All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

Believe it or not, this is precisely the way the Founding Fathers envisioned how the Constitution could work. Pressure from the judicial branch (a pending deadline to file a substantive brief) and the legislative branch (Congressional subpoenas to Bush officials) forced the White House into compromising over the scope of executive privilege in the U.S. Attorney matter. It’s a win-win-win, Steve Carell would say.

Or, you can look at it another way. The deal that finally delivers Karl Rove and Harriet Miers into Rep. John Conyers Congressional den of inquiry came about because neither the Obama Administration, nor the Congress, wanted to risk creating “bad” legal precedent about the scope of the privilege—federal law that might be political convenient now, but which could hinder future administrations (or even this one, a few years down the road).

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Former Bush aides Karl Rove and Harriet Miers have agreed to testify before Congress under oath concerning the firings of U.S. attorneys, allegedly for political reasons, during the Bush administration.

The two will testify before the House Judiciary Committee in transcribed depositions. They may or may not be called for public testimony.

The White House Counsel’s office played an active role in bringing the parties together towards an accommodation, an official told CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller.

UPDATE: Rove said Thursday morning that some Democrats would like to see him "barbecued." (Read more.)

Knoller reports that the key to the agreement was that the Obama White House stopped short of acknowledging that "executive privilege" still applied to Rove and Miers -- though the House Judiciary statement says "it was agreed that invocations of official privileges would be significantly limited."

Before President Bush left office, his counsel Fred Fielding instructed Rove that he was bound by executive privilege and could not testify.

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This post was written by CBS News Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen.

Now here is a big story at the intersection of law and politics. Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff reports that on January 16, 2009, just four days before the end of the Bush Presidency, White House Counsel Fred Fielding instructed former administration officials Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and Joshua Bolten to continue to assert “executive privilege” to avoid answering questions under oath from Congress about the U.S. Attorney matter.

The extraordinary instructions — some legal experts say they were unprecedented - presage perhaps the first great constitutional challenge for the Obama Administration. That’s because the House Judiciary Committee, led by the powerful and dogged John Conyers (D-Mich.), has indicated that it will continue as it has for years now to press ahead with its efforts to force Rove and Company to account for their influences on political hiring at the Justice Department.

If Conyers doesn’t give in, and why would he now that he has the votes, we’ll see a lawsuit in federal court seeking judicial guidance on the scope of the privilege. And if we see such a lawsuit – issue presented: may an outgoing administration block its officials from testifying for all time into the future despite a Congressional subpoena? – the Obama Administration will have to take a formal position on the issue. It simply couldn’t afford to sit on the sidelines and let the other two branches of government define the breadth and width of executive privilege.

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