Today’s Must ReadSo what’s next? Culled from the papers this morning, here’s a roundup of where the attorney purge scandal is headed these next couple of days.
Alberto Gonzales, in an increasingly desperate attempt to keep his job, has said that he’ll meet with members of Congress sometime this week to explain himself. It’s unclear when or where that will be.
Meanwhile, both the House and Senate judiciary committees are pressing forward with their investigations.
A small group of lawmakers from both the House and Senate met with White House counsel Fred Fielding yesterday concerning their request for documents and to interview White House officials, including Karl Rove. Fielding, apparently, told them he’ll get back to them Friday after speaking with the president. At issue, of course, is whether the White House will assert executive privilege. That would mean war.
According to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who was at the meeting, Fielding “said that he wanted to make this work because he had a reputation, his own reputation, to uphold.â
But though the committees have gone out of their way to be amicable, that doesn’t mean they’ll be sitting on their hands waiting for an answer from the White House.
As Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) put it: âFrankly, I donât care whether Fielding says heâs going to allow people or not. Weâll subpoena the people we want…. If they want to defy the subpoena, then you get into a stonewall situation I suspect they donât want to have.â
And so this morning, the Senate committee will vote on whether to issue subpoenas to Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers, and William Kelley, a former top aide to Miers.
We’ll know tomorrow, it seems, whether they’ll have to use them.
