April 19, 2007
Justice Obstructed
WASHINGTON – President Bush's lawyers told the Republican National Committee on Tuesday not to turn over to Congress any e-mails related to the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys before showing them to the White House.
Democrats and Republican critics of the administration said the move suggests that the White House is seeking to develop a strategy to block release of the e-mails to congressional investigators by arguing that they're covered by executive privilege and not subject to review.
Scott Stanzel, deputy White House press secretary, called the action "reasonable" and said any review of the e-mails would "be conducted in a timely fashion, to balance the committee's need for the information with the extreme over-breadth of their requests."
Party officials declined to comment, but a GOP aide familiar with the negotiations said the RNC would comply with the White House request.
Hubrisometer just spun into the red zone.
If the White House circumvented their own email system to "avoid scrutiny" there should be no grounds for blocking Congress' access... most especially under the guise of executive privilege. They lost that argument when they stopped using whitehouse.gov emails addresses and since Bush doesn't use email, communications were not directly with the office of the president.
The point is moot.