Bush bans Rove from testifying under oath

from The Age newspaper in Australia :)

US PRESIDENT George Bush and the Democrat-controlled Congress are heading for a major constitutional confrontation after Mr Bush said he would refuse to allow Karl Rove, his closest political adviser, to testify before a congressional committee investigating the sacking of eight US federal attorneys.

Mr Bush said the threat by senior Democrats to subpoena Mr Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers to explain their roles in the sackings was an attempt to set up "show trials".

"We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honourable public servants," he said in a hastily called televised news conference.

"I hope the Democrats don't choose confrontation. I will resist any attempt to subpoena White House officials."

In a day of political drama, the Bush Administration had offered to send Mr Rove and Ms Miers, who no longer works at the White House, to Capitol Hill to be questioned by members of Congress in secret, and not under oath, with no transcripts made of the meetings.

But senior Democrats rejected this offer and vowed to issue subpoenas for the pair and other White House officials.

Senate judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy said Mr Rove had to answer serious questions, and the answers had to be given in public hearings.

"Testimony should be on the record and under oath," he said.

Constitutional experts are divided over whether Congress can force White House officials to testify under oath before it, given that they are advisers to the President and not subject to any confirmation process by the Senate.

Administration officials say they will fight any attempt by Congress to force testimony from Mr Rove, in particular.

They argue that the Democrats are trying to limit executive privilege for political purposes.

If the subpoenas are issued and ignored, the matter will most likely end up in the Supreme Court, which would be asked by Congress to expedite the case.

According to legal observers, it would be one of the most significant cases in decades to question the limits of the president's power and the extent of executive privilege.

The White House has released thousands of pages of emails between White House officials and the Justice Department on the sackings, most of which came after the mid-term elections last November.

The federal attorneys are political appointments and there is a history of presidents sacking them when they come to office — Bill Clinton sacked all but one of the 93 attorneys at the start of his presidency.

But Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales and his senior officials seem to have misled Congress over why the eight were sacked.

And with the Democrats looking to take political advantage of their control of Congress, Mr Gonzales is unlikely to survive, despite being a close friend of Mr Bush.

The President told reporters that Mr Gonzales, who even many Republicans think ought be sacked, had his full support.

"The Attorney-General has my support. He has to explain what happened with the attorneys to Congress and he will do that," Mr Bush said.

But even as Mr Bush was insisting that Mr Gonzales had his support, reports in Washington suggested the White House was drawing up a list of candidates for attorney-general.

The betting is that Mr Gonzales will be gone within a month.

[link to www.theage.com.au]