Letter to Chairman Goodlatte October 11, 2018 Page
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October 11, 2018
via
Electronic Mail
Bob Goodlatte Chairman U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary c/o Arthur Baker Arthur.Baker@mail.house.gov
Re: Glenn Simpson
Dear Chairman Goodlatte: On behalf of Glenn Simpson, we are responding to the subpoena issued by the House Committee on the Judiciary for a confidential deposition. Consistent with the September 27, 2018 letter we sent to you, Mr. Simpson, whose testimony is a matter of public record, will not be participating in a confidential deposition before this Committee. He will instead invoke his constitutional rights not to testify under the First and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution.
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This Committee’s inquiry is not designed to discover the truth. The obvious – and at times explicitly stated – goal of this Committee is to discredit and otherwise damage witnesses to Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, all as part of an effort to protect a President who has sought to placate and curry favor with a hostile foreign power and who demands that the Justice Department stop investigating him. Through its investigation, the Committee has abdicated and indeed perverted its constitutional and traditional role. Rather than probe White House interference with Department of Justice investigations, this Committee has instead trained its sights on the refusal of the Department of Justice to comply with the President’s demands. Such “oversight” reverses longstanding policy, under which Department of Justice investigations are supposed to be free
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See
Emspak v. United States
, 349 US 190 (1955) and
Quinn v. United States
, 349 US 155 (1955), in which the Court reversed contempt convictions for witnesses, who refused to answer numerous questions posed at a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing by asserting “[primarily] the First Amendment of the Constitution, supplemented by the Fifth Amendment” because the references to the Fifth Amendment were sufficient to invoke the privilege against self-incrimination.
Letter to Chairman Goodlatte October 11, 2018 Page
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from the political influence of the White House.
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Indeed, this “norm and practice” of prosecutorial independence was “sufficiently entrenched by 1973 for Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, to resign rather than follow President Richard Nixon’s order to fire the Watergate special prosecutor.”
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To help weaken the independence of this Justice Department, the Committee has sought to ruin the reputations of some of the government’s most dedicated and experienced civil servants, and, in some instances, has deprived our country of their able assistance in the increasingly urgent fight against foreign interference with our democracy. For example, this Committee has sought to depict the relationship between Christopher Steele and Bruce Ohr – one of the UK’s top experts on Russia and one of the Justice Department’s leading experts on Russian organized crime – as somehow scandalous, when we should all want these two experts to share information in order to make us safer. No American should be required to participate in efforts to malign and falsely implicate dedicated national security professionals who have served their countries for decades with distinction. Additionally, this Committee has attempted to prejudge and incriminate our client and his associates by arguing that it is improper for a campaign contractor to report a crime to law enforcement – no matter how egregious the crime, no matter how well qualified the person evaluating the facts, and no matter how potentially harmful that crime might be to the integrity of our political system. This Committee has repeatedly interviewed witnesses in secret, only to selectively leak from the interviews to disparage those witnesses and promulgate a patently false narrative. The
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See Eric Tucker,
Why the Justice Department Operates Free of White House Sway
, L.A.
T
IMES
, Nov. 24, 2016 (“Long-standing protocol dictates that the FBI and Justice Department operate free of political influence or meddling from the White House.”),
available at
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-justice-department-white-house-20161123-story.html. In 2007, Senator Patrick Leahy explained: “The effectiveness and integrity of the administration of justice depends upon the Department of Justice … operating free of political interference. The most dangerous potential source of such interference is the White House.” Committee on the Judiciary, Sen. Patrick Leahy, The Security from Political Interference in Justice Act of 2007, S. Rep. No. 110-203, Oct. 23, 2007, at 2, https://www.congress.gov/110/crpt/srpt203/CRPT-110srpt203.pdf. See also Hearings before the Comm. on the Judiciary, U.S. Senate, 110th Cong., Preserving Prosecutorial Independence: Is the Department of Justice Politicizing the Hiring and Firing of U.S. Attorneys?, at 213, May 15, 2007,
available at
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110shrg35800/pdf/CHRG-110shrg35800.pdf (At a hearing to investigate the firing of U.S. Attorneys in December 2006, partway through President Bush’s term, Senator Chuck Schumer stated: “[M]any have been concerned that [Attorney General] Alberto Gonzales has made the Justice Department a mere extension of the White House, where independence takes a back seat to service to the White House, where the rule of law takes a back seat to the political needs of the President’s party.”). More recently, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley praised Rod Rosenstein’s commitment to preserving the independence of the Justice Department: “Rod Rosenstein’s well-earned reputation for independence garners him high praise from Republicans and Democrats alike…. He has pledged to ‘defend the integrity and independence of our Justice Department…”. Press Release: Grassley: Rosenstein will Keep Promise of Independence as Deputy AG, Apr. 25, 2017,
available at
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/news/news-releases/grassley-rosenstein-will-keep-promise-independence-deputy-ag.
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Isaac Arnsdorf,
Sessions Faces Decision on Politicizing Justice Department
, P
OLITICO
, Jan. 9, 2017,
available at
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/jeff-sessions-attorney-general-justice-233382.