Politics

Oversight Committee Reports Criticizing President?s Assertion of Executive Privilege

By Karina

“Creative is a good word to describe it,” said Mark Rozell, another executive-privilege expert who is a professor at George Mason University’s School of Public Policy, about the attorney general’s contention. “This is really an argument to protect the White House’s own political interests and save it from embarrassment.”
“Closing the Door”, Newsweek, 7/16/08

Today, the Oversight committee released two draft reports the Committee plans to consider next week. The first is a bipartisan report finding that President Bush made a ?legally unprecedented and an inappropriate use of executive privilege? in directing Attorney General Mukasey to withhold Special Counsel Fitzgerald?s interview of Vice President Cheney from the Committee:

On a bipartisan basis, the Committee finds that the President?s assertion of executive privilege over the report of the Vice President?s interview was legally unprecedented and an inappropriate use of executive privilege. The assertion of executive privilege prevents the Committee from having access to a complete set of records and thus results in the Committee?s inability to assess fully the actions of the Vice President.

Read the full report>>

The second is a report from Chairman Waxman criticizing the President?s assertion of executive privilege in the Committee?s investigation into recent climate change and Clean Air Act decisions:

Congress has a compelling legislative and oversight need for documents withheld from the Committee. The documents withheld pursuant to the President?s assertion of executive privilege are critical to determining the role of the White House in Administrator Johnson?s waiver and ozone decisions, whether White House actions with respect to these decisions were in compliance with Clean Air Act requirements, and whether any additional legislation is necessary to ensure the goals of the Act are effectuated properly in the future.

The President?s assertion of executive privilege covers is expansive. It covers any communications that occurred within the White House, no matter how attenuated the connection between the staff authoring the communications and the presidential decision making process. At the same time, the Administration has barred a key EPA official from responding to Committee questions about these communications and has refused to provide the Committee basic information about the authorship and distribution of the documents that would enable the Committee to assess the merits of the privilege claim and whether further accommodations could be achieved. The assertion of executive privilege under these circumstances has stymied the Committee?s investigation of the waiver and ozone decisions.

For these reasons, the Committee finds that the President?s assertion of executive privilege is wrong and an abuse of the privilege.

Read the full report>>

Learn more from the Oversight Committee web site>>

Full post as published by The Gavel on October 14, 2008 (boomark / email).