WASHINGTON – Defying Senate Democrats, the Bush administration will withhold some documents written by Supreme Court nominee John Roberts while he worked for earlier Republican administrations, advisers to the White House said Sunday.
| Key documents, arguments and opinions from John Roberts legal career can be found at www.washingtonpost.com/supremecourt. |
The documents, written while Roberts worked in President Reagan’s White House and President George H.W. Bush’s Justice Department, will be withheld on grounds of attorney-client privilege, they said on Sunday news shows. But some Democratic senators disputed the need to keep them secret, and argued that precedent suggests they should be released.
Roberts, 50, worked in the Reagan White House counsel’s office from 1982-86. He served in the Justice Department of the first President Bush as principal deputy solicitor general.
Fred Thompson, a lawyer, actor and former Republican senator who is advising the nominee, said that releasing documents written while Roberts was deputy solicitor general would bring to light “internal documents, memos about ongoing recommendations and positions.”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he compared them to privileged conversations with a priest, a physician or a spouse.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, on “Fox News Sunday,” characterized the documents as “very sensitive, very deliberative information, not something that the administration or any White House would be inclined to share, because it is so sensitive.”
But Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, disputed that there was a lawyer-client privilege.
He said on ABC’s “This Week” that Chief Justice William Rehnquist, former federal appeals court judge Robert Bork, former Attorney General Edwin Meese III and others had given up documents written while they worked for the Justice Department.
“Those working in the solicitor general’s office are not working for the president,” Leahy said. “They’re working for you and me, and all the American people.”
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