All the way back in April, three long months ago, the House judiciary committee requested (but did not issue subpoenas for) copies of emails from administration officials that had been sent from (or to) email accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee.
A couple days ago, administration counsel Emmet Flood informed the RNC and Congress it was the position of the White House those emails were covered under the President's recently invoked "Executive Privilege" order. The RNC followed shortly after by indicating it would abide with the administrations desires, and not make the emails available.
Now, subpoenas have not yet been issued but they have been approved, meaning they could be issued at anytime, including today. If so, it will be an additional log on the fire which is beginning to flame between Congress and the White House over how far Executive Privilege actually reaches.
I can't see any reasonable interpretation in which the RNC emails can be protected. One of two scenarios must apply:
1. The emails in question do not involve official administration business. If so, then they can't possibly be protected under executive privilege guidelines.
2. The emails in question do involve official administration business, in which case the administration is in clear violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. If this is the case, the investigation becomes a criminal investigation, and precedent has established Executive Privilege does not apply in the face of criminal investigations (here and here). As an extra-special added bonus, the Act explicitly states it applies to the office of the Vice President too, no matter what branch of government it resides in for any given day of the week.
So the White House is either admitting to criminal behavior on its part or willfully obstructing a legal request (and one it knows is legal) for documents. There is no third option. Personally, I'm going with the latter choice -- even this administration, with it's noted propensity for grandiose claims leavened with a large dollop of stupidity isn't going to freely admit it's been violating the law.
Issue the subpoenas and ask for an expedited decision. Lets get the farce over with.
Update: Speaking of Republican obstructionism, Anonymous Liberal has an excellent post about a different (but related) form of it. ALs post references another excellent post on the matter, this one by Hilzoy.
Update: Earlier today (July 13), subpoenas were issued to the RNC for the requested information.
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5 comments:
Admittedly, I haven't put a lot of effort into this, nor am I too heavily invested, but don't you think that a highly partisan congressional committee requesting confidential information of a potentially unlimited scope from the other Party's campaign arm is an extremely bad precedent?
Were the situation reversed, I would suspect that there would be a tremendous hue and cry from the media, say if the justice department wanted to open up DNC correspondence to see what they knew about William Jefferson and when they knew it.
The justice department would be a model of objectivity, at least in comparison with the current House Judiciary.
I would tell Conyers to stick it too, even if I didn't have anything to hide.
You make an interesting point. The counter point is the administration and RNC put themselves in this position by allowing so much business (likely some of it official) to be carried out over RNC servers.
By the way, the precedent was set over a decade ago:
"White House, DNC Files Subpoenaed -- Justice Dept. Task Force Seeks Records Related to Party Fund-Raisers, Donors --
By Ruth Marcus and Susan Schmidt
The Justice Department task force investigating Democratic campaign contributions has issued wide-ranging subpoenas to the White House and the Democratic National Committee for all records relating to a host of party fund-raisers and donors whose activities have been the focus of a controversy besetting the Clinton administration for the last three months, according to sources familiar with the documents. (Washington Post, Dec. 20, 1996"
While there is no question the DNC dragged its feet in making the requested documents available, they did, in fact, make them available.
Sirocco,
I'll grant you that, but a Justice Department request(which was run by a Clinton appointee), and a partisan and politicized House Judiciary request are light years apart in terms of degree.
Get a grand jury together, get a scope of what is needed, and get an indictment. If you cannot do that, you have no business snooping around the RNC's records. Quite frankly a small majority in the House should not give license for access the other party's campaign records and information.
And you know that to disclose embarrassing items from this area is all that is wanted and can be obtained by such a search anyway.
Be careful with the precedents you set, because they will ALWAYS come back to bite you. That whole "special prosecutor" thing turned out well for Democrats, didn't it. Filibustering of judges will be another road you will wish you hadn't been down as well.
Democrats had better start working for the people instead of continuing these silly investigations that few are aware or care about, or that 2008 advantage may start to slip. Unless the supposed scandal involves sex or murder, few care. Sad, but true.
Working with people goes both ways, and frankly, Dems have done a lot more on that end then Reps have.
The subpoenas issued (they were just issued earlier today) have nothing whatsoever to do with the RNCs fundraising lists or campaign records. They do have something to do with gathering material related to firing the US attorneys. It only applies to emails, nothing else. Frankly, if the administration has properly followed the law, the sum total of emails on the matter will be 0.
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