Stonewalling, This 4th of July, Remember what the Constitution is About.

On Thursday, the White House refused to comply with subpoenas issued June 13 by the House and Senate judiciary committees demanding that it turn over documents concerning its involvement in the 2006 purge of federal prosecutors.

Invoking executive privilege, White House Counsel Fred Fielding sent letters to the Democratic chairmen of the two committees that have been investigating the firings for the past five months, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, saying the documents would not be furnished, and that two former senior White House aides ordered to testify before the committees would not appear.

Bush-Congress Subpoena Fight Might Go to Court (Update1)

By Kim Chipman

July 1 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy says he's prepared to go to court if President

George W. Bush and his administration continue to resist subpoenas for information on the firing of federal prosecutors.

``If they don't cooperate, yes I'd go that far,'' Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said today on NBC's ``Meet the Press'' program when asked whether he would seek a congressional vote on contempt citations if Bush refuses to comply with the requests for documents. Leahy is head of the Senate panel investigating the administration's firings of U.S. attorneys.

Should lawmakers seek to hold the Bush administration in contempt of Congress, it could move the dispute to the courts and spur a constitutional showdown between Bush and the Democratic-led Congress. Leahy said today that he hopes this can be avoided.

The administration’s refusal to comply with the subpoenas on the US attorney purge leaves little doubt that it will similarly defy the Senate committee’s subpoenas concerning the domestic spying program. The deadline for those documents to be handed over is July 18.

``I've been here for six administrations, Democratic and Republican,'' he said. ``They've always found a way to work out and get the information Congress is entitled to.''

The attitude at the current White House is that ``they are above the law,'' Leahy said. ``The president and vice president aren't above the law any more than you and I are.''

Lawmakers in the Senate and the House of Representatives are trying to determine whether the Bush administration's firing of eight U.S. attorneys was carried out for improper political motives, such as to stymie probes of Republicans or prompt investigations of Democrats.

Karl Rove

One of the prosecutors was fired to give a job to a former aide to Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, according to Justice Department documents and congressional testimony.

``The bottom line in the U.S. attorney investigation is that you have people manipulating law enforcement,'' Leahy said today. ``Law enforcement can't be partisan, law enforcement can't decide, well we will arrest this person because they are a Democrat, but not this person because they are a Republican, or the other way around.''

Leahy and Representative John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat and head of the House committee probing the firings, urged Bush last week to turn over White House documents that may help explain the role of presidential aides in the dismissals. Bush has asserted executive privilege in refusing to comply.

Executive privilege is a legal doctrine which dictates that a president can decline to produce documents and testimony demanded by another branch of government, if he determines it's crucial that the information remain classified.

In several cases, the fired federal prosecutors were replaced with Bush loyalists who issued indictments based on trumped-up voter fraud charges against Democratic candidates and voter registration groups during the 2006 election campaign, or pressured state governments to purge voter rolls of poor and minority voters likely to vote Democratic. Evidence has emerged that these efforts were part of a wide-ranging scheme orchestrated by Karl Rove to pack the US attorney system so as to manipulate the 2008 presidential election.

Both Miers and Talyor have been implicated in this abuse of the electoral process, and congressional testimony has established that Bush was directly involved in discussions on the firings.

In addition, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a long-time Bush acolyte, has been repeatedly caught making false and misleading statements, some of them under oath, about his own role. Democratic and some Republican congressmen have called for Gonzales to resign, but Bush has repeatedly declared his confidence in the attorney general and Gonzales has refused to step down.

Executive Privilege

``The president has already said publicly he's not involved in the things we're looking at,'' Leahy said. ``So I don't know where the executive privilege claim comes in.''

Leahy and Conyers sent a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding last week threatening legal action to enforce the subpoenas. They said Bush's refusal to produce the documents is reminiscent of ``Nixonian stonewalling,'' recalling former President Richard Nixon's refusal to give Congress tapes and documents about the Watergate scandal, which ended his presidency in 1974.

The congressional panels have subpoenaed former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor, Bush's former political director, to force them to testify. Bush has offered to let his aides be questioned behind closed doors without a transcript and under the agreement that lawmakers never issue a subpoena for a follow-up, conditions the panels have rejected.

Legislative Malpractice

``I would be guilty of legislative malpractice if I accepted it,'' Leahy said today.

When asked whether he was confident that the U.S. attorney's office in Washington would prosecute should Congress seek a criminal contempt citation, Leahy said he believed it would be ``very difficult for him not to.''

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said in a statement last week that the lawmakers ``continue to demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of separation of powers.'' Fratto said that ``if the committees just want the facts, then they should withdraw the subpoenas and accept the president's offer, instead of this continued pattern of gross overreach and confrontation.''