WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday approved contempt of Congress citations against White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers for their refusal to cooperate with an investigation into the mass firings of U.S. attorneys and allegations that administration officials sought to politicize the Justice Department.
The House voted 223-32 in favor of the citations, the first against the executive branch since the Reagan administration. The vote came after a morning of tense partisan fights over procedural motions and bickering over parliamentary rules, capped by most House Republicans walking off the floor and refusing to vote. Republicans said the chamber should instead be approving a surveillance law passed by the Senate and supported by President Bush.
But Democrats said they were left with no choice but to engage in a constitutional showdown with Bush because he has refused for nearly a year to allow any current or former West Wing staff members to testify in the congressional inquiry. Citing executive privilege, the president has offered their testimony only if it is taken without transcripts and not under oath.
“This is beyond arrogance. This is hubris taken to the ultimate degree,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in the debate’s closing moments.
The contempt resolution against Bolten cites his refusal to turn over subpoenaed documents and e-mails sought by the House Judiciary Committee in its now yearlong investigation into the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. Miers was cited for refusing to testify after she was subpoenaed to appear before the panel last summer about her role in the dismissals.
By law, the contempt citations now go to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeffrey Taylor, but the White House and Justice Department have said that no executive branch employee would face a grand jury inquiry.
Testifying at his confirmation hearings last October, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said that current and former White House officials who refused to testify in a congressional inquiry likely did so based on the Justice Department’s ruling that Bush’s assertion of executive privilege was proper. That meant the Justice Department could not now criminally charge someone for defying Congress based on its own prior legal advice, he said.
The resolutions approved by the House contain a second mechanism that, if Mukasey and Taylor refuse to impanel a grand jury, would allow the House general counsel to file a civil lawsuit in federal courts seeking a declaratory judgment against Bolten and Miers that would compel their congressional testimony.
Republicans said the Judiciary Committee should instead accept the White House’s offer of limited testimony to learn as much as they can before Bush leaves office next year.
“I don’t think throwing the president’s chief of staff in jail is going to do the trick,” said Rep. James Sensenbrenner, Wis., a senior Republican on the committee.
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