Hysterical–executive privilege extends to the Republican National Committee.
The documents led to demands from Democrats for testimony from Mr. Rove and others; the White House agreed only to off-the-record interviews, and Democrats responded by threatening subpoenas.
Now that Democrats are also demanding access to the political e-mail, the White House took steps on Thursday to use those latest demands as leverage to force Democrats to accept the White House’s conditions for making Mr. Rove and the others available.
In a letter to Mr. Leahy and Representative John Conyers Jr., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Mr. Fielding, the White House counsel, said the administration was prepared to produce e-mail from the national committee, but only as part of a “carefully and thoughtfully considered package of accommodations” — in other words, only as part of the offer for Mr. Rove and the others to appear in private.
Mr. Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, issued a tart reply: “The White House position seems to be that executive privilege not only applies in the Oval Office, but to the R.N.C. as well. There is absolutely no basis in law or fact for such a claim.”
This literally takes them past Nixon’s claims on Executive Privilege and makes him look restrained. Executive privilege is a very limited concept only including direct communication with the President under usual circumstances. To try and extend it to an illegal e-mail system (government business was discussed on a private system in contravention of the law) run by a political party is not just laughable, but beyond parody.
John Cole has been calling it the most corrupt administration in history which has become clearly true, but the truly amazing aspect of this is they have no shame and are even using Fred Fielding to make ludicrous arguments.
If the press wasn’t filled with poodles in DC, they might point this out.