Capitol Hill probes White House role in firings

Congressional subpeonas portend a showdown over executive privilege.

By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 15, 2007 edition

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Washington - Sara Taylor was frustrated, and thought the time might be ripe for a little political revenge.

The date was Feb. 7, 2007. Ms. Taylor – then White House political director – had helped an administration colleague named Tim Griffin land the prestigious post of US attorney for eastern Arkansas. Trouble was, the job hadn't just been sitting open. To replace Mr. Griffin, the Bush team had fired the previous prosecutor in the position – Bud Cummins, a former chief counsel to the state's Republican governor.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Cummins didn't like getting the ax. He started complaining publicly about the way he'd been treated. But Taylor and some other White House officials saw this as disloyalty.

"I normally don't like attacking our friends, but since Bud Cummins is talking to everyone, why don't we tell the deal on him?" wrote Taylor in an e-mail to a top Justice Department official.

As a sheaf of just-released administration e-mails makes clear, White House officials were fully engaged in the response to the furor over fired US attorneys as it developed early this year.

Previously released documents and testimony by Justice Department officials show that former White House counsel Harriet Miers and other top Bush aides were aware of the effort to purge prosecutors before it began.

The House and Senate Judiciary Committees would like to know exactly how involved the White House was with the whole affair. So June 13 they issued subpoenas to try to compel both Taylor and Ms. Miers to appear at public hearings.

If the White House chooses to fight the subpoenas on grounds of executive privilege, the legal struggle might last until the end of the Bush presidency. Congressional investigators might be left poring over the existing record for further clues.

"The bread crumbs in this investigation have always led to 1600 Pennsylvania [Avenue]," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. John Conyers (D) of Michigan on June 13.

Miers resigned as President Bush's chief counsel this past January. She appears to have been a key voice pushing for attorney firings from the start.

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