House Votes To Hold Bush Aides in Contempt
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
WASHINGTON — The House voted yesterday to hold two of President Bush’s confidants in contempt for failing to cooperate with an inquiry into whether a purge of federal prosecutors was politically motivated. Angry Republicans boycotted the vote and staged a walkout. The vote was 223–32 to hold White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and a former White House counsel, Harriet Miers, in contempt. The citations charge Ms. Miers with failing to testify and accuse her and Mr. Bolten of refusing Congress’s demands for documents related to the 2006-2007 firings.
Republicans said Democrats should instead be working on extending a law — set to expire Saturday — allowing the government to eavesdrop on phone calls and emails in America in cases of suspected terrorist activity.
“We have space on the calendar today for a politically charged fishing expedition, but no space for a bill that would protect the American people from terrorists who want to kill us,” the minority leader, Rep. John Boehner, a Republican of Ohio, said.
“Let’s just get up and leave,” he told his colleagues, before storming out of the House chamber with scores of Republicans in tow.
The vote, which Democrats had been threatening for months, was the latest wrinkle in a more than year-long constitutional clash between Congress and the White House. The administration says the information being sought is off-limits under executive privilege, and argues that Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers are immune from prosecution. Democrats said they were acting to protect Congress’s constitutional prerogatives.
If Congress didn’t enforce the subpoenas, said Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the no. 2 Democrat, it would “be giving its tacit consent to the dangerous idea of an imperial presidency, above the law and beyond the reach of checks and balances.”
The White House said the Justice Department would not ask the U.S. attorney to pursue the House contempt charges. However, the measure would allow the House to bring its own lawsuit on the matter. It is the first time in 25 years that a full chamber of Congress has voted on a contempt of Congress citation, and the White House quickly pointed out that it was the first time that such action had been taken against top White House officials who had been instructed by the president to remain silent to preserve executive privilege.
