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Pink Spider
02-17-2009, 04:05 PM
Obama, not Bush, now seeking delay of Rove deposition
John Byrne
Published: Tuesday February 17, 2009

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_not_Bush_now_seeking_delay_0217.html

Former Bush Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove has a new president urging Congress not to force him to testify next week.

President Barack Obama.

In a court brief quietly filed Monday, Michael Hertz, Obama's acting assistant attorney general, said it was necessary to delay an effort to force Rove to be deposed in a congressional investigation into the firing of nine US Attorneys and the alleged political prosecution of a former Alabama governor.

Hertz said an effort was underway to find a "compromise" for Rove, and requested two weeks to broker a deal before proceeding in court.

"The inauguration of a new president has altered the dynamics of this case and created new opportunities for compromise rather than litigation," Hertz wrote in the brief released late Monday by McClatchy's Washington, D.C. bureau. "At the same time, there is now an additional interested party — the former president — whose views should be considered."

The House Judiciary Committee sued the Bush Administration to force Rove to testify last year, saying that Rove shouldn't be covered by executive privilege. They won. But their case has been held up by an appeal, and Hertz's filing was the Obama administration's first legal weighing-in on the matter. Obama's Justice Department has supplanted the role of Bush's Justice Department in the case, and their position will likely inform the terms under which Rove is questioned by Congress.

Hertz's statement mirrors a statement from Obama White House Counsel Gregory Craig published Saturday.

"The president is very sympathetic to those who want to find out what happened," Craig told The Washington Post. "But he is also mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency. So, for that reason, he is urging both sides of this to settle."

Both Hertz's and Craig's statement point to an underlying challenge Obama faces with regard to Rove. Since former President Bush still claims that Rove is protected from testifying to Congress by executive privilege, even after departing office, Obama must decide whether he wants to risk diluting his own executive privilege in the future.

These statements, however, stand in contrast to Obama's previous rhetoric.

In 2007, while in the Senate, Obama rebuked Bush's White House as "the most secretive in modern history," which aimed "to hide its abuse of our justice system."

Responding to a Bush claim of executive privilege, he said, "By continuing to act as the most secretive White House in modern history, the Bush Administration has once again placed itself above the law in order to hide its abuse of our justice system from the American people. On the first day of an Obama Administration, we will launch the most sweeping ethics reform in history to shed sunlight on the decisions made by government and put the interests of the American people at the center of every decision that's made."

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI), who subpoenaed Rove as recently as last week and demanded that he come before Congress Feb. 23, refused a request from Rove's attorney seeking a delay. Rove didn't show up on two previous occasions he was subpoenaed, once in 2008 and again in January. He didn't honor a 2007 Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena either.

The White House indicated in their latest filing that negotiations are ongoing between representatives of the Bush White House and the Obama team.

Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, told Raw Story last week that no agreement had been reached.

A special prosecutor continues to probe what role White House officials may have had in the firings of the US Attorneys -- which Democrats say were politically motivated.

Rove also has been called to testify about his knowledge of an alleged political prosecution in Alabama, where a Democratic governor was jailed on corruption charges that may have been politically motivated. A whistleblower fingered Rove as pushing for the prosecution behind the scenes, which Rove vehemently and categorically denies.

kwame k
02-17-2009, 04:51 PM
Wow....Rove must have some great dirt on Bush, to make Obama blink like that. Rove is one scary bastard and it seems now that even Obama is afraid of him. Either that or the amount of corruption and scandal that would break if Rove testified would expose The Presidency for what it was..........

IMO......If I was Obama I would nail that fucker to the wall......would love to know the inside details on this case.

LoungeMachine
02-17-2009, 05:13 PM
Wtf??

Combat Ready
02-17-2009, 06:07 PM
I think I recall the rupubs getting pissed at Bush in his early days too. They wanted an investigation into the Clinton library being funded by the Saudis (among others)....To the tune of several million dollars--or something like that. Bush and team declined to pursue and worked to shelve the issue.

Obama is a pretty shrewd politician. He knows that he and his team could/will be subject to similar investigations and subpoenas in 4 or 8 years as well.

Some things don’t change, regardless of party affiliation….At least when discussing donkeys and elephants.

GAR
02-17-2009, 06:25 PM
Rove must have some great dirt on Bush, to make Obama blink like that.

Yes, and it's called the Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate ones' self.

He doesn't have to tell Obama one fucking thing, and why should he? Fuck Obama!

kwame k
02-17-2009, 07:35 PM
Yes, and it's called the Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate ones' self.

He doesn't have to tell Obama one fucking thing, and why should he? Fuck Obama!


Just remember one thing si-gar........

































Feburary is Black History Month! (http://www.history.com/minisites/blackhistory)

kwame k
02-17-2009, 07:49 PM
I think I recall the rupubs getting pissed at Bush in his early days too. They wanted an investigation into the Clinton library being funded by the Saudis (among others)....To the tune of several million dollars--or something like that. Bush and team declined to pursue and worked to shelve the issue.

Obama is a pretty shrewd politician. He knows that he and his team could/will be subject to similar investigations and subpoenas in 4 or 8 years as well.

Some things don’t change, regardless of party affiliation….At least when discussing donkeys and elephants.

That's one angle........could be that the shit Rove could stir up could shake an already fragile country to it's core.......remember Rove or The Architect helped put Bush in office and has helped some of the most powerful Repukes get elected, too.....he knows more of the inside dealings than we'll ever be able to guess.

Politically, Obama doesn't want to look like he's on a witch hunt.......He'll need the Repukes....especially, if you look ahead to the mid-term elections.....Dems have control right now but that could change......Obama might need the Repukes and if they are successful in the mid-term elections, they could reek havoc on him and blow any chance he has for re-election.

I agree.......I've always looked at politics like Chess.....the only difference is, Chess is a game......these fuckers play with our lives.

Nickdfresh
02-17-2009, 08:29 PM
Just remember one thing si-gar........





Feburary is Black History Month! (http://www.history.com/minisites/blackhistory)

It's good for GAR's mother's boyfriend to have a month dedicated to him. :)

Combat Ready
02-22-2009, 02:41 PM
On a related note:

Obama administration tries to kill e-mail case



Feb 21, 2:34 PM (ET)

By PETE YOST WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, is trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails.
Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush's eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama's Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration's bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.
During its first term, the Bush White House failed to install electronic record-keeping for e-mail when it switched to a new system, resulting in millions of messages that could not be found.
The Bush White House discovered the problem in 2005 and rejected a proposed solution.
Recently, the Bush White House said it had located 14 million e-mails that were misplaced and that the White House had restored hundreds of thousands of other e-mails from computer backup tapes.
The steps the White House took are inadequate, one of the two groups, the National Security Archive, told a federal judge in court papers filed Friday.
"We do not know how many more e-mails could be restored but have not been, because defendants have not looked," the National Security Archive said in the court papers.
"The new administration seems no more eager than the last" to deal with the issue, said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the other group that sued the EOP.
The Executive Office of the President includes the president's immediate staff and many White House offices and agencies.
Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, noted that President Barack Obama on his first full day in office called for greater transparency in government.
The Justice Department "apparently never got the message" from Obama, Blanton said.
The department defends the government when it is sued.