Rep. John Conyers is the quintessential congressional Democrat. He’s polite and gracious and knows how things work on the Hill. For the past year, he’s been patiently sending off a variety of polite and gracious letters to Attorney General Michael Mukasey asking if, please, he wouldn’t mind handing over to the House Judiciary Committee a bunch of documents related to various investigations it’s conducting on such topics as the New Hampshire phone jamming case or the enforcement record of the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Not so graciously, Mukasey has all but told the elder statesman to blow away.
So in May, Conyers got serious and told Mukasey that if he didn’t respond to some of these document requests by the 16th, Conyers was going to have to issue a subpoena. The 16th came and went and still no documents. Conyers sent one last letter on June 18 making basically the same request, and once again, Mukasey ignored him. So now Conyers, it seems, is going to make good on his threat. The subcommittee on commercial and administrative law, chaired by Rep. Linda Sanchez, voted today to authorize the full Judiciary Committee to issue the subpoenas, the first step in forcing Justice to be overseen by Congress. Sanchez said in a statement, “The Department of Justice is trying to run out the clock on congressional investigations of possible misconduct. We have taken this step because the Department has indicated that it will not voluntarily comply with Congress’ constitutionally mandated oversight role. There are questions in various investigations that the American people deserve to have answered.”
