From the Los Angeles Times:
Escalating a fight with Democrats on Capitol Hill, the White House on Friday invoked executive privilege in refusing to turn over documents to a congressional committee investigating the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to deny California permission to implement its own vehicle emission standards.
The Bush administration asserted executive privilege hours before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was to vote on whether to bring contempt-of-Congress proceedings against EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson and Susan Dudley, administrator of regulatory affairs in the White House Office of Management and Budget, for refusing to turn over subpoenaed documents.
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Presidents since George Washington have claimed rights to executive branch confidentiality, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The Bush White House invoked executive privilege to prevent officials from testifying about the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. President Clinton cited presidential privilege during investigations into the Monica Lewinsky scandal and on other issues.
House and Senate committees have been investigating what role the White House played in EPA decisions preventing California and other states from enacting tougher emissions rules than the federal government and in the EPA's approval of new ozone pollution standards.
The administration's claim of executive privilege is the latest twist in the escalating legal and political battle over California's efforts to implement its own law combating global warming. Critics of the EPA decision contend that it was based on politics, not science or the law.
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In asserting executive privilege in the EPA inquiry, the administration made public a copy of a letter sent to the president by Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey saying that releasing internal documents "could inhibit the candor of future deliberations among the president's staff."
For the relevant documents, click here for the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
