Kagro has been tracking the passage of the new House rules package over at his new digs. As he described earlier, John Conyers stuck something in the new rules that will allow the House Judiciary Committee to continue its lawsuit against Harriet Miers and Bolten to get their testimony in the US Attorney scandal.
One nice goody buried in the new House Rules package: the House will authorize the Judiciary Committee to continue its lawsuit seeking to enforce its subpoenas and contempt of Congress citations against Bush White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers.
Technically, Miers and Bolten were in contempt of the 110th Congress. But with its adjournment, the 110th Congress no longer exists, so there’s nothing to be in contempt of, nor any plaintiff in the lawsuit. The courts had indicated that this might give them cause to moot the whole case and drop it. But the Rules package specifically authorizes the Judiciary Committee in the new 111th Congress to continue the suit. And we had earlier word that the 111th was considering reissuing those subpoenas.And, as Kagro now points out (now that the rules have passed), there’s a little bomblet in there specific to Rove.
There’s one more juicy nugget in the rules package that just passed. Regarding the Judiciary Committe’s power to continue its suit against Miers and Bolten.
From Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s fact sheet (PDF):
In addition, it authorizes the Judiciary Committee and General Counsel to add as a party to the lawsuit any individual subpoenaed by the Committee in the 110th Congress who failed to comply.
Who else was subpoenaed by the Judiciary Committee in the 110th Congress and failed to comply? Karl Rove and Michael Mukasey.Nice going, Chairman Conyers and Speaker Pelosi.In other words, Rove – and Michael Mukasey, who refused to turn over documents particularly relating to the Siegelman prosecution – is about to get added to HJC’s lawsuit forcing him to testify before House Judicial Committee in the 111th Congress.
This is actually big news, big news. I think the American people need to see in bold relief the truth about Bush’s White House. And I’d like for them to see the truth about how the right wing media was a part of that. The best place to show that would be at the interface – Karl Rove himself. There’s no better place to do that than the U.S. Attorney firings scandal. That little piece of work effectively took out the Department of Justice arm of the Republican Party. But it stopped short of the top – the link into the White House via Harriet Miers and Karl Rove [AKA Mr. Fox News]. Outside of the term of the Bush Administration, it’s going to be hard for Executive Privilege to matter. Since they’ve never testified, I can’t see Bush pardoning them. There’s nothing to pardon. While I would personally prefer a Special Prosecutor as a more appropriate way to investigate something as big as what is alleged in this case, a Congressional Hearing would be a fine start [followed by a Special Prosecutor]. This case shows the Bush Administration’s true colors as well as any…
Am I dreaming?
[…] reissue the subpoenas of Miers, Bolten, and Rove. I would expect to see it reported in the blogs [still hope…, The Little Bomblet for Turdblossom in the New Rules], but for it to be in the Vegas paper […]