Refusal to Turn Over Key Documents Breaks Precedent & Raises Suspicions

Washington – In a break with longstanding precedent, late this afternoon the Attorney General’s office sent a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy refusing to turn over materials documenting John Roberts’ work under Ken Starr as Principal Deputy Solicitor General, a political appointment he held in George H.W. Bush’s administration.

“Today the White House thumbed its nose at the American people,” said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the nation’s oldest, largest and most diverse civil and human rights coalition. “By withholding documents from Roberts’ stint at the Solicitor General’s Office, the White House is cheating the Senate, the American people and Roberts himself. They are making it all but impossible for the Senate to fairly evaluate Roberts’ record, which is a disservice to all parties.”

There is well-established judicial precedent for receiving similar documents from nominees, including materials from the Solicitor General’s Office. Even Senator Orrin Hatch has sharply dismissed claims of attorney-client privilege by government lawyers, stating on the Senate floor: “No statute or Senate or House rule applies the attorney-client privilege to Congress. In fact, both the Senate and the House have explicitly refused to formally include the privilege in their rules. . . . This body cannot simply take the President’s claim of privilege against Congress at face value. To do so would be to surrender an important constitutional obligation.”

As Principal Deputy Solicitor General, Roberts said, “my sole client was the United States.” As such he and the administration have an obligation to be straight with the American people. While incomplete, documents from his time in the Reagan administration portray a troubling record on a number of issues important to ordinary Americans, including disturbing efforts to reshape civil rights policies such as court-ordered desegregation of public schools, as well as voting rights and Title IX implementation.

“Bork, Rehnquist, and Roberts’ former boss, William Bradford Reynolds all complied with Senate requests,” said Henderson. “What does the White House have to hide?”