The Political Chase

Fielding Letter to Judiciary Committees

The letter White House Counsel Fred Fielding sent to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees stating the White House would not allow Rove, Miers, et al to testify under oath can be read here.

An issue missed in House hearings on FBI abuses

I watched yesterday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on the FBI’s abuse of national security letters to collect personal data, and a key point, in my opinion, was not addressed. Members of the committee did not fully question witnesses on when did the FBI start taking corrective actions for known abuses? The answers to when the FBI took corrective actions goes to the credibility of the FBI’s intent or ability to adequately resolve the issues.

FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni and Inspector General Glenn Fine fielded questions and admonishments from the committee on the FBI’s abuse of collecting telephone, email and financial records of thousands of individuals in the U.S. The abuse was recently revealed in a report issued by the FBI Inspector General, which took approximately one year to compile. Caproni and Fine’s testimony made it clear that several problems were recognized many months before the report was issued; however, their statements strongly indicated remedial action was not taken until just prior to or immediately after the report was released.

If senior FBI officials, including General Counsel Caproni, knew there were issues, why did they not take immediate action rather than wait until they knew the problems would be made public?

Furthermore, Caproni repeatedly said new procedures and policies would be put in place to correct all the abuses; FBI Director Mueller recently made the same promises. But, these promises have been made several times before by Mueller and George Bush. Since there is no real oversight of the FBI’s use of the national security letters until substantially after the fact, are we supposed to believe their commitments have more credibility than in the past?

18 Day Gap in Justice Department Documents

Remember the 18-minute gap in the Watergate tapes? Well, one of Josh Marshall’s readers found an 18-day gap in the documents the Justice Department sent Congress yesterday.

Oops..

I think a commenter in our document dump research thread may have been the first to notice that the emails released by the Justice Department seem to have a gap between November 15th and December 4th of last year.

So, the President’s proposal yesterday was reasonable?

David Iglesias speaks out

David Iglesias, the fired U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, says why he was fired in a New York Times op-ed.

House committee approves subpoenas

The House Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law approved issuing subpoenas to senior White House officials today.

A House panel on Wednesday approved subpoenas for President Bush’s political adviser, Karl Rove and other top White House aides, setting up a constitutional showdown over the firings of eight federal prosecutors.

The panel also voted to compel the production of documents related to the firings from those officials and Gonzales, Fielding and White House chief of staff Joshua Bolton. Fielding a day earlier refused to provide Congress internal White House communications on the subject.

Pending Committee Chairman John Conyers’ (D-MI) approval, the issue will now go before the full House Judiciary Committee to authorize the subpoenas.