The Sara Taylor Tractor Pull
Sara Taylor, who at 30 was the youngest White House political director ever, is scheduled to testify July 11 before the Senate judiciary committee as part of its ongoing investigation into U.S. attorneygate. Taylor resigned in May and was subpoenaed on June 13. The judiciary committee would like to hear about some e-mails Taylor wrote regarding replacing Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins with Tim Griffin, a protégé of Taylor's boss, Karl Rove. Taylor can likely confirm greater White House involvement than President Bush has admitted in ousting Cummins. There's just one little problem. According to her attorney, W. Neil Eggleston, Taylor would like to help the committee, but White House Counsel Fred Fielding won't let her. Taylor's former bosses argue that her testimony and that of previous White House Counsel Harriet Miers (which has also been subpoenaed) would violate the "constitutional principle of separation of powers." Consequently, the White House is extending to Taylor not only the right but apparently also the duty to claim executive privilege. This creative legal construct is described in a July 7 letter that Eggleston wrote the committee chairman and ranking member and Fielding (below and on the following page). In the letter, Eggleston complains that his client's choices are "untenable" and that she has become the "object of an unseemly tug of war."
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Remarks from the Fray:
We assign privileges to communications we want to protect, e.g., doctor/patient, priest/penitent, attorney/client, spouse/spouse.
In each instance, the person from whom we would elicit testimony (doctor, lawyer, priest) asserts the privilege as a means to resist doing so. Conversely, the target of the investigation (patient, penitent, client) may assert the privilege to prevent testimony which might be harmful. But for the privilege, the parties might not feel free to communicate.
So in this instance, the White House is itself asserting the privilege, not "extending to Taylor . . . the right but apparently also the duty to claim executive privilege."
You can (somewhat easily) argue that the White House's construction and assertion of executive privilege is overly broad. But that such a privilege would be used to prevent testimony is not uncommon; it is, in fact, why the privilege exists.
Counselor Eggleston is right when he avers that the "clash may ultimately be decided by the judicial branch."
--Thufir_Hawat
(To reply, click here.)
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