Following the refusal of the Department of Justice to prosecute contempt of Congress charges against Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten, the House Judiciary Committee has filed suit in federal court, seeking to enforce their subpoenas.
From a committee press release:
The Judiciary Committee, as plaintiff, is asking the Court to find the following:
(1) Ms. Miers is not "immune" from the obligation to appear before the Committee in response to a duly authorized, issued and served Committee subpoena;
(2) Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten must produce privilege logs identifying all documents withheld on grounds of executive privilege;
(3) Executive privilege does not cover documents not involving the President or undertaken directly in preparation for advising the President or whose contents are widely-known, previously released or previously the subject of extensive, authorized testimony, and that Ms. Miers’s and Mr. Bolten’s claims of executive privilege are, in any event, overcome by the Committee’s compelling need for the subpoenaed testimony and documents.
(4) that Ms. Miers is required to appear before the Committee to respond to questions put to her pertinent to the Investigation and to invoke executive privilege only if and when appropriate;
(5) that Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten are required to provide, as required by the subpoenas, a detailed privilege log, identifying by author, recipient, date and subject matter those documents responsive to the subpoena that have been withheld on executive privilege grounds;
(6) that Ms. Miers and Mr. Bolten are required to produce all non-privileged documents responsive to the subpoenas.
The case has been assigned D.C. District Court Judge John D. Bates.
Judge Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, was Deputy Independent Counsel for the Whitewater investigation from 1995 to mid-1997, ruled in 2002 to dismiss for lack of standing the GAO's suit seeking access to the Cheney Energy Task Force documents, and in 2006 upheld the validity of Bush's signature on an a bill not properly passed in the same form by both houses of Congress.
So, you know, it's all good. I'm sure it'll all come out in the wash.