Constitutional Law

Judiciary Committee Files Civil Suit Against Miers and Bolton for Contempt of Congress

The House Committee on the Judiciary has filed a civil suit [PDF] seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten for refusing to comply with the Committee's subpoenas for testimony and documents.

The Committee on the Judiciary filed the lawsuit after Attorney General Mukasey ordered the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to ignore the House of Representatives' directive to convene a grand jury to examine contempt charges against Miers and Bolton. ACSBlog reviewed a CRS Report that examined Congress's inherent and statutory contempt powers.

According to the complaint, the subpoenas arise out of an investigation of "allegations of malfeasance, abuse of authority and violations of existing laws by Executive Branch Personnel." Specifically, the complaint alleges that "U.S. Attorneys who failed to return desired indictments or failed to bring voter fraud prosecutions that were considered politically useful to the Administration were forced to resign; that U.S. Attorneys who prosecuted officeholders allied with the Administration were forced to resign; and that U.S. Attorneys who prosecuted the Administration's political opponents were retained."

Miers and Bolton refused to attend hearings examining the matter, despite being subpoenaed to do so, citing executive privilege.

The Judiciary Committee asked Court to make the following findings:

(1) Ms. Miers is not “immune” from the obligation to appear before the committee in response to a duly authorized, issued and served committee subpoena;

(2) Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten must produce privilege logs identifying all documents withheld on grounds of executive privilege;

(3) Executive privilege does not cover documents not involving the president or undertaken directly in preparation for advising the president or whose contents are widely-known, previously released or previously the subject of extensive, authorized testimony, and that Ms. Miers’s and Mr. Bolten’s claims of executive privilege are, in any event, overcome by the committee’s compelling need for the subpoenaed testimony and documents.

(4) That Ms. Miers is required to appear before the committee to respond to questions put to her pertinent to the investigation and to invoke executive privilege only if and when appropriate;

(5) That Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten are required to provide, as required by the subpoenas, a detailed privilege log, identifying by author, recipient, date and subject matter those documents responsive to the subpoena that have been withheld on executive privilege grounds;

(6) That Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten are required to produce all non-privileged documents responsive to the subpoenas.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on March 10, 2008 (boomark / email).