Story here:
-
Will he show up this time?
-
What happens if he doesn’t?
-
What happens if he does?
-
Does it make any difference to the “executive privilege” argument that the Administration Rove served is no longer in office?
I say he shows up. He “forgot” a few things, “doesn’t recall remembering” a few others, and generally makes a mockery of the thing. Gonzo proved this works. All it got him was fired (and barely), and they can’t even do that to Rove. Does somebody have some hard evidence somewhere?
It’s nice to dream though…
As unpalatable as it would seem at first, if Obama pardoned him and removed the possibility of self-incrimination; could he, not then, be compelled to testify?
No. You can’t be pardoned involuntarily, and Rove would certainly be aware of the consequences of accepting a pardon.
Frog march! Frog march! Frog march!
He could be granted immunity by Congress for whatever he testifies to, though. So the Fifth Amendment couldn’t be used as an excuse.
Come to think of it, Turdblossom always has had rather a batrachian quality to him . . .
The Fifth mentions nothing about immunity or punishment, it merely states that nobody can be compelled to serve as a witness against his or herself in a criminal case.
But it has generally been interpreted to support a privilege against any self-incrimination under oath in any kind of proceeding (a privilege much older in Anglo-American law than the Fifth Amendment itself). Immunity simply takes the possibility of self-incrimination off the table.
What the hell does he hope to accomplish by that??
What else? Political cover.
Turdie’s hoping that the counsel will respond, with strong suggestion from the president, that his appearance would be unnecessary and unhelpful based on the fact that there are more pressing issues on which Congress needs to focus.
If the Obama administration is willing to sacrifice the law in favor of scoring points with the intractable Right, then up in flames the law will go. That’s the chance Rove and counsel are taking.
The “Executive Privilege” applies only to, oddly enough, the Executive. Bush is no longer the Executive. Obama is.
As discussed in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, there is some residual privilege, but much of it depends on the opinion of the current President. If Obama takes the view that he agrees with Conyers and doesn’t give a fig about Rove or his claims, Rove’s claim of executive privilege will be greatly reduced, if not shredded. If, however, Obama says that he agrees with Rove and that he wants to support the claim of executive privilege, the privilege is much stronger. So much of how Rove is going to play this depends on the stance the current Executive takes.
I’m kinda guessing that Conyers checked in with the new administration before issuing that subpeona
Hmm . . . It doesn’t say whether, or how, Greg Craig replied to Luskin.
How will he reply?
Utterly irrelevant.
The whole point of executive privilege is that it belongs to the executive. Bush’s guidance was to assert the privilege. Now that Obama is The Man, he has the right to continue or change that policy.
Rove did the right thing before in following Bish’s guidance, and he’s doing the right thing now in asking for Obama’s guidance.
He will be doing the wrong thing if Obama says, “Yes, tell 'em everything,” and he still refuses for the reason of executive privilege.
Rove may have done the right thing in complying with Bush’s claim of privilege, but he went about it in what seems to me to be totally the wrong way—he simply chose not to comply with a legally issued subpoena rather than either responding to the subpoena and then asserting privilege as to specific questions, or by Bush moving to quash. To me, that’s a big deal-It suggests that he just didn’t want to play by the rules, rather than wanting to assert a legal privilege.
IANAL, but as I understand it, the standard view is that few privileges are absolute (i.e. protects from any kind of testimony, rather than just protecting privileged materials) and the argument that executive privilege is absolute as to advisors is weak at best, and was rejected in district court last year.
Agreed.
Not necessarily. It’s also possible that Bush wanted to force a court decision that validated an expanded vision of the privilege. By such actions is new case law made. The case-or-controversy requirement essentially forces this mode upon those seeking to expand, via case law, the state of the law.
I never thought about the pardon process… at what stage does a person accept/reject the pardon? If Prisoner 24601 declined a pardon, could the jail kick him out anyway?
Do you have any evidence whatsoever that Bush wanted that? Any?
On pretty much every other issue, from FISA to Guantanamo to his “unitary executive” theories, signing statements, torture, and others, Bush went out of his way to avoid any judicial decision on his … inventive… legal opinions. Why in heavens name would you even think that he might have wanted a court decision when he avoided them like the plague for 8 years?
Too late to edit; answering my own question.
Excerpted from an article considering whether or not Libbey should have accepted a pardon (had one been offered). It touches on *Burdick v. United States *(1915), and *United States v. Wilson *(1833).
Rest of the article here.