Washington – Senators joined the House on Thursday in approving subpoenas to force President Bush’s political adviser and other aides to testify about the firings of federal prosecutors, setting off new efforts to avoid a dragged- out court fight.
Democrats portrayed the subpoena authority, approved on voice vote by both the House and Senate Judiciary committees, as a bargaining chip in negotiations over the terms of any testimony by White House political adviser Karl Rove.
The committees’ chairmen, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., appeared in no rush to issue subpoenas to White House officials and provoke a standoff.
Talks continued behind the scenes, officials said, even as the White House and majority Democrats engaged in strategic posturing before the cameras.
In letters Thursday, Senate and House Democrats rejected White House counsel Fred Fielding’s offer to let Rove and other administration officials talk about their roles in the firings, but only on Bush’s terms: in private, off the record and not under oath.
“I have never heard the Senate take an ultimatum like that,” Leahy said. “I know he’s the decider for the White House, but he’s not the decider for the United States Senate.”
White House spokesman Tony Snow cast the administration’s offer to allow Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and their deputies to talk to lawmakers in private as the best deal Democrats were going to get.
The developments came as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, struggling to save his job from increasing calls for his resignation over the firings, promised to cooperate with Congress.
Members of both parties want to know why the Justice Department fired eight well-regarded U.S. attorneys over the winter; whether politicians pressured the prosecutors to rush corruption cases; and whether the firings were punishments for the prosecutors’ balking at Bush administration priorities.
Lawmakers also want answers on whether the firings were to make way for more loyal Bush allies, as the White House has acknowledged doing in Arkansas.
