Bush Asserts Executive Privilege, Will Not Release Docs on Prosecutor Firings

President Bush on Thursday asserted executive privilege in rejecting Congressional subpoenas that require him to turn over documents that might provide information about the curious firings of several federal prosecutors, a move that has touched of bipartisan furor about the politicization of the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales. See here for more details.

Bush's attorney, Fred Fielding sent a letter to the House and Senate judiciary committees today explaining why the White House had decided to assert the privilege, a power claimed by the executive branch to resist investigations, for only the second time since Bush entered office in 2000. Full letter and White House's legal justification here (.pdf). A snippet:

"At the outset of this controversy, the President attempted to chart a course of cooperation. It was his intent that Congress receives information in a manner that accommodated Presidential prerogatives. The Department of Justice, for its part, has produced or made available for review more than 8,500 pages of documents, including scores of documents containing communications with White House personnel....

The President's assertion of Executive Privilege is not designed to shield information in a particular situation, but to help protect the ability of Presidents to ensure that decisions reflect and benefit from the exchange of informed and diverse viewpoints and open and frank deliberations."

In response, Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vermont), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had some stern words for the White House:

"This is a further shift by the Bush Administration into Nixonian stonewalling and more evidence of their disdain for our system of checks and balances....Increasingly, the President and Vice President feel they are above the law -- in America no one is above law."

On Wednesday, Leahy issued a separate set of subpoenas seeking information on the administration's warrantless wiretapping program that secretly snooped on American citizens. No word yet on whether the the demand, which has a July 18 deadline, will result in a third assertion of executive privilege. But considering that Leahy subpoenaed (.pdf) Vice President Dick Cheney's office, which has claimed not to be "an entity within the executive branch" in order to avoid oversight of classified documents, the demand sets up a fascinating showdown. Can executive privilege be asserted with regard to Cheney's office? Can Cheney's chief-of-staff and legal brain, David Addington, twist logic into even more magnificent knots? Stay tuned....