Bush wants it both ways in the AG vs USAs mess

Dubya wants to claim executive privilege over something he claims not to know about.
Anonymous Liberal at Crooks and Liars

President Bush is in a real bind. The circumstances surrounding the firing of eight United States Attorneys reek so badly of crass partisan politics that the President's advisers are trying very hard to distance him as much as possible from the decision-making process. Hence, this from Tony Snow:

MR. SNOW: The President has no recollection of this ever being raised with him. . . .

Q Just to follow, did you say, again for the record, that the President has no recollection of ever being asked about any of this?

MR. SNOW: Yes, the removal — yes, that is correct.

Indeed, Snow went as far as to assert that this was "a decision that was made at the U.S. Department of Justice."

Here's the problem, though. As Marty Lederman points out, the relevant statute–28 U.S.C. 541(c)–vests the power to remove U.S. Attorneys with the president ("Each United States attorney is subject to removal by the President.") As we've repeatedly been told, U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President–not the pleasure of the Attorney General (and certainly not the pleasure of the Attorney General's chief of staff). The decision to fire a U.S. Attorney–much less eight of them–is unquestionably one for the president to make, so if President Bush was truly out of the loop on this, that's a problem in and of itself.

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