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 For Immediate Release
Mar 12, 2004 Contact: Press Office
202-646-5188
JUDICIAL WATCH FILES SUPREME COURT BRIEF IN CHENEY ENERGY TASK FORCE CASE




(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, yesterday filed its brief in opposition to Bush Administration arguments that Vice President Cheney, his Energy Task Force, and various cabinet officials be immune from court process. Last year, an Appeals Court panel ruled that the Bush Administration was asking it to transform “executive privilege from a doctrine designed to protect presidential communications into virtual immunity from suit” and that “this court has no authority to ‘extend’ the law beyond its well-prescribed bounds.” The Vice President and the Energy Task Force appealed rulings against them to the Supreme Court of the United States. Oral argument in the case, Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States, et al. v. United States District Court For the District of Columbia, has been set for April 27, 2004.

Judicial Watch was forced to file its lawsuit in 2001 under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (open meetings law) after it was rebuffed in its requests for information on the Task Force by Vice President Cheney. Several months later, the Energy Task Force also was sued by the Sierra Club, which is now a co-plaintiff in Judicial Watch's lawsuit. (This same law was used to sue Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Task Force in 1993.) Rather than comply with court-ordered limited discovery into the composition of the Task Force, the Bush Administration has asserted it is immune from discovery and that the courts and Congress have no authority to seek information from Mr. Cheney (or any other administration official) about contacts with outside individuals alleged to have participated in the Task Force, such as former Enron chief Kenneth Lay. As the Judicial Watch brief notes:
    [The Supreme] Court has consistently held that even the President, from whom [Judicial Watch and Sierra Club] have not sought discovery, is not Aabove the law@ and is subject to judicial process. Nixon I, 418 U.S. at 707 (Aneither the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances@); Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681, 697 (1997).
“Courts have rejected three times already Vice President Cheney’s power grab and contempt for the judicial process. We hope the Supreme Court will do the same,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

The Judicial Watch Supreme Court brief is available in its entirety by visiting the following links: text format or Adobe Acrobat format.

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