McClellan published a book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White
House and the Culture of Washington Deception, earlier this month that
suggested Bush and Cheney played a bigger role in the scandal than they
have publicly acknowledged.
Additionally, McClellan wrote that
the White House mislead the public about Iraq’s arsenal of chemical and
biological weapons and the threat the country posed to the U.S.
Conyers’
opening statement prior to the start of the hearing signaled that he
may be inclined to consider a vote on the 35 articles of impeachment
introduced against President Bush two weeks ago by his colleague, Ohio
Congressman Dennis Kucinich. The House voted 251-166 to send the
impeachment articles to the Judiciary Committee for consideration.
- “What
Scott McClellan wrote in his new book about the administration’s
propaganda campaign to promote and defend the occupation of Iraq was
not a revelation,” Conyers’ opening statement says. “It was
confirmation that the White House has played fast and loose with the
truth in a time of war. Depending on how one reads the Constitution,
that may or may not be an impeachable offense.”
Conyers did
not elaborate on impeachment beyond what he said in his opening
statement. A spokesman for Conyers did not return calls for comment. In
the past, the Michigan congressman has said publicly that he did not
support Democratic efforts to impeach President Bush. Last year, a
resolution introduced by Kucinich to impeach Cheney died in Conyers'
committee.
Talk of impeachment, however, was not limited to
Conyers’ opening statement. Several Democratic members of the Judiciary
Committee, including Robert Wexler, and Sheila Jackson Lee, discussed
the need for impeachment hearings based on revelations that McClellan
made in his book.
Wexler and Jackson Lee’s comments lead
Republican Congressman Dan Lungren to remark that the hearing was
beginning to sound like “Kucinich light.” Lungren questioned whether
McClellan’s motive in appearing before the committee was to make a case
for impeaching President Bush.
“You didn’t come here believing
that someone should be impeached did you?” Lungren asked McClellan. The
former press secretary told Lungren that he did not support impeachment.
- “I
have listened to my colleagues refer to impeachment four different
times and we have been told by the leadership that impeachment is off
the table,” Lungren said, quoting Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy
Pelosi. “We’re not hear to bring up an impeachment resolution.”
In
an interview with The Public Record Thursday, Kucinich said he was
scheduled to meet with Conyers Thursday evening to discuss how the
Judiciary Committee will deal with the impeachment articles he
introduced. However, the former 2008 Democratic presidential candidate
said he was unclear on what course of action Conyers would take in the
weeks ahead with regard to the articles of impeachment. Kucinich has
vowed that he would continue to reintroduce articles of impeachment
against President Bush if the Judiciary Committee does not take up the
matter within the next 30 days.
- "I have informed the
leadership of the House should they fail to hold hearings I would come
back to the Congress in 30 days with even more articles," Kucinich told
The Public Record. "I may have to do this one or two more times before
I get their attention."
Kucinich said Congressional hearings,
such as the one taking place in the Judiciary Committee with McClellan,
"reduces Congress to a debating society" if lawmakers fail to hold the
Executive Branch accountable for their alleged misdeeds.
- "How
many hearings do we need to have to establish that this administration
has violated the Constitution," Kucinich said. "There is a point at
which you reduce congress to a debating society, which diminishes
Congress' oversight role. It sets a terrible precedent."
Conyers
certainly appears to be probing whether the new revelations about Bush
and Cheney’s role in the Plame leak--an incident directly linked to to
the exposure of the White House's use of fraudulent prewar Iraq
intelligence--amount to High Crimes and Misdemeanors.
In a
letter sent June 5 to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Conyers and
Subcommittee Chairman Linda Sanchez, (D-Calif.), demanded the Justice
Department turn over transcripts of Bush and Cheney’s interviews with
CIA leak investigator Patrick Fitzgerald and other documents obtained
by the special prosecutor during the course of his three-year
investigation.
A June 13 letter written by Deputy Attorney
General Keith Nelson in response to Conyers and Sanchez's inquiry to
the DOJ indicated that the lawmakers are trying to build a criminal
case against the White House.
- "Committee staff has indicated
that in this newly-initiated inquiry, the Committee's interest focuses
on alleged White House attempts to cover up the involvement of White
House officials in the leak and whether such attempts constitute an
obstruction of justice or other violation of federal criminal law,"
Nelson wrote.
Nelson refused to turn over the leak documents
to the Judiciary Committee claiming the panel does not have
"government-wide oversight jurisdiction and it does not have
jurisdiction over the White House."
While we appreciate that the
Committee has oversight authority over the Department of Justice, we do
not understand how the Committee's jurisdiction could extend to the
alleged conduct at the White House," says Nelson's letter to Conyers
and Sanchez. "The executive branch has substantial confidentiality
interests in these documents, which have been created and maintained by
the Department but consist of White House information."
- "Additionally,
we note that it is the responsibility of this Department to investigate
possible violations of the criminal law, not the responsibility of any
committee of Congress. Moreover, this theory of oversight jurisdiction
would suggest that the Judiciary Committee could investigate
allegations of this kind anywhere in the executive branch. We are not
aware that the Committee has exercised this kind of jurisdiction in the
past," Nelson wrote.
Nelson’s response angered Conyers and
Sanchez. They fired off a response to Nelson Wednesday that said they
intended to subpoena the Justice Department “unless we receive a clear
commitment to promptly produce these documents by next Tuesday, June
24.”
- “There is absolutely no proper basis for this action...
it's patently absurd... and an affront to the entire Congress,” Conyers
and Sanchez responded Wednesday in a letter to Nelson. “Both the rules
and our previous oversight activity concerning the Fitzgerald
investigation plainly encompass the current inquiry, and the notion
that our oversight concerning criminal law enforcement should somehow
stop at the gates of the White House has no proper basis.”
Writings 
In an opening statement Friday morning before former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s highly anticipated testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee, the panel's Democratic 
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