bob duncan -- you've got mail! -- july 17, 2007 return-date on a house subpoena!

well -- it is high time to pick
up the pace on these subpeonas, given
the nakedly-transparent stone-walling,
and the "manufactured-unavailability"
of former white house counsel harriet
miers -- today, chairman conyers deftly obbliges. . .

July 13, 2007

BY FAX AND U.S. MAIL

Mr. Robert M. Duncan,
Chairman, Republican National Committee
c/o Mr. Robert Kelner
Covington & Burling LLP
1201 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20004

Dear Mr. Duncan:

Enclosed is a subpoena for e-mail documents to be produced to the House Judiciary Committee by Tuesday, July 17, at 10:00 a.m. These are the e-mails, written by White House officials on their RNC e-mail accounts, pertaining to the Committee’s investigation into the circumstances surrounding the termination of at least nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006, possible related violations of federal law, and other related matters. The subpoena is being issued pursuant to authority granted by the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law on July 12, 2007.

As you know, I first requested these e-mail documents in a letter to you from myself and Subcommittee Chair Linda Sánchez on April 12, 2007. Following that letter, your outside counsel Mr. Robert Kelner and my staff have engaged in productive and cooperative negotiations to identify documents responsive to the request that could be obtained and produced without undue burden. Through that process, the RNC has identified, collected, and processed what I understand to be a substantial number of e-mail documents relevant to our investigation.

This subpoena is tailored accordingly, calling for you to produce only documents that the RNC has already identified through our cooperative process as responsive to the Committee’s letter, and which have already been collected and reviewed by both your outside counsel and the Office of the White House Counsel. As I understand the circumstances, these documents are ready and available for production, and it is for this reason that I am comfortable issuing a subpoena with this relatively prompt return date.

Your counsel has previously informed us that the White House has directed you to withhold many of these documents from the Committee. That direction, however, was made before the RNC was formally under subpoena, and before our Subcommittee hearing yesterday at which Chairwoman Sánchez quite correctly rejected the White House’s overreaching privilege claims as asserted on behalf of another private party (in that case Harriet Miers), and in particular the White House’s asserted right to direct a private party to violate a duly issued Congressional subpoena.

Please address any questions to the Judiciary Committee office at 2138 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515 (tel: 202- 225-3951, fax: 202-225-7680). I look forward to your compliance with the subpoena next week.

Sincerely,

my guess is that the r.n.c. will
intentionally miss the tuesday,
10 a.m. deadline -- setting another
vote to begin the process of obtaining
an order holding the r.n.c., like harriet
miers, in contempt of congress. . .

and that vote may come as early as
wednesday, july 18, 2007.