Former White House Counsel Harriet Miers has again rejected calls from the House Judiciary Committee to comply with a subpoena for her testimony on the firing of 9 US Attorneys in 2006 and 2007. The Committee had set a deadline of 5 PM for Miers to explain how she would comply with the subpoena.
"In light of the continuing directives to Ms. Miers and as previously indicated to your Committee, I must respectfully inform you that, directed as she has been to honor the Executive privileges and immunities asserted in this matter, Ms. Miers will not appear before the Committee or otherwise produce documents or provide testimony as set forth in the Committee's subpoena," wrote Miers' attorney, George Manning, in a letter delivered Tuesday to Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
A copy of the letter was sent directly to RAW STORY.
In his letter, Manning suggested that the prohibition on Miers' subpoena compliance was 'unequivocal.'
"The correspondence communicating these unequivocal directives has been previously provided to the Committee," he wrote. "The Subcommittee has demanded that Ms. Miers do precisely what the President has prohibited her from doing."
Conyers had set 5 PM, July 17, as the deadline for Miers to make her intentions known about complying with the committee's subpoena. The Judiciary Committee had warned last week that it would contemplate other actions, including criminal contempt proceedings, if Miers failed to comply with the subpoena.
In a statement released late on Tuesday afternoon, Rep. Conyers said the committee's next move was being planned.
"The subcommittee has overruled Ms. Miers' claims of immunity and privilege," he said. "Her failure to comply with our subpoena is a serious affront to this committee and our constitutional system of checks and balances. We are carefully planning our next steps."
Perhaps it is time for the House Judiciary Committee to issue an Inherent Contempt charge against Harriet Miers:
Under this process, the procedure for holding a person in contempt involves only the chamber concerned. Following a contempt citation, the person cited for contempt is arrested by the Sergeant-at-Arms for the House or Senate, brought to the floor of the chamber, held to answer charges by the presiding officer, and then subject to punishment that the House may dictate (usually imprisonment for punishment reasons, imprisonment for coercive effect, or release from the contempt citation.)
Concerned with the time-consuming nature of a contempt proceeding and the inability to extend punishment further than the session of the Congress concerned (under Supreme Court rulings), Congress created a statutory process in 1857. While Congress retains its "inherent contempt" authority and may exercise it at any time, this inherent contempt process was last used by the Senate in 1934, against a U.S. Postmaster. After a one-week trial on the Senate floor (presided by the Vice-President of the United States, acting as Senate President), a former Postmaster, William P. MacCracken, was found guilty and sentenced to 10 days imprisonment.
The Postmaster had filed a petition of Habeas Corpus in federal courts to overturn his arrest, but after litigation, the US Supreme Court ruled that Congress had acted constitutionally, and denied the petition in the case Jurney v. MacCracken, 294 U.S. 125 (1935).
Keith Olbermann has a great analysis of the Miers' controversy and Inherent Contempt. From YouTube:
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