White House invokes executive privilege on EPA investigation regarding California's vehicle emission standards

Los Angeles Times

2008-06-22

"I don't think we've had a situation like this since Richard Nixon was president," Congressman Henry Waxman said yesterday after the Bush administration invoked executive privilege in order to refuse to turn over subpoenaed documents in an investigation of the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to deny California permission to implement its own vehicle emission standards.

Waxman was referring to the fact that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was deciding 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 honor the subpoena.

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."

EPA spokesman Tim Lyons said the agency had provided the committee with more than 7,000 documents and devoted 2,200 hours of staff time to responding to requests for information, and he called it "disappointing" that the committee had decided to "politicize environmental regulations."

"We don't know whether this privilege that's being asserted is valid or not," Waxman said yesterday and is currently deciding what the committee's next move will be.

-- Tony Pierce