White House Charged with Contempt of Congress

The Congress of the United States is charged with a duty to protect the people of the United States of America from injustices perpetrated by the Executive Branch of our government. This duty is sometimes called "oversight." In order for Congress to perform its duties of oversight, it needs to have the power to subpoena witnesses and documents from the Executive Branch.

Uses of executive privilege have been sparing. The current White House is fond of saying that the tradition goes back to George Washington, our first president. What they don't say is that his use of it was a procedural matter. He claimed that he did not owe papers about a treaty being negotiated with England to the House, because such matters were overseen by the Senate. He gave the papers to the Senate. (See the Wikipedia article on Executive Privilege.)

Jefferson seems to have tried to wiggle out of a political sensitive matter by not wanting to give up his letters regarding Aaron Burr when Burr was on trial for treason. But his attempt to withhold documents was shot down by Chief Justice John Marshall.

In modern times, Eisenhower used 'executive privilege' to successfully block a witch-hunt in the U.S. military by Joseph McCarthy during the last days of McCarthy's power. But that didn't set a precedent that could be successfully used by Nixon, and the court-ordered release of the White House tapes brought down his presidency.

Currently, George Bush wants to claim executive privilege to prevent Congressional oversight regarding the potentially illegal firings of U.S. Attorneys.

Former Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis) objected to the contempt charges, saying "I believe this is an unnecessary provocation of a constitutional crisis. Absent showing that a crime was committed in this process, I think the White House is going to win an argument in court."

Now I'm not a constitutional expert, but the natural question to ask in such a case is... how is the Committee supposed to know if something illegal is being done if it can't get anyone to answer questions. It obviously suspects irregularities if it's asking for the testimony and documents. And constitutional experts do say that the executive privilege principle is supposed to be there to protect national interests, and not to simply hide wrong-doing by the executive.

So, I think current Committee Chair John Conyers (D-Mich) gets it right when he explains: "If we countenance a process where our subpoenas can be readily ignored, where a witness under a duly authorized subpoena doesn't even have to bother to show up . . . then we have already lost. We won't be able to get anybody in front of this committee or any other."

Contempt of Congress is a federal misdemeanor, punishable by as much as one year in prison and a $100,000 fine.