I'm happy the new Attorney General Mike Mukasey has the guts to tell Nancy Pelosi he won't be enforcing her contempt citations against Josh Bolten and Harriet Myers.
Saying no crime was committed, Mukasey rejected a request by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to refer the citations to a federal grand jury investigation of current White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers.
"The Department has determined that the non-compliance by Mr. Bolten and Ms. Miers with the Judiciary Committee subpoenas did not constitute a crime, and therefore the Department will not bring the congressional contempt citations before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute Mr. Bolten or Ms. Miers," Mukasey said in a letter to Pelosi.
Via Patterico's Pontifications and Hot Air.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air says Congress could file a lawsuit to compell the A.G. to prosecute, but that would put the judiciary in the middle of a sibling fight that's been brewing between the executive and legislative branches for a long time. That's a position the Supreme Court is not anxious to claim.
In this case, though, the House has been itching for a fight. The White House has offered to meet the committee members partway, but they have insisted on demanding that the Bush administration give up its claim on executive privilege instead — which no one ever believed they would do. Mukasey found that Bush’s use of executive privilege meets legal requirements.
Now the courts will have to make a decision that will make one branch or another very unhappy, and for a very long time — all over terminations that were obviously in the purview of the executive, and after a fishing expedition that produced nothing more than an incompetent AG. Thankfully, we have a much more talented replacement at the helm.
This is yet another ridiculous case of Democrats wanting headlines versus doing anything substantive. It's clearly part of the executive's privilege to hire or fire the attorneys in question. For any reason. That's what "serving at the pleasure of the president" means, after all.
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