With All Due Respect to the WaPo

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Amy Goldstein was one of the nicest people covering the Scooter Libby trial and Dan Eggen has been doing excellent work covering the USA Scandal. But their article on the White House’s assertion that no US Attorney can take up the contempt charges that HJC is about to dump on Harriet and Josh Bolten misses some key details. Goldstein and Eggen write:

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion ofexecutive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nineU.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

[snip]

In defending its argument, administration officials point to a 1984opinion by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, headed atthe time by Theodore B. Olson, a prominent conservative lawyer who wassolicitor general from 2001 to 2004. The opinion centered on a contemptcitation issued by the House for Anne Gorsuch Burford, thenadministrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Itconcluded: "The President, through a United States Attorney, need not,indeed may not, prosecute criminally a subordinate for asserting on hisbehalf a claim of executive privilege. Nor could the Legislative Branchor the courts require or implement the prosecution of such anindividual."

In the Burford case, which involved spending on theSuperfund program, the White House filed a federal lawsuit to blockCongress’s contempt action. The conflict subsided when Burford turnedover documents to Congress.

The Bush administration has notpreviously signaled it would forbid a U.S. attorney from pursuing acontempt case in relation to the prosecutor firings. But officials atJustice and elsewhere say it has long held that Congress cannot forcesuch action.

And here are some details they miss, from Kagro X, whose batting average on Bush obstruction has been better than anyone’s:

The False First Amendment of the Dow Jones and AP

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Back when Dow Jones and the AP renewed their bid to unseal the materials relating to Judy’s and Cooper’s subpoenas, they asserted–apparently based on self-serving public comments by Novak, Rove, and Armitage and on Victoria Toensing’s self-declared omniscience in all things Plame–that Fitzgerald’s pursuit of the journalists’ testimony was unnecessary.

Recently, the public learned that the Special Counsel’s pursuit of those reporters was entirely unnecessary for him to determine who had leaked Ms. Plame’s name to Robert Novak, the columnist who had first published it.  The public now knows that the Special Counsel knew the identity of that leaker — Richard Armitage, the former Deputy Secretary of State — from the very beginning of his investigation. [my emphasis]

Their bid to unseal these materials went on in highfalutin’ language about the public’s right to know, the importance of explaining to the public why Fitzgerald thought he needed Miller’s and Cooper’s testimony.

Unsealing the redacted portions of Jude Tatel’s opinion and the Special Counsel’s affidavits will enable the public to scrutinize the basis for this Court’s ruling that any common law reporter’s privilege was overcome.  Furthermore, it will help the public understand the basis for the appointment of the Special Counsel and the Special Counsel’s determination and argument that, notwithstanding Mr. Armitage’s revelation in October 2003, he viewed it necessary to compel testimony from Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper — and force the imprisonment of Ms. Miller — to fulfill his investigatory mandate.

Now, you’d think, what with all that language about the importance of helping the public to scrutinize the Court’s decisions and to understand Fitzgerald’s thinking, that’d be what Dow Jones and the AP would focus on when enough of those documents were unsealed to answer their questions, right? You’d think that, given that the affidavits clearly explained that Fitzgerald was still considering charges against Armitage in connection with the Novak leak–and that stories of Rove, Libby, and Armitage were all tied together in a knot of half truths–the news organizations would waste no time in either making those affidavits available to the public they care so much about, or at least reporting on those questions they claimed were so important and pressing that they should overcome grand jury rules. You’d think that, at the very least, those news organizations would rush out and admit they were wrong when they accused Fitzgerald of subpoenaing journalists for no reason.

But that’s not what happened.

This Is How It’s Done

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Tim Walberg is a really awful wingnutty Congressman whose district begins just spitting distance (emphasis on spitting) from my house. One of the local reporters, Susan Demas, had the balls to report that he refused to fire a campaign worker who pled guilty to child abuse, so the Congressman has basically frozen the newspaper out since then. Via the watchblog Walberg Watch, here is what Demas has to say about Walberg now.

U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg doesn’t like me and I don’t give a damn.

Neither should you.

Journalists and politicians often enjoy a testy, if not combative relationship; that’s nothing new.

They’re in the business of making themselves look good, raising cash and getting re-elected.

The press is in the business of reporting the truth about officials’ voting records, platforms, finances and campaign ads.

Naturally,these goals often clash. As a result, Walberg and his staff refuse toanswer my questions, provide information on his votes and inform me ofhis public events.

As an editor, I can’t even assign a reporterto cover something as simple as the Tipton Republican’s earmarks in thefederal budget – as was the case last week – because I’m not privy tohis press releases.

In short, I can’t do my job to inform the public Read more →

Fred Fielding Lied to the Press Yesterday

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The White House had a super-secret briefing yesterday in which they trotted out Fred Fielding, but then insisted he be referred to solely as a Senior Administration Official. Perhaps they insisted on the absurd background rules because they wanted to make Fred feel free to lie. And lie he did.

In the briefing, a journalist asked Fielding whether Bush’s invocation of privilege meant that he was protecting deliberations he, personally, was involved in.

Q    For any of you, I have a question about — as a non-legal scholar. My understanding is the evolution of the law, the executive privilege, that there are basically two forms of privilege that a president can claim.And I wanted to clarify: Is the President saying, by doing this, that he himself personally was in receipt of advice about the U.S. Attorney firings, and that’s why he’s invoking the privilege? The documents went to him; that his staff provided him with advice, and that’s what he’s protecting.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:  Oh no, no, that would be a misconstruction of the breadth of the executive privilege. What is related — deliberations, formulation of advice, performance of executive branch duties consistent with the President’s constitutional obligations.

Q    So he is Read more →

The WaPo’s Schizophrenia

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What a stark comparison. We’ve been treated to a four-day series unveiling the secrets of Cheney’s power. And in the same week, Eric Boehlert takes on the WaPo’s consistent attempt to belittle the Plame investigation, along with its absolute capitulation to the Libby Lobby.

Meanwhile, searching through the Nexisnews database going back more than 40 months, I cannot find a single outsidecontributor who was invited by the newspaper to write a piece that includedsustained criticism of Libby during the scandal. Since the Plame story brokebig in September 2003, the Posthas likely published more than 1,000 guest columns on all sorts of topics. None,however, was built around criticizing Libby or cheering Fitzgerald’sinvestigation. Not one.

By contrast, the newspaper has employedsomething of an open-door policy for outside contributors who want to use the paper’sopinion pages to belittle the Fitzgerald investigation, wallow in pity forLibby, and purposefully misstate the facts of the case. (More on that later.)

Boehlert’s got a stronger stomach than I, because he proceeds to examine the depths to which the WaPo was willing to go to help Libby’s cause.

Here’s the thing. Carol Leonnig is, IMO, the best mainstream reporter on this story. As the Cheney series proves, the WaPo can Read more →

David Sanger in the Aspen Grove

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