Today’s Must Read

You can read the letter White House counsel Fred Fielding sent last night to Congress about the U.S. attorneys investigation here.

But here’s the shorter version of the “offer”:

Dear Congress,

You’ll get what we want you to get when we want you to get it, or you’ll get nothing.

Best,
Fred Fielding

In the letter, Fielding says that the White House’s offer of March 20th stands. It’s a great offer, he says. And carping from Democrats and some Republicans like Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) about it fails “to credit fully the extraordinary nature of the disclosure we are prepared to provide.”

The offer, remember, was 1) to turn over records of all relevant communications from a White House official to a party outside the White House (but no internal communications are to be turned over) and 2) Karl Rove and other White House officials would meet with Congress privately, but there would be no transcript and no oath. The offer also restricts the range of questioning.

But it gets better. Those RNC-issued email accounts belonging to White House staff are also to be covered under the deal. And Fieldings says “it was and remains our intention to collect e-mails and documents from those [RNC-controlled] accounts.”

In other words, whatever emails Congress gets, they’ll have to get through the White House — and they won’t get anything unless they get it as part of Fielding’s “unified offer,” his “carefully and thoughtfully considered package of accommodations.”

Democrats had asked if Fielding couldn’t separately provide the White House’s “external” communications, since he was offering them as part of the deal anyway.

But if they want those emails, they’ll have to agree to the White House’s terms for interviewing Rove and others. And they’ll have to resign themselves to not receiving any “internal” White House communications, even if those communications occurred via RNC-issued email addresses. The executive privilege claim with regard to all internal White House correspondence is questionable, but it’s even more questionable with regard to the RNC-issued email communications.

As House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) put it: “The White House position seems to be that executive privilege not only applies in the Oval Office, but to the R.N.C. as well. There is absolutely no basis in law or fact for such a claim.”

That’s why Conyers is trying to get the emails straight from the RNC. In his letter to the RNC chairman yesterday, he demanded that the RNC provide the emails “directly” to Congress — instead of giving them to the White House. Not providing the emails directly to Congress, Conyers wrote, would be “an unjustified delay” and “potentially… an obstruction of our investigation.”

So it looks like things are about to get even nastier.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had his own summary of Fielding’s offer: “‘We are stonewalling.’”