of the Solicitor General, I would assume.

[bluedog]

10. release them papers...

..........should be no problem releasing the documents. It's obvious that Bush is hiding something from the people.


This is a LIFETIME appointment. It's our duty to know more about Roberts.


Reminds one of the energy papers involving cheney..the SC sided with cheney........hummmmm................

[democratic veteran]

11. Twenty questions is twenty minutes for twenty years.

That's all the Democrats will get, twenty minutes each for a guy that will be on the bench for twenty years. Who cares if he helped JEB screw the people of Florida out of their vote. These guys only car for their own kind of Americans, not all Americans.

[Vickers]

14. Twenty years? A healthy white male of 50 today can expect to live

to be over 80. Hell, my alcoholic, drug-abusing dad lived to be almost 70, and he never went to a doctor.

[Straight Shooter]

13. McCain has lost all integrity, all honor, all semblance of reasoning.

He's a loser.

[Disturbed]

15. Will McCain fool all the people all the time with his

total BS? He is a pathetic phony and a RW lapdog.

[garthranzz]

16. The scariest part of all this...

If someone who could resist torture by the Vietnamese for six years caves into the pressure/torture (can you say Abu Gitmo?) of ShrubRoveCheney, we are truly entering the era of Big Brother. McCain used to be a man of integrity, someone you could respect even if you disagreed with him. He's clearly pandering to the Republican "right" now, hoping for a presidential nomination he'll never get. G-d only knows what they did to make him step in line.

Does anyone else see an unraveling as power consolidates? Nixon, the pursuit of Clinton, Bush - seems rather cosmologic by analogy - as the black hole pulls all matter to it, everything not caught in the vortex is flung outward, explosively.

[savemefromdumbya]

17. McCain, dork always a dork - don't ever trust him

I really don't know why so many people trust McCain. He's such a turkey.

[Athame]

18. I thought the reason ** and the veep had to lawyer up

with the grand jury investigation was that neither the White House counsel nor the Solicitor General have attorney-client privelege with the White House.

McCain is just spitting chaff to draw fire away from Roberts.

[wickerwoman]

19. Looks like McCain isn't a big "West Wing" fan.

Even I know that the Solicitor General isn't the President's private counsel.

[On the Road]

20. Ken Starr Destroyed That Privilege,

or at least tried to, during the Whitewater investigation. He argued that Clinton's conversations with his lawyers were not privileged simply because the lawyers were being paid by the government.

[Supersedeas]

21. Obviously they have something to hide or need time to 'correct' the record

[ClarkUSA]

22. I just called his office and told his aide to tell McCain to stop lying...

to the American people. I explained McCain's specious reasoning regarding attorney-client privileges and asked that someone in his DC office correct him before he continues to cover for an obviously anti-choice candidate who has something to hide from the public as well as the Democratic Senators asking for his documents when he worked for the Office of Solicitor General whose client is the United States not the President. I said that it's obvious McCain is kissing Bush's butt so he can run in 2008, but that to alot of folks, McCain is an apologist for the Bush administration for everything from Rovegate to Roberts.

I said that Senator Leahy (who corrected McCain's false comments yesterday on This Week) as well as liberal blogs know the truth and that McCain had better stop speaking with a forked Republican tongue or else the next time he lies about this, his offices will be getting 10,000 phone calls correcting him.

His aide told me that he'd tell Senator McCain. Whatever.

DC Phone: [phone]
Press #2 to speak to an aide immediately.

McCain likes to bill himself as a straight-talker, but so does Bill O'Reilly. They are both lying hypocrites who deserve to be exposed.

[AzDar]

23. John McCain is nothing but a fi' dollah 'ho...and I'll bet he calls Shrub

"Big Daddy".

[Catchawave]

24. Ooops, the Patriot Act doesn't include this?

It just struck me funny that in Bush's Terror World, there are some loopholes in the privacy issues still intact :rofl: