The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to hold the White House in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with its subpoenas for information and testimony related to the 2006 firings of nine U.S. attorneys.
The panel voted 12-7 to hold White House adviser Karl Rove and White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten in contempt of Congress.
The contempt resolutions now move to the Senate floor, where passage is not as certain. On Thursday afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the contempt citations won't come to the floor before lawmakers leave town, but he added they will "take a look" at them when they return in January. He also said he would look "very favorably" at bringing the motion to the Senate floor.
Two prominent Republicans, ranking member Arlen Specter (Pa.) and Chuck Grassley (Iowa), voted in favor of the resolutions, saying they did so to maintain congressional oversight power over the executive branch.
The panel issued subpoenas to Bolten in June and to Rove in late July, seeking testimony and information in an investigation into the prosecutors’ firings and whether the Department of Justice had become improperly politicized. The probe ultimately resulted in former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s resignation and caused several top officials at the Department of Justice to step down.
Leahy has said that Bolten produced none of the White House documents compelled by subpoena, and Rove failed to appear before the committee to testify as required by subpoena after the White House claimed that he was immune from testifying.
House Democrats already have moved forward with contempt charges against the White House. In early November, Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) readied a contempt-of-Congress citation against the White House for failing to comply with subpoenas for documents and testimony from Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers. Conyers filed the contempt resolution with the clerk of the House.
The House contempt vote may come next week or be pushed into January as Democrats struggle to finish their work before Christmas.
If Democrats pass the measure and the White House continues to assert executive privilege to deny the access, a constitutional showdown between the two branches eventually could reach the Supreme Court.
