Legal Commentary

Rove, Congress, the Special Counsel, and Handcuffs

By TChris

Raw Story calls attention to an interesting public appearance by Karl Rove:

Rove spoke Tuesday evening at Loyola Marymount University, a Jesuit institution in Los Angeles, as part of the school's "First Amendment Week." "One man loudly denounced Rove as a 'traitor' before he was escorted out," the Loyola Daily Breeze noted. "A woman held up a pair of handcuffs and said she would like to see Rove wearing them."

The Raw Story report suggests the existence of a conflict between Rove's insistence on Tuesday that he would not honor the House Judiciary Committee's subpoena (citing executive privilege) and his lawyer's statement that Rove was cooperating with a Special Counsel's investigation into the U.S. Attorney firings and the Siegelman prosecution. There is no conflict. [more ...]

Rove was talking about invoking executive privilege to resist a subpoena issued by the Legislative Branch. Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, was talking about an Executive Branch investigation into the same issues. Rove can't very well assert executive privilege to resist an Executive Branch investigation.

As John Dean points out:

[Rove] is cooperating with the Special Counsel's investigation because she has convened a grand jury. Rove and his lawyer know that White House aides are not immune from a grand jury subpoena. After all, Rove lost that same battle during the investigation of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's status as a covert CIA agent.

True, Rove refused to cooperate with an earlier internal Justice Department investigation into the firings, but that was because (according to Luskin) Rove had been "directed by the Bush White House counsel's office not to cooperate." Rove won't receive the same direction from the current White House counsel.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 06, 2009 (boomark / email).