Now here's a tough decision:
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is urging a former White House political director to ignore a subpoena and not testify before Congress about the firings of federal prosecutors, her lawyer says.
The Senate Judiciary Committee wants to hear from Sara Taylor at its hearing Wednesday and she is willing to talk. Testifying, however, would defy the wishes of the president, “a person whom she admires and for whom she has worked tirelessly for years,” lawyer W. Neil Eggleston said.
So, let's be clear -- her rationale for defying a Congressional subpoena would be ... what exactly? (emphasis unnecessarily added)
[Eggleston] added, “Absent the direction from the White House, Ms. Taylor would testify without hesitation before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She has committed no wrongdoing. She will assert no personal privileges.”
Gotcha -- because her hero asked her not to. Why, yes -- as I understand it, that's a perfectly legitimate legal defense these days. I'm sure all those law-and-order Blogging Tories will be all over this sordid tale of self-interested contempt for the legal process.
You actually followed that link, didn't you? You people just never learn.
(Wag of the tail to TPM.)
9 comments:
On the Blogging Tories search engine, you might want to try
"Sara Taylor" supeena
or something a little more phonetic like that.
Just a thought.
Sara's rationale is that what worked for Scooter will work for her.
The Seer:
Unless Sara has first hand evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Bush or Cheney I rather doubt it, as it appears that is the only thing that will get him to protect someone, just ask Jack Abramoff, Ken Lay (well, before he died anyways), etc. Libby only got what he did because Bush knows that Libby will sing like a bird if he is actually put in jail, and what Libby knows about the deepest workings of the first five years of the Cheney-Bush Presidency is everything. THAT is why Libby got the commutation, and why Sara would be a fool to assume she would get the same protection UNLESS she has similar level dangerous/incriminating evidence on Bush or Cheney.
scotian: "Sara would be a fool to assume she would get the same protection UNLESS she has similar level dangerous/incriminating evidence on Bush or Cheney."
Ya think?
Do you really see Bush protecting anyone other than someone that could hurt him personally? I don't. (Unless that "Ya think?" was meant as sarcastic agreement, if so sorry about missing it, I am not always good at telling tone in text)
In the United States, we had a tradition of separating law enforcement from politics. Of course, you In Canada did too. (Whether that will continue with William Elliott at the RCMP remains to be seen.) Under George W. Bush, control of the appointment of federal district attorneys was used to protect Republicans from indictment for graft and to prosecute Democrats. At least nine US Attorneys who refused to "play ball" were fired and replaced with more compliant people.
US Attorneys serve "at the pleasure" of the president. In such a situation, a president can fire for a good reason, a bad reason or no reason at all, as long as it is not an unlawful reason. Discharging a US Attorney in an attempt to protect a crooked Republican politician constitutes the offense of obstruction of justice, which is an unlawful reason.
Don't forget: Bush keeps telling us no one has proven that a crime was committed. We need Ms. Taylor's testimony to know whether a crime was committed.
I believe Sara Taylor has evidence that Bush used his appointment power for partisan political gain. If Bush had an unlawful reason for terminating a US Attorney, Ms. Taylor was in on it. So, yes, I believe Ms. Taylor is in the same boat as Scooter.
The Seer:
Fair enough, although I remain unconvinced, since I heard the same regarding Monica Goodling's testimony prior to hers, and there was almost nothing usable there (I should mention I have been following the prosecutor scandal since it broke in detail including but not limited to FDL, The Next Hurrah, and other similar level quality American political blogs). I also have been a regular at Drum's Political Animal since early 2004 and have paid close attention o American domestic politics since the mid 70s. So I am not exactly uninformed about American domestic politics and the differences between our systems.
I am not as convinced that Taylor has crucial incriminating evidence nor that even if she did she would testify to Congress about it. I would love to be proven wrong though as I have maintained for years now that Bushco had radically perverted the American judicial and prosecutorial structures of American government, and that even now what has been revealed via the document dumps in the prosecutor scandal is still only the tiniest tip of a very large and deep iceberg. My point about Bush though was that unless she can specifically indict him in a criminal act that he could well let her hang on her own as he has with other loyalists like Lay, like Abramoff (which given the funding he brought into Bushco via Rove and their communal secretary is no small amount of exposure to serious criminal risk either even if nothing has happened to date, likely because the Bushco appointed USA involved is doing all they can to slow/stop that line of prosecution).
For what it is worth I really hope you are correct about the level damage her open and honest testimony could cause, I am just less convinced that Bush would be so threatened by her as to do what he did for Libby, if nothing else that act would confirm that Bush is clearly using this power to obstruct justice and could open himself up to criminal prosecution as well as impeachment by being too blatant about it. Libby knew everything because he was Cheney's Cheney, I doubt Sara Taylor is anywhere near as dangerous a threat as Libby could be given the respective position of the two. We shall see.
I don't think the claim of executive privilege has anything to do with whether Taylor has damaging testimony or not. I think it's just a knee-jerk reaction from the administration.
If they allowed one person to testify unopposed, that sets a precedent. And that's exactly what they don't want to have to defend down the road.
Best just to oppose everyone and establish a pattern.
"I don't think the claim of executive privilege has anything to do with whether Taylor has damaging testimony or not. I think it's just a knee-jerk reaction from the administration.
If they allowed one person to testify unopposed, that sets a precedent. And that's exactly what they don't want to have to defend down the road.
Best just to oppose everyone and establish a pattern." CC 1:51 PM
I completely agree with you on that point CC, but then it is not like that is hard to work out if one actually lives in the fact/reality based world and looks at the record to date, is it? I mean really, I have never heard of as secretive a Presidency in my lifetime (including the former record-holder Nixon) as what we have seen in this Administration. Which is also one of the reasons why I find the Harper emulation of the Cheney political philosophy of Leo Strauss combined with the political tactical tools derived from the culture war political approach and Frank Luntz's propaganda tools so incredibly worrisome for our system here. Watching the way he has redesigned the judicial screening committees in favour of the government appointees is a very strong signal that he is going to do to our judicial structure what the GOP (especially through Bushco but not limited to them as this was a long term goal) did to the American one. Which when you combine that with his clear belief that the Canadian MSM is Liberally biased/controlled as much as any American hard-core conservative (especially neo and theo cons) believes the American one is with as imaginary evidence/proof to back this up with as the American conservatives do as demonstrated by both his words over the last decades or two and his actions as government from day one should worry any citizen that believes in representative democracy, good government and equal treatment under our laws.
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