White House Counsel Kathryn H. Ruemmler shot back at House Energy & Commerce Republicans Friday, characterizing a subpoena the committee had approved along party lines Thursday as an “unreasonable burden on the President’s ability to meet his constitutional duties.”
Ruemmler didn’t invoke executive privilege, but chastised the Republican leaders of the House Energy & Committee and subcommittee for blowing her off and ploughing ahead with the subpoena that demands any and all documents relating to Solyndra (as opposed to specific documents that relate to oversight of the loan guarantee and communications between the White House and the Department of Energy.)
“I am disappointed and troubled that, despite our offer to work with the Committee on a more focused request that balances the important interests of both the Congress and the Executive Branch, the Committee decided to move forward with an overbroad subpoena that is unprecedented and unnecessary,” she wrote. The full letter is below.
Further:
“Earlier this week, we made a good faith offer to work with the Committee to accomodate its legitimate oversight concerns. You rejected our offer without explaining how it fell short of your legitimate oversight purpose. I can only conclude that your decision to issue a subpoena, authorized by a party-line vote, was driven more by partsian politics than a legitimate effort to conduct a responsible investigation.”
As Ruemmler notes in the letter, the House Energy and Commerce Committee now has more than 85,000 documents relating to the loan guarantee process and White House communications on the matter with DOE, and apparently, nobody has been able to find any evidence of favoritism to George Kaiser, a wealthy supporter and fundraiser for President Obama and an investor in Solyndra.
Ruemmler also called House Republicans’ charges that the White House has been dragging its heals on producing the documents “demonstrably false.”
“We remain willing to work with the Committee to accomodate its legitimate oversight interests in a balanced manner,” she concluded. “Given the breadth of the subpoena, I hope that the Committee’s public statement that it intends to negotiate the scope of any document production is sincere.”
