WASHINGTON--The House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena Tuesday to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, demanding that the Justice Department turn over hundreds of pages of new or uncensored records related to the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year.
The subpoena is the first served in connection with the dismissals, and it escalates the legal confrontation between Democrats and the Bush administration, which has resisted demands for more documents and for public testimony from White House aides. It comes just a week before the embattled attorney general is scheduled to testify before the Senate, a hearing widely considered crucial to his attempt to keep his job.
House and Senate committees have authorized a series of subpoenas in recent weeks as part of their investigations of the prosecutor firings, but have not issued one until now.
“We have been patient in allowing the department to work through its concerns regarding the sensitive nature of some of these materials,” Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., the judiciary panel’s chairman, wrote Gonzales in a letter that accompanied the subpoena. “Unfortunately, the department has not indicated any meaningful willingness to find a way to meet our legitimate needs.”
The administration immediately signaled that it might oppose the demand. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said that the administration would like “to reach an accommodation with the Congress” but may fight the subpoena if an agreement cannot be negotiated.
“Much of the information that the Congress seeks pertains to individuals other than the U.S. attorneys who resigned,” Roehrkasse said. “Furthermore, many of the documents Congress is now seeking have already been available to them for review. Because there are individual privacy interests implicated by publicly releasing this information, it is unfortunate the Congress would choose this option.”
Seven U.S. attorneys were fired Dec. 7, and another was dismissed earlier in the year, as part of a plan that originated in the White House to replace some prosecutors based in part on their perceived disloyalty to President Bush and his policies. The uproar over the removals has grown amid allegations that GOP lawmakers had improper political contact with prosecutors and claims by Democrats that the firings may have been an attempt to disrupt public corruption investigations.
The subpoena issued Tuesday demands that Gonzales turn over the requested material by 2 p.m. Monday, according to a copy released by the House committee. It seeks full copies of some documents that were censored when they were previously released to Congress.
One key example is a chart compiled by D. Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’s then-chief of staff, that in March 2005 evaluated all 93 U.S. attorneys. A copy turned over to Congress was blacked out except for information on the eight prosecutors who were eventually fired.
The committee also wants hundreds of pages of Justice Department documents that congressional staffers have been allowed to examine without taking notes, as well as any other records related to the firings.
The administration characterized the subpoena as unreasonable and focused on information not germane to the U.S. attorney dismissals.
“I think the Justice Department has been working very hard to be fully responsive to the request, as the president asked them to do,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.
The issuance of a subpoena is the first step in a long process that has rarely reached a clear legal conclusion in the past, according to experts. If the administration refuses to comply with the subpoena, the judiciary committee could issue a citation for contempt of Congress, followed by a similar citation from the full Congress. That would then require the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia--a former Gonzales aide--to empanel a grand jury to consider criminal indictments.
In almost all cases, administrations have chosen to fully or substantially comply with such requests before the start of criminal proceedings. In 1998, for example, a GOP-led House committee issued a contempt citation to then-Attorney General Janet Reno for refusing to turn over internal Justice Department memos. Justice offered a staff briefing on the documents, and the full House never acted on the citation.
“I’m not sure how the administration could win on this claim, in terms of keeping those documents,” said Martin Lederman, a Georgetown University law professor who worked in Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel from 1994 to 2002.
Gonzales is scheduled to appear Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He has retreated from public view since last week to take part in intensive preparations for the testimony.
Senate Democrats also took another step Tuesday to expand the scope of the probe beyond the U.S. attorney dismissals themselves. Wisconsin’s two Democratic senators, Russell Feingold and Herb Kohl, joined other members in demanding records and other information about a federal public corruption case in that state, according to a letter they sent to Gonzales.
A federal appeals court in Chicago last week ordered a former Wisconsin state employee released after overturning her conviction.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., also wrote to a senior Justice Department official Tuesday requesting information showing “any political pressure” by the Justice Department or White House on the Minneapolis U.S. attorney’s office. Three senior prosecutors abruptly relinquished their management positions there last week, saying they could no longer work with the new U.S. attorney, Rachel Paulose, a former Gonzales aide who is the nation’s youngest chief federal prosecutor.
