John Dean laid it all out at the time, when George W. Bush's administration was firing US Attorneys from the DOJ because they were not 'sufficiently' towing the right wing political line, especially when it came to the administration's
intent to
pervert the electoral process.
By forcing compliance of the U. S. attorneys, the Bushies could depress voter turnout. If the U. S. attorneys refused, Bush and Rove fired them. As of October 2009, there were
31 Bush holdovers still burrowed in at DOJ.
Oh, and Mr. Rove,
educate yourself. The U. S. Congress does, indeed, have the power to imprison.
Congress Has a Way of Making Witnesses Speak: Its Own Jail ,
NYT, December 4, 2007
.....
This is where inherent contempt comes in. From the Republic’s earliest days, Congress has had the right to hold recalcitrant witnesses in contempt — and even imprison them — all by itself. In 1795, shortly after the Constitution was ratified, the House ordered its sergeant at arms to arrest and detain two men accused of trying to bribe members of Congress. The House held a trial and convicted one of them.
In 1821, the Supreme Court upheld Congress’s right to hold people in contempt and imprison them. Without this power, the court ruled, Congress would “be exposed to every indignity and interruption, that rudeness, caprice, or even conspiracy, may mediate against it.” Later, in a 1927 case arising from the Teapot Dome scandal, the court upheld the Senate’s arrest of the brother of a former attorney general — carried out in Ohio by the deputy sergeant at arms — for ignoring a subpoena to testify.
The Congressional Research Service issued a report in July that confirmed Congress’s inherent contempt powers. It explained how they work: “The individual is brought before the House or Senate by the sergeant at arms, tried at the bar of the body, and can be imprisoned in the Capitol jail.” Congress can do this, the report concluded, to compel them to testify or to punish them for their refusal to do so.
.....
The American people are sick to death of this long-term right wing assault on our government.
Because none of these people have been held accountable for their offenses against the country and the international community, we are still lost in the weeds as a nation.
Unless and until we administer justice to these traitors to America, we will be unable to move successfully into our future.
