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By Elana Schor
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Posted: 07/27/07 05:47 PM [ET] |
Senior Senate Democrats on Thursday called for a special prosecutor to investigate Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for possible perjury, opening a second front in the constitutional clash between Congress and the White House.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) refrained from joining the special-prosecutor plea made by four of his panel members, instead firing off a new subpoena to senior White House adviser Karl Rove. Citing evidence that Rove and fellow aides played a role in last year’s firings of U.S. attorneys, Leahy appealed to the administration to reconsider its refusal to cooperate.
“If there are any cooler heads at the White House, I urge them to reconsider the course that they have taken, because there is a cloud over the White House and a gathering storm,” Leahy said on the Senate floor.
The four senators issued their call just one day after the House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to hold President Bush’s chief of staff and former White House counsel in contempt of Congress for not cooperating in the attorneys probe.
The four Democratic Judiciary members remained aghast at Gonzales’s testimony on Tuesday, when the embattled attorney general appeared to reverse himself several times under questioning. In requesting an independent prosecutor,
Democrats chiefly noted inconsistencies between Gonzales’s testimony and that of James Comey, former deputy attorney general, about Comey’s disapproval of legal authority for the administration’s warrantless domestic eavesdropping.
Gonzales told senators this week that a March 2004 briefing for the “Gang of Eight,” the bicameral leaders and intelligence panel chairmen who typically receive top-secret briefings, dealt with Comey’s concerns but not with the surveillance program that President Bush has publicly confirmed.
Yet the four Democrats noted that Gen. Michael Hayden, now CIA director, and John Negroponte, now deputy secretary of state, both have contradicted Gonzales’s assertions in public statements.
“I have never seen an attorney general so contemptuous of Congress and his role as the chief law enforcement officer,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told reporters.
Feinstein, along with Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), asked Solicitor General Paul Clement to name a special prosecutor outside of the Justice Department. Clement became the department’s point man for the U.S. attorneys probe after Gonzales’s recusal.
Schumer said the Democratic quartet notified Leahy and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) of their plans. Leahy has taken a softer approach to the latest unraveling of relations with Gonzales, giving him one week to clarify the apparent discrepancies in his sworn testimony before the Justice inspector general is asked to look into the matter.
Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the senior Republican on Judiciary, pointed to Leahy’s decision to stay out of the Democratic effort and blasted the special-prosecutor plea as politically motivated. While not endorsing Leahy’s call to bring in an inspector general, Specter echoed the Vermonter’s plan to look at the record before making any judgment on perjury.
“Sen. Schumer’s not interested in looking at the record,” Specter said. “He is interested in throwing down the gauntlet to make tomorrow’s newspapers.”
Specter suggested that the White House may be on the verge of extending an olive branch to Judiciary members who have rejected presidential counsel Fred Fielding’s offer of private interviews with Rove and other sought-after officials but no transcript, oath or future subpoenas. Specter said a senior White House official has called him to discuss negotiations but declined to name who it was.
Still, Specter added, those talks may not go far unless Democrats dial back their subpoena threats.
“The White House is not going to negotiate with the ranking member on the committee. It wants to negotiate with the committee,” he said.
As to the confusion over the 2004 briefing — which has raised the possibility of a second eavesdropping program that the White House has never publicly confirmed — Specter suggested going directly to the Gang of Eight members at that time.
Conversations with those sitting and former lawmakers, including former Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) “has to proceed, to find out what the facts are,” Specter said. He noted that only Democratic members have spoken out so far, all of them condemning Gonzales for telling mistruths about the 2004 briefing.
Senators on both sides were far from optimistic that Clement would agree to name a special prosecutor. Schumer said he has spoken to Leahy about a potential resurrection of the Watergate-era independent counsel law, which Congress allowed to expire in 1999 after a wave of very costly investigations that bore little fruit.
Reid told reporters that he strongly supports the special prosecutor request, echoing his caucus members’ highly charged reference to Gonzales as a liar.
“Some of the bantering going back and forth … recognizes the fact that even Republicans think he has not been leveling with the committee,” Reid said.
But Reid agreed with Feinstein and others that bringing back independent counsels might be a bridge too far.
“I’m not speaking for the caucus, for sure. But I wasn’t a big fan of the independent counsel,” Reid said.
Meanwhile, White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters on Air Force One that Bush believes Gonzales’s testimony was consistent and remains confident in his performance.
“I think at some point this is going to be something where members are going to have to go behind closed doors and have a fuller discussion of the issues,” Snow said.
Jonathan Turley, a senior professor at George Washington University Law School, said the lack of an independent-counsel law makes conducting the ever-expanding inquiry more difficult but no less necessary.
“In the interest of justice, the attorney general should work with Congress to create an independent avenue,” Turley said in an interview. “If the attorney general opposes a special counsel, it will dramatically add to the impression that the administration is trying to obstruct Congress in its constitutional duties.”
Manu Raju and Klaus Marre contributed to this report.
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