Legal News

Washington Watchdog Group Sues Dick Cheney Over VP Papers

By Dan Slater

Dick Cheney waves upon arrival in Kiev, Ukraine, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008. (AP Photo/Sergei Chuzavkov)

Beltway insiders, which we are not, may know about CREW, or the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Yesterday, the organization introduced itself to Vice President Dick Cheney — with a lawsuit. CREW, along with two historians and three organizations of historians and archivists, filed a complaint against Cheney, the Office of the Vice President, the archivist and the National Archives and Records Administration, challenging their exclusion of a majority of Cheney’s papers from the Presidential Records Act. Click here for the report on CREW’s Web site, where you’ll find a link to the suit. Here’s an AP report.

The suit stems from Cheney’s position that his office is not part of the executive branch of government. A spokesman for Cheney, Jamie Hennigan, told the AP that the office of the vice president follows the PRA and will continue to follow the requirements of the law. He said that includes turning over vice presidential records to the National Archives at the end of the term.

Two months ago, reports the AP, Cheney chief of staff David Addington told Congress the vice president belongs to neither the executive nor legislative branch of government, but rather is attached by the Constitution to Congress.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 09, 2008 (boomark / email).