Judge orders Cheney to come clean

The battle the White House hoped everyone had forgotten has just taken a REAL interesting turn. A judge has ordered the White House to release key documents about its energy task force, or declare executive privilidge. The punchline? The deadline for turning over those documents is Nov. 5 -- Election Day.

Now, I have no doubt that the White House will try and delay by appealing, but it looks as though the administration is on increasingly thin ice. Check out this positively Bushian exchange:

Coffin said the government would likely ask the judge to stay his own order before the Nov. 5 deadline. He said the government wants enough time to be able to ask an appellate court to intervene if necessary.

After Sullivan set a series of deadlines for court motions beginning next week, the hearing appeared to be over.

But when Coffin said government attorneys might need even more time because "we haven't done a document review of the office of the vice president," it was Sullivan who interrupted.

"That is a startling revelation!" the judge said twice. "How can you be asserting this is privileged information if you haven't looked at it?"

"We haven't completed the review," Coffin said. "We've done enough to know our arguments" are correct, he said. "I misspoke."

"How could you misspeak on something as significant as that?" Sullivan shot back.

Joining in, Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch, said, "He made a plain statement, and now he's backing off it because it's bad press."

"We've made a review," Coffin explained, "but we're not going to ask our clients to complete that review because it's an unconstitutional burden."

So, they've made a review, but they haven't made a review because its unconstitutional to make a review. Got it? Good. Neither do I.

Posted October 18, 2002 09:19 AM | Comments (6)