US lawmakers vote for contempt charges on White House aides

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House and Congress lurched toward a constitutional showdown as lawmakers on a key committee voted Wednesday to file rare contempt of Congress citations against senior White House staff.

The move raised the stakes in a legal row between lawmakers and President George W. Bush over the firing of a group of at least eight federal prosecutors. Critics say the lawyers were sacked for political reasons.

Members of the Democratic-led House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted 22-17 to pass to the full House contempt citations against White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten and former legal counsel Harriet Miers.

Bolten and Miers refused to comply with subpoenas filed by the committee to testify about the affair, after Bush invoked executive privilege.

If the full House, as expected, also endorses the citations, Bush's right to apply this legal doctrine, under which the president can refuse to produce certain documents and testimony to Congress, could land the case in the courts.

Committee chairman John Conyers said he did not seek the citations lightly but felt he needed to "protect our constitutional prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government."

However, Republicans said the White House had done nothing wrong in firing the attorneys and said Democrats motivated by hatred for Bush were on a partisan witchhunt.

"In our view, this is pathetic," spokesman Tony Snow said as the White House mounted a fierce counter-offensive.

Snow argued it was unlikely a US court would honor a criminal contempt petition on the basis of an executive privilege claim.

"What you have right now is partisanship on Capitol Hill that quite often boils down to insults, insinuations, inquisitions and investigations," spokesman Tony Snow said after the party-line vote.

"You've got to ask yourself, why not simply work along the road of accommodation, which this administration has done, rather than try to provoke something that seems to be aimed at creating a courtroom showdown?" he said.

He also said that, "ironically," the committee wanted to question Miers while it is about to approve a bill protecting attorney-client privilege, "apparently not believing that attorney-client privilege applies to the president and his own lawyer."

The charge of contempt of Congress, which is rarely invoked, is intended to punish anybody who obstructs an inquiry by lawmakers or who refuses to testify.

Snow strongly suggested that the US Department of Justice, headed by longtime Bush confidant Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, would not enforce the contempt charges.

"Nevertheless, that is a decision to be made by the Department of Justice," Snow said. "We don't choose the response. The Department of Justice will handle the referral."

The hearing came a day after US senators assailed Gonzales during testimony over the affair and said they did not trust him, accused of him of dodging questions and raised doubts about his integrity.

The fired prosecutors worked under Gonzales's direction. Bush has repeatedly defied calls to fire Gonzales, one of his closest aides dating from his days as Texas governor, and said repeatedly he retains confidence in him.

Asked if Gonzalez had been truthful, Snow said that in dealing with classified matters in an open session of Congress "it becomes difficult to walk the line about what is permissible and what is not permissible to say in public."

Nonetheless, he added, "we continue to believe that the attorney general has testified truthfully."

Snow, who accused the Democrats of indulging in cheap political theater, also showed a graphic claiming that a stack of 430,000 papers the White House had given Congress in the case would reach twice the height of the White House.

He approvingly quoted a Democratic senator under similar circumstances calling contempt charges a "fruitless endeavor" because they were unlikely to be enforced. "This is not likely to go anywhere," he said.