Scott Horton: Congress Cites Bolten and Miers for Contempt–But Is the Issue Really Impeachment?

[seafan]

Congress Cites Bolten and Miers for Contempt–But Is the Issue Really Impeachment?

By Scott Horton
February 15, 2008

It’s been seven months since the Judiciary Committee subpoenaed White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers to appear and give evidence in connection with hearings into the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in December 2006. In July the Judiciary Committee quickly voted to cite them for contempt. And then the matter stagnated for many months as the House leadership conferred with White House lawyers about a solution. The White House reportedly said it would offer up Miers and Bolten only if they testified behind closed doors and not under oath, and with the understanding that no transcript of their remarks would be made. But most tellingly, the White House took the position that the scope of examination would be narrowly tailored so as to exclude precisely the subject matter of the inquiry: Did White House staffers interfere with prosecutors for partisan political reasons?

For instance, among the small volume of documents actually produced there are many which provide evidence of exactly that. On one document concerning the failure of Milwaukee U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic to bring “vote fraud” prosecutions, Karl Rove has scribbled a note “Discuss w/Harriet.” In fact we know that Biskupic was on the “to-fire” list. He then began to bring a series of politically motivated prosecutions, including the case against Georgia Thompson that the Seventh Circuit dismissed as “preposterous.” And Biskupic then disappeared from the “to-fire” list. So what discussions Rove had with Miers are right at the heart of the inquiry. But the White House offer ruled that off limits. That was obviously unacceptable.

The matter seemed almost forgotten. But today it suddenly lept back onto the front page. The House issued contempt sanctions against the pair on a vote of 223-32; it also authorized a civil suit to enforce the contempt sanction, as Attorney General Mukasey previously stated he would refuse to fulfill his statutory duty to enforce the contempt sanction.

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The Department of Justice’s internal investigation into the December 7 firings is coming to a conclusion. I am told that it is highly likely that this investigation will conclude that the decision to fire New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was clearly motivated by improper reasons. Iglesias resisted efforts by members of the New Mexico Congressional delegation (including Heather Wilson, who joined Boehner in his infantile march to the Capitol steps) to get him to bring a prosecution of a prominent Democrat in the weeks just before the 2006 elections in order to help influence the results. Being rebuffed by Iglesias, the New Mexico Republicans went to the people they knew pulled the prosecutorial strings all across the country: Karl Rove and his staff in the White House. And that path led to Iglesias’s firing.
The investigation into the firing of the U.S. Attorneys in Phoenix, Seattle and San Diego is showing similar signs of improper tampering with prosecutions by White House figures for partisan political reasons.

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Now the Justice Department’s investigation focuses only on Alberto Gonzales, Paul McNulty and a handful of other senior political appointees, almost all of whom have left. It does not have the jurisdiction to address staffers in the White House like Rove, Miers and Bolten, nor indeed, President Bush.
But they are clearly within the jurisdictional remit of the Judiciary Committee. Moreover, if the Justice Department’s report implicates not just Rove, Miers and Bolten, but also Bush in the decision to fire for improper reasons—a conclusion which is now looking extremely likely—then it will be up to Conyers’s committee to press the investigation forward. In so doing, he is entitled to conduct hearings on the footing of impeachment. If he does, the executive privilege objection interposed by the White House and backed in another Constitution-defying opinion of the Attorney General, would not apply. ..... if it does come to a pointed inquiry into criminal conduct in the Oval Office relating to the dismissals, Conyers and his Committee want to be in a position to demonstrate that they have exhausted the other remedies—subpoenas and contempt citations—and have been stymied by the White House. In a sense, the White House will be forcing the opening of an impeachment inquiry by its own intransigence.

Mr. Horton, an awful lot of people hope you are prescient.

[Senator]

1. Perhaps. But In A Back-Handed Way.

Horton's implication of some subtle, secret plan is highly unlikely. That doesn't mean however that events may not get out of hand for the DC-Dems volunteering to be the regime's firewall against impeachment.

The simple reality is that not only is impeachment a moral and patriotic imperative, there's also no rational basis to keep avoiding it. This makes failure to impeach a very difficult course to sustain -- in one's own mind and among others in your day-to-day life. You begin to really dislike yourself for choosing sides with the war criminals and "unitary" Anti-Americans.

Add to this new scandal after new scandal, a years-long-now constant barrage of impeachment demands from outside the beltway, and the demonstrable impotence of any other effort the "new majority" even thinks of engaging in; and you've got a virtual torture process for anyone with any notion of themselves as someone who loves their country or holds any of its stated core values dear.

These "pre-neutered" contempt charges just make the angst of that reality more acute. Trying to tout it as some sort of victory, or display of confronting the regime, is just plain pathetic. They're howling with derisive laughter in the stolen WH.

I'd hate to trade places with Pelosi, or Conyers, or any of the other "good Germans" inside the beltway who are desperate for "somebody else" to come along and make it all go away.

Impeachment won't go away. Neither will the failure to impeach - ever. It just doesn't work that way.

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