By Klaus Marre
The Hill
Tuesday 14 August 2007
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), at the urging of the panel's ranking member, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), on Tuesday requested a meeting with President Bush to hammer out a deal that would allow key White House aides to testify before the panel on the firing of several U.S. attorneys.
Leahy indicated that this is a last-ditch effort, saying that his previous efforts to get the White House to cooperate have failed to yield results.
"The stonewalling leaves me and the Senate Judiciary Committee with few options other than considering citations for contempt of Congress against those who have refused to provide relevant testimony and documents to the Congress," he said.
Leahy noted that Specter, who is unhappy with the conditions the White House wants to place on testimony from top aides but has been seeking to reach a compromise, urged him to contact the president directly.
While Democrats want the aides to testify as any other witness would, White House Counsel Fred Fielding has made a "take it or leave it" offer that would place severe restrictions on any such testimony. The administration does not want the staffers to be placed under oath and said there should be no transcript of the conversation between the lawmakers and the White House aides.
The text of the letter is below.
August 14, 2007
The Honorable George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. President:
For the last several months, I have been seeking the voluntary cooperation of the White House with the efforts of the Senate Judiciary Committee to get to the bottom of the scandal surrounding the firing of so many of the United States Attorneys you had appointed. If, as the testimony has indicated, this is about extending improper political influence into our justice system and then misleading Congress and the American people about that political corruption of law enforcement, I hope you would agree this is a grave matter.
The accumulated evidence shows that the list of those to be fired was compiled based on input from the political ranks in the White House and that the reasons publicly given for these firings were contrived as part of a cover up. Recently during his sworn testimony, Attorney General Gonzales himself contrasted these politically-motivated firings with the replacement of other United States Attorneys for "legitimate cause."
I have sent numerous letters to your White House counsel to no avail. For example, in a May 16 letter to Fred Fielding I outlined some of the indications of Karl Rove's involvement. Yet, all of my good faith efforts have been rebuffed. The stonewalling leaves me and the Senate Judiciary Committee with few options other than considering citations for contempt of Congress against those who have refused to provide relevant testimony and documents to the Congress.
Senator Specter has urged me to write to you directly and suggest that we sit down together to work out our differences with respect to this matter. That is the purpose of this letter.