Statement Of Sen. Patrick
Leahy (D-Vt.),
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee,
Hearing On “Preserving Prosecutorial Independence: Is The Department
Of Justice Politicizing The Hiring And Firing Of U.S. Attorneys? –
Part VI”
July 11, 2007
Today, the Committee welcomes Sara
Taylor, until recently the White House Political Director. She is
accompanied by her attorney Neil Eggleston, whom we have permitted
to be seated next to her at the witness table during the hearing to
provide her with his advice and counsel.
In April, Senator Specter and I wrote
to Ms. Taylor asking for her cooperation with the Committee’s
investigation but we did not hear back from her. Since then, she
has left the White House and we have scheduled this hearing to learn
more about the role White House political operatives played in the
unprecedented firings of a number of U.S. Attorneys who had been
appointed by this President. I had a chance to meet Ms. Taylor just
before the hearing. I thank her for appearing today and share with
her my hope that she will cooperate with us by testifying to the
best of her knowledge and information. The choice is hers.
I feel strongly that law enforcement
should be above politics and that effective law enforcement in which
the American people can have confidence requires its independence
from partisan political activities. That is what appears to have
been compromised in this purge and by the signal it sent to federal
prosecutors around the country.
There is clear evidence that Ms.
Taylor, a top aide to Karl Rove, was among the staffers who played a
key role in these firings and in the Administration’s response to
cover up the reasons behind them when questions first arose. The
White House continues to cover up the facts and reasons for these
firings. Ms. Taylor’s lawyer informed us last week that she would
like to cooperate with our investigation and I hope that she will.
The White House lawyers have resorted to an unprecedented, blanket
assertion of “executive privilege” and are seeking to interfere with
the obligations of Ms. Taylor to testify and to prevent other
witnesses and the Republican National Committee from providing
information requested by this Committee and the House Judiciary
Committee.
Of course this belated blanket claim
of executive privilege belies the initial reaction of the White
House and of the President himself that minimized his involvement
and the involvement of Karl Rove in these matters. This follows the
pattern we saw that culminated in the conviction of Mr. Libby for
obstruction of justice, perjury and lying in another matter.
What is the White House trying to
hide? Why would it interfere in Ms. Taylor’s testifying if, as her
lawyer says, she wishes to cooperate?
We have learned from the selective
documents we obtained from the Department of Justice that Ms. Taylor
was involved in the discussions and planning that led to the removal
of Bud Cummins and bypassing the Senate confirmation process to
install Tim Griffin, another former aide to Mr. Karl Rove, as U.S.
Attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas. We know from these
documents that Ms. Taylor was part of a group that discussed using
the Attorney General’s expanded authority under the Patriot Act
Reauthorization to appoint Mr. Griffin as interim U.S. Attorney
indefinitely, doing an end-run around the Senate’s constitutional
advice and consent responsibility. We know from documents and
testimony that Ms. Taylor played a role in approving the plan for
firing multiple U.S. Attorneys on December 7, 2006. We know she was
involved in subsequent discussions regarding the congressional
testimony of Department officials and the Administration’s response
to the growing scandal surrounding the firings. So why is the White
House trying to block this Committee from hearing from Ms. Taylor
directly?
We also understand that tens of
thousands of emails from RNC accounts used by White House political
operatives have been identified and turned over to the White House
but, despite our best efforts, not produced to the congressional
investigating committees. What are they hiding in these emails?
From the outset of this scandal the
President has spoken about the firing of U.S. attorneys as if it
were a matter handled and decided by the Attorney General and
something Mr. Gonzales would have to explain to Congress and the
American people. The President was hands off and arms’ length. He
indicated to the American people that he had to ask others whether
anything improper was done and relied on a review by White House
lawyers for his assertion that nothing was.
Are we now to understand from the
White House claims of executive privilege that these were decisions
made by the President? That is a direct contradiction of the
President’s earlier statements that he was not responsible for this
scandal, for the firing of such well-regarded and well-performing
U.S. attorneys for partisan political purposes and to affect
elections?
When we had the Attorney General
testify under oath, he did not know who added U.S. attorneys to the
list of those to be fired or the reasons they were added. Indeed,
the bottom line of the sworn testimony from the Attorney General,
the Deputy Attorney General, the Attorney General’s former Chief of
Staff, the White House liaison and other senior Justice Department
officials was that they were not responsible. Senator Specter said
recently that two of the questions at hand are, who ordered the
firings and why? We need answers to these questions -- who did make
these decisions? Was it, in fact, the political operatives at the
White House? Was it an attempt to affect elections? What role did
Ms. Taylor and others in Karl Rove’s White House political office
play?
Even this White House cannot dispute
the evidence we have gathered to date showing that White House
officials were heavily involved in these firings and in the Justice
Department’s response to congressional inquiries about them.
The White House continues to try to
have it both ways, but at the end of the day it cannot. It cannot
block Congress from obtaining the relevant evidence and credibly
assert that nothing improper occurred. What is the White House
hiding? Was the President involved and were his earlier statements
to the American people therefore misleading? Or is this simply an
effort by the White House legal team to protect White House
political operatives whose partisan efforts have been uncovered in a
new set of White House horrors?
For months, I have been giving the
White House every opportunity to work with us voluntarily to provide
the information we have sought. This week, the White House ignored
an opportunity to meet its burden of explaining its blanket
privilege claims. Specifically, what is it the White House is so
intent on hiding that they cannot even identify the documents, the
dates, the authors and recipients that they claim are privileged?
Would we see the early and consistent involvement of Ms. Taylor and
other high-ranking White House political operatives in what should
be independent and neutral law enforcement decisions? Ms. Taylor’s
honest testimony could help us begin to answer these questions. It
is apparent that this White House is contemptuous of the Congress
and feels that it does not have to explain itself to anyone -- not
to the people’s representatives in Congress, nor to the American
people. I urge Ms. Taylor not to follow the White House down this
path.
This is a serious matter with serious
consequences for the administration of justice. This is about
improper political influence of our justice system – it is about the
White House manipulating the Justice Department into its own
political arm. It is about manipulating our justice system to pursue
a partisan political agenda. It is about pressuring prosecutors to
bring cases of voter fraud to try to influence elections – of
sending a partisan operative like Bradley Schlozman to Missouri to
file charges on the eve of an election in violation of Justice
Department guidelines. It is about the unprecedented and improper
reach of politics into the Department’s professional ranks – such as
the admission by the Department’s White House Liaison Monica
Goodling that she improperly screened career employees for political
loyalty and wielded undue political influence over key law
enforcement decisions and policies.
It is about political operatives pressuring
prosecutors to bring partisan cases and seeking retribution against
those who refuse to bend to their political will -- such as the
example of New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, who was fired a
few weeks after Karl Rove complained to the Attorney General about
the lack of purported “voter fraud” enforcement cases in Mr.
Iglesias’ jurisdiction. It is about high-ranking officials
misleading Congress and the American people about this political
manipulation of justice.
Along the way, this subversion of the
justice system has included lying, misleading and stonewalling the
Congress in our attempts to find out what happened. This
Administration has instituted an abusive policy of secrecy aimed at
protecting themselves from embarrassment and accountability.
Apparently the President and Vice President feel they, and their
staff, are above the law. In America no one is above the law.
Untoward White House interference with
federal law enforcement is a serious matter. It corrupts federal
law enforcement, threatens our elections and has seriously undercut
the American people’s confidence in the independence and
evenhandedness of law enforcement.
Congress will continue to pursue the
truth behind this matter because it is our constitutional
responsibility -- and it is the right thing to do.
I hope Ms. Taylor chooses to reject the White
House’s insistence that she abet their stonewalling and, instead,
works with us so that we can get to the bottom of what has gone on
and gone wrong.
# # # # #
Questions, Round One
Questions, Round Two
Closing