Committee Chairmen Leahy,
Conyers Push For White House Cooperation
WASHINGTON –
(Wednesday, March 28) - Today, House and Senate Judiciary Committee
Chairmen John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) sent a
letter to the White House to encourage continued negotiations in
their ongoing U.S. Attorney oversight investigations. The Chairmen
wrote that the White House has not produced documents previously
offered and has not been forthcoming in efforts to negotiate
interviews with White House officials.
"When we met
recently, each of us agreed to continue to talk and keep the lines
of communication open," the Chairmen wrote. "Nevertheless, we have
not heard from you. It is now more than a week since the last set of
meetings and almost a week since you received March 23rd letters
from each of us inviting the White House to agree to provide the
investigating committees of the Congress, both House and Senate,
with access to witnesses, information and relevant documents."
The Chairmen
detailed their areas of interest in which the White House has failed
to respond, including: communication between the White House and the
Justice Department, further discussions on interviews with White
House officials; "internal" White House documents; and, newly
discussed communication that may have taken place under political
email addresses regarding official government business.
Regarding document
production, the letter states: "We hope that you will reconsider
your "all or nothing" approach with respect to documents you
identified that you would be willing to provide... In addition, we
have become increasingly sensitized over the last several days to
the White House staff wearing several "hats" and using Republican
National Committee and campaign e-mail addresses...Accordingly, we
trust that you will be collecting and producing e-mails and
documents from all e-mail accounts, addresses and domains and that
you are not artificially limiting your production to the official
White House e-mail and document retention system."
On interviews with
White House officials: "Senators Hatch and Sessions suggested that
the Committee proceed with preliminary interviews of the White House
senior staff and then consider whether to authorize subpoenas and
compel testimony. Given the terms included in your March 20 letter,
that seemed to us disingenuous, to appear to accept your limited
proposal and then ultimately to ignore the limitation that there be
no follow up testimony to the off-the-record interview you
demanded."
Both committees have
authorized subpoenas for White House and Justice officials, as well
as documents. Neither Chairman has issued subpoenas, as the
committees continue to focus first on negotiation and cooperation
with all parties involved as they move forward with the
investigations.
Text of the letter
is below. A
pdf version is also available.
March 28, 2007
Fred Fielding, Esq.
Counsel to the President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington,
D.C. 20500
Dear Mr. Fielding:
When we met recently, each of us
agreed to continue to talk and keep the lines of communication
open. Nevertheless, we have not heard from you. It is now more
than a week since the last set of meetings and almost a week since
you received March 23rd letters from each of us inviting
the White House to agree to provide the investigating committees of
the Congress, both House and Senate, with access to witnesses,
information and relevant documents.
As we have previously noted, political
influence in federal law enforcement is a serious matter. We need
to get to the bottom of what happened, why, how and who was involved
in the mass firings of United States attorneys; the criteria used to
retain U.S. Attorneys; and possible misstatements to Congress. The
fact that recent disclosures have called into question previous
statements made by the Attorney General and a high ranking
Department of Justice official asserted her fifth amendment rights
magnifies the need for a prompt, thorough, and fair investigation.
Allow us to share another step you
might consider. At the most recent Senate Judiciary Committee
business meeting, Senators from both sides of the aisle made a
number of statements seeking White House cooperation. Senator
Specter, the Committee’s Ranking Republican, said that despite what
you, the President and the President’s spokesman have been saying,
the President was, in fact, willing to negotiate. Senators Hatch
and Sessions suggested that the Committee proceed with preliminary
interviews of the White House senior staff and then consider whether
to authorize subpoenas and compel testimony. Given the terms
included in your March 20 letter, that seemed to us disingenuous, to
appear to accept your limited proposal and then ultimately to ignore
the limitation that there be no follow up testimony to the
off-the-record interview you demanded.
We do believe your willingness to
provide documents is worth pursuing. We hope that you will
reconsider your “all or nothing” approach with respect to documents
you identified that you would be willing to provide. We urge you to
provide all relevant documents without delay. The White House
documents to and from the Department of Justice and with third
parties, such as Republican state party officials, should be
provided without delay. You have acknowledged your willingness to
provide those to us previously.
That would narrow the dispute over
White House documents to those you refer to as “internal”. We
believe that these are important to our investigation, as well. For
example, if there is a memorandum or an e-mail from Karl Rove to
Harriet Miers initiating consideration of firing some United States
attorneys in order to impede an investigation, that would be very
important for the Committees to know. Thus, while we do not agree
with you that what you describe as “internal” White House documents
should be off limits, we recognize that you view them as a separate
category and you disagree whether those should be shared with the
Committees. Recognizing we have a dispute over those documents
should not delay the Committees receiving the other documents that
you indicate you are willing to provide.
If we can narrow our dispute, we may
then be able to work through it by agreeing, for example, that we
initially designate as “Committee Confidential” what you refer to as
“internal” White House documents. We could then consider a process
by which we would consult with you prior to making them public.
In addition, we have become
increasingly sensitized over the last several days to the White
House staff wearing several “hats” and using Republican National
Committee and campaign e-mail addresses. In fact, as Chairman
Waxman has recently pointed out, congressional investigations,
including this one, “have uncovered evidence that White House staff
have used nongovernmental e-mail accounts to conduct official
government business.”
As Chairman Waxman has also pointed
out, many exchanges between Jack Abramoff and White House officials
were conducted via non-government e-mail accounts. Indeed, he quotes
exchanges that suggest that Mr. Abramoff and White House officials
were using the nongovernmental accounts specifically to avoid
creating a White House “record” of the communications.
We hope you agree that such sleight of
hand should not be used to circumvent and compromise the
comprehensiveness of our investigation. In this matter we have
already received a document showing communications between D. Kyle
Sampson, the Attorney General’s former chief of staff, and J. Scott
Jennings, the Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director
of Political Affairs at the White House (who you offered for an
off-the-record interview), in which Mr. Jennings does not use his
White House e-mail account but an e-mail account at the Republican
National Committee designated “gwb43.com.” There is another,
similar use of a nongovernmental e-mail account in an exchange
including Mr. Jennings and Monica Goodling, the Justice Department
official who was the White House liaison and who recently invoked
her privilege against self incrimination.
Accordingly, we trust that you will be
collecting and producing e-mails and documents from all e-mail
accounts, addresses and domains and that you are not artificially
limiting your production to the official White House e-mail and
document retention system.
Again, we urge you to continue to work
with us so that we can achieve our mutual goal of getting to the
truth in this matter
Sincerely,
PATRICK LEAHY
JOHN CONYERS,
JR.
Chairman
Chairman
Senate Judiciary Committee
House Judiciary Committee
cc: The Hon. Arlen
Specter
The Hon. Lamar Smith
