Well. This ought to be entertaining.
Subpoenas for White House (Newsday.com, March 5, 2004).
The federal grand jury probing the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity has subpoenaed records of Air Force One telephone calls in the week before the officer's name was published in a column in July, according to documents obtained by Newsday. Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. And the subpoenas asked for a transcript of a White House spokesman's press briefing in Nigeria, a list of those attending a birthday reception for a former president, and, casting a much wider net than previously reported, records of White House contacts with more than two dozen journalists and news media outlets. [...] The subpoenas required the White House to produce the documents in three stages - the first on Jan. 30, a second on Feb. 4 and the third on Feb. 6 - even as White House aides began appearing before the grand jury sitting in Washington, D.C.
The subpoena with the first production deadline sought three sets of documents. It requested records of telephone calls to and from Air Force One from July 7 to 12, while Bush was visting several nations in Africa. The White House declined yesterday to release a list of those on the trip.
Given past history, what will likely happen next is that the administration will stand on executive privilege and refuse to release the information. There will then follow a long drawn-out court battle about whether or not the investigators have the right to subpoena these records.
To be sure, some of the reaction of the administration may depend on how and when the Supreme Court decides the last case on these types of issues, Cheney's energy committee records. If the Court determines that the records should be released, the administration may decide to release the phone records relating to the Flame affair without further resistance.
... Nah. This administration cooperating with a subpoena without going down fighting? Never happen.
Posted by iain at March 05, 2004 12:50 PM
