House panel votes to issue subpoenas:
A House panel authorized subpoenas yesterday for top White House and Justice Department aides, including White House counselor Karl Rove, setting up a constitutional clash with the Bush administration over the U.S. attorneys investigation.
Democrat senator says good luck trying to enforce them. From the office of Senator Patrick Leahy:
Most importantly, compelling compliance with a congressional subpoena in this context would be difficult. The civil contempt mechanism normally available to Congress, see 28 U.S.C. § 1365, specifically exempts subpoenas to the executive branch. The criminal contempt mechanism, see 2 U.S.C. § 192, which punishes as a misdemeanor a refusal to testify or produce documents to Congress, requires a referral to the Justice Department, which is not likely to pursue compliance in the likely event that the President asserts executive privilege in response to the request for certain documents or testimony. Thus, the only legal way to enforce this subpoena would be to hold a witness in contempt using its “inherent contempt authority,” but this would require a contempt trial on the floor of the Senate. Not many of us relished our role as jurors during the impeachment trial and are not anxious to reprise that role
Ok, Senator Depends issued this letter in 1999. I am sure that Depends will claim that circumstances are somehow different. Yet if you take Leahy’s letter at face value, the democrat subpoenas are not going any where.
(H/T: Mark Levin, NRO)
Tags: BitsBlog, Democrats, Just for fun
