White House Responds to Roberts Document Requests

The New York Times reports that the White House - responding to a request from the Senate Judiciary Committee's chairman, Arlen Specter - will release files dating from Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' time in the Reagan Administration. Documents from 1981-82, when Roberts worked as special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, have been eligible for release since 1998, and the National Archives will make them public on Tuesday. More than 50,000 pages of documents dating from Roberts' tenure as assistant White House Counsel (1982-86) are being expedited for release by the Reagan Presidential Library, a process which an archivist there said could take several weeks.

The files at the Reagan Library, the Times reports, are eligible for release under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, and the Bush Administration has waived any right to attorney-client privilege on the documents. As for other files, dating from Roberts' tenure as principal deputy solicitor general from 1989-1993, the Times cites "two senior administration officials" as suggesting those may not be released, at least en bloc. Specter's request to the Administration did not include these files - as of yet, no formal request has been made for their release.

This article will undoubtedly provide more fuel to those who want to make a stink about this. I, for one, and going to wait and see. If the Judiciary Committee ends up making a request for these documents and the White House refuses to release them, I'll admit there may be some reason for concern (although I realize that the precedent is mixed on this and there is some question of attorney-client privilege). Ideally in such an instance, some agreement would be worked out whereby Specter and Leahy would be allowed to view the relevant files and report back to the Committee (or something similar).

Let's try not to jump to conclusions about this, and shout and shriek about how the White House is holding things back. There may be time for that in the future, who knows. But let's continue to take things one step at a time, and not get sucked into an unnecessary brawl.

[Completely unrelated notes:

- Don't forget, go vote in Patrick Ruffini's '08 GOP straw poll. I would stop recommending this, but my competitive juices have kicked in since he's ranking the results by referring site (and we're doing very well!).

- I just read the pieces about the setbacks in the energy bill conference, I'll be posting on those in the morning. Troublemaking Joe Barton, at it again.]