http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200707/072607a.htmlJuly 26, 2007
Mr. Karl Rove
Deputy Chief of Staff
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. Rove:
Four months ago, Senator Specter and I sent you a letter seeking your voluntary cooperation with the Senate Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigation of the mass firings and replacements of U.S. Attorneys and politicization at the Department of Justice. We received no response to that letter. Similar letters to the White House Counsel from the Committee have also failed to elicit cooperation.
Indeed, the White House has chosen to precipitate a needless constitutional confrontation. The evidence gathered by our Committee and the House Judiciary Committee shows that you and other White House officials were involved in these firings and in the Justice Department’s response to congressional inquiries about them. Yet, the White House has responded to requests for cooperation by stonewalling and to subpoenas with unprecedented, blanket assertions of “executive privilege.” It has even reached beyond matters under its control to stop or try to stop former White House officials involved in these matters from meeting their legal obligation to testify in compliance with congressional subpoenas.
I am issuing the enclosed subpoenas to provide the Committee with documents in your possession, custody, or control related to the Committee’s investigation and for you to appear to testify under oath before the Committee on August 2, 2007.
I have issued this subpoena after exhausting every avenue for voluntary cooperation from you and the White House. I hope that the White House takes this opportunity to reconsider its blanket claim of executive privilege, especially in light of the testimony that the President was not involved in the dismissals of these U.S. Attorneys. I am left to ask what the White House is so intent on hiding that it cannot even identify the documents, the dates, the authors and recipients that they claim are privileged.
We have learned from the limited documents released by the Department of Justice, and from the testimony of high-ranking Department officials, that you were involved from the beginning in plans to remove U.S. Attorneys. E-mails show that you initiated inquires at least by the beginning of 2005 as to how to proceed regarding the dismissal and replacement of U.S. Attorneys. The evidence also shows that you raised political concerns, including those of New Mexico Republican leaders, about New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias that may have led to his dismissal. He was fired a few weeks after you complained to the Attorney General about the lack of purported “voter fraud” enforcement cases in his jurisdiction.
We have learned you raised similar concerns with the Attorney General about prosecutors not aggressively pursuing voter fraud cases in several districts and that prior to the 2006 mid-term election you sent the Attorney General’s Chief of Staff a packet of information containing a 30-page report concerning voting in Wisconsin in 2004. This evidence raises serious concerns about your role in removing or trying to remove prosecutors not considered sufficiently loyal to Republican electoral prospects, an unacceptable manipulation and subversion of law enforcement.
Documents and testimony also show that you had a role in shaping the Administration’s response to congressional inquiries into these dismissals, which led to inaccurate and misleading testimony to Congress and statements to the public. This response included an attempt to cover up the role that you and other White House officials played in the firings.
The evidence of untoward White House interference with federal law enforcement threatens our elections and has seriously undercut the American people’s confidence in the independence and evenhandedness of law enforcement.
Sincerely,
PATRICK LEAHY
Chairman
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