I think you are wrong in that. They waived executive privilege claims in the Plame investigation. Bush and Cheney were interviewed, and many other White House officials appeared before the grand jury.
Presidents generally don’t want these claims to be tested by too high a court, because that might imperil this constitutional principle entirely.
In camera =! unsworn and off the record. All witnesses in this matter should be examined under oath and a transcript made of their testimony – which might or might not be made public later.
No, you’re neglecting the fact that I’m not talking about criminal proceedings at all: I’m talking about (a) congressional oversight, and (b) the possibility of high crimes and misdemeanors which aren’t necessarily enumerated in the criminal code.
What you mentioned doesn’t get into this territory: AFAYC, the White House is a black box with respect to these things.
The fact remains that there are a wide array of avenues for investigation and prosecution both. Such avenues must, though, take executive privilege seriously when such claims are judged valid.
:rolleyes: :dubious: I don’t have to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt, I’m not prosecuting him in court. (If only!) But for purposes of debate in this forum, the publicly known facts and the text of the statute speak for themselves:
Bush, in ordering Miers not to appear in response to a Congressional subpoena, to block investigation into a suspected conspiracy to draft the DoJ into a partisan political tool, is acting “corruptly” for purposes of these statutes.
How exactly are you using the term “standing”?! I don’t think it means what you think it does.
I think this side debate is unproductive.
If it were me posting that, I probably would have gone straight to the U.S. Code, and maybe given a little nod to the blogger in question. However, it is generally my preference here to work from source documents, and that is a preference only.
I had no trouble getting to the U.S. Code myself from the links provided. Of course, I found the argument not completely persuasive, given what I stated above.
In any case, it was a perfectly valid and productive addition to the debate, and I was glad to have it.
That’s pretty general. Care to get specific, with respect to the U.S. Attorney Purge investigation?
Specifically, I think it is an opening position, per John Mace above. This stakes out a position for a claim that will either be resolved through a settlement with the Judiciary Committee or by argument in federal court.
I have no idea - none - what you mean.
Sorry. See John Mace’s post #30.
That’s a bit more helpful, thanks. That was awhile back!
I believe it’s a negotiating ploy, but in a different sense than you have in mind. The currency isn’t information so much as the time required to acquire it. The more Bush takes the hardass position on giving up anything he’s asked for, the more likely it becomes that we get to election season next year before anyone has the goods to Chimpeach him with, and by then nobody will feel like being bothered with it.
BTW, none of this will get settled in court. The OLC opinion has already settled the question of whether the U.S. Attorney for D.C. will feel like prosecuting a contempt-of-Congress claim against anyone, so that’s out. And if the House goes either the inherent-contempt route, or goes directly to impeachment, the courts won’t be a factor.
I’d be grateful if you would bring the email you mentioned in post #97.
Unless you’d prefer to bring an acknowledgement that no such email exists, and you were only pretending, in order to advance your view that it is ridiculous to suppose that an argument that has ever been emailed can be entered into a debate and remain viable. I’d be grateful for that, too.
Nevertheless, I’m sure it will wind up in court – specifically, the SCOTUS – by one route or another, some time before this Admin ends.
Which is, I’m surmising, the entire point of the excercise, not to clarify, but to stall.
Given the Executive Privilege discussion in this thread, I know it must be almost impossible to overstate the damage to freewheeling Executive deliberations caused by the publication of the list of participants in Cheney’s 2001 energy task force meetings.
That is covered by different law,
That is covered by different law, 5 USC 552b, which spells out the situations under which a meeting of an advisory panel may be closed.
Caselaw testing this may be found by looking up Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Inc. v. Hillary Clinton. The court found that Clinton was acting as a government employee in heading up the panel, and thus the panel constituted an advisory committee that could have closed meetings.
Oh. And?
So please spell out how this has any relevance to the topic at hand, given my cite.
Remember that Cheney never formally asserted executive privilege in this matter, and that the records were opened to the public after action by the Supreme Court.