If Harriet Can Appear Before HJC, Why Not Rove, Yet?
Fox is reporting that Harriet Miers snuck into HJC for a deposition yesterday. It’s all very nice that–two years after she was subpoenaed, Harriet is just now getting around to showing up before Congress. (h/t fatster)
But I’m more troubled by Fox’s report that there still isn’t an agreement for Rove to testify.
In March, Miers and former Bush adviser Karl Rove agreed to testify under oath.
Miers testified today behind closed doors. It remains unclear when Bolten could be deposed. But a senior House Democrat familiar with the inquiry described Bolten as “a tasty little morsel.” The senior lawmaker indicated to FOX that Rove ”is really the big catch.” But there is still no agreement for Rove to appear.
It has been, by my count, 114 days since Greg Craig and HJC finalized the plan to have Turdblossom (and Miers) testify. Yet he still–according to Fox, which ought to know–hasn’t shown his face for his deposition.
Now perhaps Rove’s interim engagement with Nora Dennehy, in May, explains the delay. After all, HJC might be willing to postpone their chat with Rove to allow a federal prosecutor to grill him first.
But otherwise, what’s the delay? Is it that he’s just more scared of Congress than Harriet Miers?
Any chance we’ll ever find out what Harriet said in her deposition?
Doesn’t Bolten have to testify as well ? IIRC, he and Harriet were s’posed to meet with Nora …
Answering my own question: “It remains unclear when Bolten could be deposed. But a senior House Democrat familiar with the inquiry described Bolten as “a tasty little morsel.”
I’m not sure that we need to know that Bolten’s paramour calls him “a tasty little morsel.”
According to the agreement, the transcript would be made available AFTER everyone was done and had had a chance to look at it.
I’m actually not sure Bolten is supposed to testify–he’s supposed to hand over documents, and those documents have already ben turned over.
It was just a subpoena duces tecum with Bolten, that ought to be just a production agreement you would think.
Duces tecum = Deuces Wild?
Naw, just means the subpoena is for things (usually documents) rather than a person for testimony.
Boy you’re fast, EW! Like lightening.
”But otherwise, what’s the delay? Is it that he’s just more scared of Congress than Harriet Miers?”
Prolly it’s that Congress is more scared of him. (Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.)
I was looking over the impressive list of lawyers that resigned during the Bush Administration. Harriet Miers was the first after the U.S. Attorney firings and the harbinger of that mass exodus.
Then there were the threats of a massive walkout in 2004 during the Jim Comey hospital room era, averted by Comey’s meeting with Bush and some revisions in the N.S.A. program.
But there was a previous DoJ resignation epidemic in the summer of 2003, right after the Invasion of Iraq. Jay Bybee got his judgeship in March 2003. John Yoo left soon after when Ashcroft blocked his promotion. But then, Larry Thompson, Viet Dihn, Michael Chertoff, Adam Ciongoli, and a number of others dribbled out over the next few months.
We know why they all left during the investigation of the U.S. Attorney scandal. And we know why they were going to leave in 2004 [the Comey era]. But do we know why the best and brightest of the Conservative Republican DoJ upper echelon suddenly heard the call to return to their families in the period right after we invaded Iraq? Maybe they’re the ones we ought to be sending subpoenas…
Thompson was getting sued by Maher Arar and his torture efforts were probably a lot more tiring after he realized he might be looking at personal liablity. Chertoff, amazingly, may have actually been advocating for complying with civilian criminal investigation and proseuction rules and apparently refused to chime in on non-prosecution for torutre (unlike Holder and Obama). Who knows on Dinh, but his ties with the torture brigades best and brightest were very tight. And of course, for all who left, three years in was a good time to cash in on the contacts and experience acquired under a torture regime.
I don’t recall anyone ever boycotting Pepsi for putting the guy who signed off on Maher Arar’s torture trip in at Gen Counsel.
Arar is still on one of the storied lists kept by State and Homeland Security and who knows who else, even though everyone who has seen the evidence that Condi finally started showing our guys and your congresscritturs has said the same thing: there’s nothing there.
That would be true of at least a dozen other Canadians, one of them, Mr Abdelrazik, now stuck in Sudan in one of the more bizarre stories of the last decade. Our government moves the goalposts every time it has to produce another excuse for not repatriating him, even when ordered by the courts, but clearly they’re doing that because Hillary isn’t moving an inch on … whatever.
Presumably that is happening because admitting that some of those rendered and tortured by proxy were entirely innocent would entail investigating the happy renderers?
I am very glad to see the Miers interview travelling under the radar–like parties assembling a legal case instead of putting on a public relations sideshow.
I would love even more if Pat Fitzgerald and Barry Obama would sit down for a couple of drinks at the Duke of Perth on N. Clark St. when the president next gets to Chicago, kick over when to indict “Official B” in the Plame leak, and then frogmarch Karl in for federal arraignment.
OT: Interesting article from VoxEU:
But why stop there?
(My old teacher Fred Lee would be happy to see that the authors use a couple of mechanisms from the Physiocrats.)
It’s good that Myers finally testified. I hope her memory was up to it. As for Karl, my bet is he won’t show until he’s given the choice of appearing or appearing in handcuffs.
Boxturtle (This congress seems just as afraid of contempt as the last one)