Skip to content Skip to footer
|

Fox’s Brazen Star: Karl Rove Rebukes Obama on Executive Privilege Claim

For someone whose qualifications as a constitutional authority are nil, Rove’s comments on Thursday displayed an impressive degree of contempt for his listeners that is not seen every day, not even on Fox.

Forever incapable of embarrassment, let alone sober reflection, Karl Rove is very well suited to his current roles as Fox News commentator and Crossroads Super PAC smear sponsor. But he achieved a moment of near-perfection last Thursday when, appearing on a Fox morning news broadcast, he spoke up about President Obama’s invocation of executive privilege against a House committee subpoena of Justice Department documents.

“It’s one thing to exert executive privilege over the actions of the president, and his aides, and the White House,” he said. “It’s another thing to exercise executive privilege with regard to a Cabinet official, seemingly in a matter that — according to the president up until now — had no connections with, no contact with, no communications with the White House … .”

Rove went on to complain that the president’s privilege claim over the “Operation Fast and Furious” documents demanded by Rep. Darrell Issa’s oversight committee “is a very long reach. I mean basically, if the president is allowed to take the privilege that goes to the Executive Office of the President and extend it to a Cabinet department, then he can extend it to any branch of the government for any matter, even if there was no presidential or White House involvement. And I’m not certain that that’s what the Founders thought about when they talked about executive privilege.”

For someone whose qualifications as a constitutional authority are nil, Rove’s comments displayed an impressive degree of contempt for his listeners that is not seen every day, not even on Fox. Whatever he may know about executive privilege, he could only have learned when George W. Bush used it to protect (SET ITAL) him (END ITAL) from various investigations, notably concerning his role as White House political boss in the partisan and lawless dismissal of seven United States attorneys for partisan revenge.

Rove must have been reminded of that experience last week, when former Speaker Nancy Pelosi remarked: “I could have arrested Karl Rove on any given day. I’m not kidding.”

She was commenting on the Issa committee’s resolution holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for his refusal to turn over certain “Fast and Furious” material on internal Justice Department deliberations — if only to note her own forbearance for letting Rove escape confinement in a Capitol Hill jail cell.

Rove’s complaint was especially audacious because he knows that Bush made privilege claims over thousands of documents not directly connected with the president and his deliberations — including those concerning the manipulation of the Justice Department and U.S. attorneys by Rove and his subordinates, which became one of the most blatant cases of partisan abuse in the department’s history.

Indeed, Bush asserted precisely the same level of privilege as Obama when he told Republican House members in 2001 that they could not obtain Justice Department internal documents concerning President Clinton’s fundraising activities. That claim extended the cloak of privilege to officers of a Cabinet department under a previous president. Bush likewise claimed privilege to frustrate investigations of the military cover-up of the death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan and the FBI’s coddling of Boston mobster, informant and killer Whitey Bulger.

But Rove can ignore such details on Fox News, where he need never fear anyone will notice that he is brazenly pulling his facts and theories from his butt.

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.

Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.

You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.