Ex-Justice officials urge Bush to tell 'Attorneygate' probers 'see you in Court'
 Former officials in the Reagan and first Bush administration say the president is protecting important constitutional prerogatives in resisting Congressional subpoenas and encourages the president to go to court over the issue.
David Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey, who served in the Justice Department, say Democrats are trying to "resuscitate a rapidly expiring 'scandal,' in an opinion article in Friday's Los Angeles Times. The pair focus explicitly on the firing of at least eight US attorneys for what critics say were purely partisan motives.
"Chosen for political reasons, they can legally and morally be fired for political reasons: insufficient loyalty, a perceived failure to pursue administration priorities or that someone with better political contacts has come along," the pair write.
The column does not mention other instances of apparent malfeasance within the Justice Department that have emerged in conjunction with the attorney-firing investigation being led by Democrats in Congress, especially in the department's Civil Rights Division. The investigation has shown an acting US attorney in Kansas and head of the division 'boasted' about hiring loyal Republicans into career positions, which are supposed to nonpartisan.
Rivkin and Casey say because the attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president there was nothing "unlawful or inappropriate" about the attorneys being fired.
"Because there is no legitimate congressional concern here to weigh against the president's clear interest in keeping White House political personnel deliberations confidential, a claim of executive privilege should be upheld by the judiciary," they write. "The president's answer to both House and Senate subpoenas should be 'See you in court.'"
EXCERPTS FROM THE LA TIMES:
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Executive privilege got a bad name under President Nixon, for obvious reasons. There is no small chance that the current Democratic leadership is more interested in forcing President Bush to claim the privilege — and get tarred by Nixon's brush — than in obtaining information about the U.S. attorney deliberations. Nevertheless, one of the strongest aspects of executive privilege — the presidential communications privilege — would protect those deliberations and justify the president's refusal to permit Miers or Taylor to testify.
As the Supreme Court explained in the case regarding Nixon's White House tapes, a "president and those who assist him must be free to explore alternatives in the process of shaping policies and making decisions and to do so in a way many would be unwilling to express except privately."
The privilege is not, of course, absolute — as the court also found in United States vs. Nixon (1974). Although such presidential materials are presumptively privileged, that privilege may be overcome by the need for evidence "demonstrably relevant in a criminal trial." Significantly, there is no such imperative in the U.S. attorneys matter.
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FULL ARTICLE HERE
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