White House Offer Withholds White House Documents

Here’s the letter from White House counsel Fred Fielding laying out the White House’s offer to the House and Senate judiciary committees.

In it, Fielding says that the documents and interviews from the Justice Department are providing Congress “a virtually unprecedented window into personnel decision-making within the Executive Branch.” The interviews (private, no oath, no transcript) with White House officials, therefore, “should be conducted, if needed, only after Congress has heard from Department of Justice officials about the decision to request the resignations of the U.S. Attorneys.”

Fielding also offers to provide certain documents related to the decisions, including White House documents between White House staff and third parties — but not internal White House communications.

Update: Here’s Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) summary of the problem with that document provision, via ThinkProgress:

So, if Karl Rove sent a communication to Harriet Miers and said, and this is purely hypothetical, “We have to get rid of US Attorney Lam. Come up with a good reason…” and the only communication we get is the good reason that Harriet Miers sent to the Justice Department.