Mukasey: Law is no longer supreme

October 30, 2007
Mukasey: Law is no longer supreme

President Bush's nominee for attorney general, Michael Mukasey, was asked an important question
about Congress's power at his confirmation hearing. If witnesses claim executive privilege and
refuse to respond to Congressional subpoenas in the United States attorneys scandal — as
Karl Rove and Harriet Miers have done — and Congress holds them in contempt, would his
Justice Department refer the matter to a grand jury for criminal prosecution, as federal law
requires?

Mr. Mukasey suggested the answer would be no. That was hardly his only slap-down of Congress.
He made the startling claim that a president can defy laws if he or she is acting within the
authority "to defend the country." That is a mighty large exception to the rule that Congress's
laws are supreme.