Leahy to BushCo - "You're in comtempt"!

Sen. Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today threatened to hold members of the Bush administration in contempt for not producing subpoenaed information about the legal justification for President Bush's secretive eavesdropping program. "When the Senate comes back in the session, I'll bring it up before the committee," said Leahy, "I prefer cooperation to contempt. Right now, there's no question that they are in contempt of the valid order of this Congress."

On June 27, Leahy's committee subpoenaed the Justice Department, National Security Council and the offices of the president and vice president for documents relating to the NSA's legal justification for the wiretapping program.

White House lawyer Fred Fielding once again today claimed that the administration needed more time to review the requested documents, but Leahy was having none of it. "We've waited waited long enough. It has been almost two months since service of the subpoenas, three weeks since the time they asked for additional time. And still, we have nothing at all," Leahy said.

Leahy further indicated that the committee would continue to seek recently resigned White House adviser Karl Rove's appearance on the U.S. attorney firings. "I don't think he had a valid claim of executive privilege, because all the testimony has been that it wasn't discussed with the president. If it wasn't discussed with the president, there's no executive privilege," he said. "And they've just lost the other claim they could make that he's too important to the operation of the White House to be able to take time to testify. That's not going to be the case anymore."