Ever since Monica Conyers, the president pro tem of the Detroit city council, pleaded guilty last week to bribery charges, our major interest here at TPMmuckraker has been in whether her husband, U.S. Rep. John Conyers, is implicated in his wife's confessed wrongdoing.

No evidence has emerged to suggest that he is -- but at a minimum, there's reason to take a close look.

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Monica Conyers, the president pro tem of the Detroit city council -- and the wife of Rep. John Conyers, the powerful chair of the US House Judiciary committee -- has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery, which is punishable by up to five years in prison.

The Detroit Free Press reports:

The federal plea document released today cites two instances in late 2007, in the days surrounding the approval of the now-infamous Synagro Technologies sludge-hauling contract, when Conyers accepted cash bribes from a Synagro consultant.

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Rep. John Conyers, who chairs the House Judiciary committee, has played a prominent role in recent years exposing executive-branch muck, from the US Attorneys scandal to torture. So it's ironic that Conyers' wife is caught up in some serious muck of her own.

The scandal has been brewing for a while, but it reached boiling point Monday, when Rayford Jackson, a Detroit businessman, admitted in a plea deal with prosecutors that he had bribed a council member in 2007, to gain approval for a $1.2-billion waste disposal contract. The Detroit Free Press had previously reported that the council member in question, described in court documents, is Monica Conyers.

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Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel under President Bush, has finally testified, behind closed doors, as part of Congress's investigation of the US attorney firings, reports FOXNews.com.

That raises an obvious question: When will Karl Rove do the same? Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, told TPMmuckraker last month that he expected Rove to testify in early June. But today Luskin did not immediately return our call.

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Karl Rove's long-awaited testimony before Congress about the US Attorney firings will likely occur around early June, according to Rove's lawyer.

Robert Luskin told TPMmuckraker that the Obama White House has been painstakingly sorting through the documents related to the firings, and is providing them to Rove and to the House Judiciary committee simultaneously. It's that process, said Luskin, that's driving the scheduling of Rove's testimony. Luskin stressed that the discussions have been cordial on all sides.

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Congress has asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a 2005 memo written by a top State Department lawyer, which is said to have taken an alternative view on the legality of torture to that famously offered by DOJ lawyers.

In a letter to Clinton, Reps John Conyers and Howard Berman, who chair, respectively, the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees wrote that the memo "may shed important light on the process by which these interrogation practices were evaluated, approved, ad implemented by the former Administration." Reps Jerry Nadler and Bill Delahunt, who chair subcommittees of Judiciary and Foreign Affairs, respectively, also signed on.

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Reps. John Conyers and Jerry Nadler want a special prosecutor to investigate whether Bush administration officials committed crimes in ordering and justifying torture policies.

In a just-released letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the Democratic lawmakers write:

The authorization and use of interrogation techniques that likely amounted to torture has generated concern and outrage in this country, and has harmed our legal and moral standing in the world. As a country committed to the rule of law, we must investigate and demand accountability for acts of torture committed by or own our behalf (sic). Appointing a special counsel to undertake this task would serve the interests of the department and of the public in ensuring that the necessary investigation is through and impartial, and that the United States fairly investigates serious and credible accusations of misconduct, even where high-ranking government officials may be involved.

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Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), who sits on the House Judiciary committee (and also happens to be TPM's congressman) went on MSNBC's Countdown last night to repeat his call for the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee, who, while a member of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, wrote one of the torture memos released last week.

Nadler also said he supported the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate whether Bush administration officials, including Bybee, committed crimes.

Watch:

Rep. John Conyers, who chairs the House Judiciary committee, has announced that he plans to hold hearings into the Bush-era OLC memos released last week.

Despite his pledge to hold hearings in his own committee, Conyers said he agrees with President Obama's statement that he favors a probe conducted by a bipartisan commission, rather than solely by a congressional committee.

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So when exactly will Karl Rove have his big sit-down with the House Judiciary committee to reveal what he knows about the White House's involvement in the US Attorney firings?

According to Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, not for "several weeks." That's how long it will likely take, Luskin told TPMmuckraker, for both Rove and the committee to review the relevant documents and schedule the testimony. Luskin declined to give a more specific time frame.

The agreement securing Rove's testimony, announced Wednesday between Congress and the Bush administration, acknowledged this need for deliberation, declaring: "The interviews will be conducted as soon as possible consistent with needed preparation time and the availability of the witnesses and their counsel."

But Luskin did defend Rove's comments to FoxNews.com, published yesterday, in which he warned of a "show trial" and said that Democrats "would love to have me barbecued."

Arguing that Rove had legitimate concerns about the fairness of the process, Luskin referred to a comment made about Rove by Judicary chair John Conyers -- "someone's got to kick his ass." Luskin also said that Speaker Nancy Pelosi had told Rolling Stone that Rove might have to go to jail. (In fact, Pelosi said she foresaw Rove being prosecuted.)

"If you were the subject of that, you'd worry about the process too," said Luskin.

Luskin also confirmed to TPMMuckraker that he had played no role in the agreement, and was not kept closely informed about the progress of negotiations.

Here's one other key aspect of the Rove-Miers testimony agreement that's worth noting...

The agreement declares that the famous "Scudder memo" will be made available "for Committee review only". In other words, the committee won't get to keep a copy, nor will it be able to release the memo publicly.

That seems at first like a significant concession.

The Scudder memo, to refresh your memories, appears to be a key piece of evidence in the effort to get to the bottom of the White House's role in the firings. Michael Scudder, an associate White House counsel, was tasked by White House staff with conducting an internal inquiry fully documenting the White House's involvement in the affair. He interviewed numerous White House and DOJ officials, including Rove. In their report on the firings released last year, Justice Department investigators identified the Scudder memo as one of the most crucial documents to which they lacked access, that might have helped them uncover the truth.

But it's not quite that simple. In an emailed statement to TPMmuckraker, a committee source explained why the committee settled for being able to review the memo only:

The Scudder memo was identified by OIG/OPR as a critical document even they could not get, and we would not have accepted a settlement that did not get us full use of the document in the interviews. At the same time, we do respect the need for White House lawyers to investigate rising controversies, and so we think the agreement works a fair compromise that won't limit our investigation or unduly burden any future Administration.

In other words, it sounds like one or both of the Bush and Obama White Houses were concerned, perhaps legitimately, about maintaining the ability to conduct internal reviews of controversial issues with the confidence that the results will remain confidential. And the committee felt willing to compromise on that point, as long as it was given adequate time to review the memo before it questioned Rove and Miers.

And of course, when transcripts of the testimony are released, we'll likely learn the key facts included in the memo anyway-- since they'll presumably be included in the committee's questioning and in the witnesses' responses.

On the related subject of the Obama White House's role in the deal, here's the cover letter that went with the agreement, written by Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig, and sent to Judiciary chair John Conyers, and President Bush's lawyer, Emmet Flood.

The letter, which notes that "both the Bush administration and the House Judiciary Committee have confirmed to me orally and in writing that they have accepted the terms of the enclosed Agreement."

In other words, as recent reports have suggested, the Obama White House was intimately involved in shaping this agreement -- a fact that would appear to explain the concern for maintaining the White House's ongoing ability to conduct confidential internal inquiries.

In his first public comments about the deal to secure his testimony on the US Attorney firings, Karl Rove told Fox News.com:

I understand they may be the hors d'oeuvres, but I'm the main course. Some Democrats would love to have me barbecued.

But beyond that eye-catching quote, something far sneakier came out of the interview. Rove used a curious argument to defend his role in the firings, saying:

If White House contact with the Justice Department is inappropriate, then what are we doing by allowing anybody who has anything remotely to do with the political campaign -- like the general counsel of the Obama White House -- to have any contact with the Justice Department?. I mean, we named the Justice Department building after the campaign manager of the 1960 presidential campaign - Robert F. Kennedy.

Leave aside the shot at Bobby Kennedy. Rove seems to be arguing that the White House's coordination with the Justice Department over the firings is comparable to any contact that the White House counsel might have with the department.

But as Rove knows, one of the concerns that the firings scandal brought up was the fact that the Bush White House allowed numerous White House staffers to talk to DOJ officials about the case. Democrats responded with efforts to limit those contacts -- and Rove certainly has never before expressed the view that those efforts didn't go far enough.

And while we're on the subject of Rove's mendacity, here's another point worth noting: Yes, Rove will testify under penalty of perjury. But he appears to have shown in the past that he's perfectly capable of dissembling even under such conditions.

In 2006, there was fevered speculation that Rove would be indicted for perjury for lying to Pat Fitzgerald's investigation into the Valerie Plame affair. Rove initially did not tell the grand jury about his conversation about Plame with Time's Matt Cooper (now at TPM!), claiming he forgot about it.

A New York Times story from 2006 lays out the details:

In his February 2004 testimony, Mr. Rove acknowledged talking to the columnist Robert D. Novak about Ms. Wilson, but he did not tell the grand jury about a second conversation he had about her with Matthew Cooper, a Time magazine reporter. Mr. Novak revealed her name and C.I.A. employment in a column on July 14, 2003.

Critics of the Bush administration have asserted that the revelation was retaliation against her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who had publicly accused the administration of twisting some of the intelligence used to justify going to war with Iraq.

Mr. Rove later voluntarily told the grand jury about the conversation with Mr. Cooper, and said that he had forgotten about it in the rush of his daily business. But Mr. Fitzgerald has long been skeptical of Mr. Rove's account of his forgetfulness, lawyers in the case say.

So it wouldn't run counter to precedent if Rove again walked right up to the line of inviting a perjury charge when he testifies.

Something for Conyers and his team to be aware of, perhaps.

The House Judiciary committee's announcement this afternoon of an agreement on Karl Rove and Hariet Miers' testimony about the US Attorney firings leaves a few key questions still unanswered:

1) The committee says: "It was agreed that invocations of official privileges would be significantly limited." Limited how? Exactly when can Rove and Miers invoke the privilege? The devil could very well be in that detail.

2) Did the committee agree to steer clear of any specific subjects?

3) Why won't Rove and Miers be under oath? It's true that they'll still be under penalty of perjury, and, when you're talking about a congressional investigation, that penalty is no different whether the subject is under oath or not. But in that case, why not just put them under oath to avoid any confusion? Presumably, because the Bush administration objected. And if it objected, then the oath question is meaningful. (Lawyers with relevant experience, feel free to weigh in here!)

We've called the Judiciary committee to put these questions to them, and will keep you posted.

The House Judiciary committee just announced an agreement that it says will secure Karl Rove's testimony about the US Attorney firings.

The committee says in a press release that it has forged a deal with the Bush White House which will see Rove and Harriet Miers conduct transcribed interviews before the committee, under penalty of perjury, on the subject of what they know the about the White House's role in the firings. If the committee wants to follow up by with public testimony by requiring public testimony, it has reserved the right to do so.

By the terms of the agreement, Rove and Miers' ability to invoke executive privilege -- a privilege that President Bush has been claiming exists in perpetuity even after a president leaves office -- will be "significantly limited", though the announcement does not indicate the nature of those limitations.

The interviews won't technically be under oath. But since the criminal penalties for lying to Congressional investigators are the same whether or not the interview is conducted under oath, that's not seen as a major hurdle in getting to the truth.

In addition:

The Committee will also receive Bush White House documents relevant to this inquiry. Under the agreement, the landmark ruling by Judge John Bates rejecting key Bush White House claims of executive immunity and privilege will be preserved. If the agreement is breached, the Committee can resume the litigation.

And:

[I] the Committee uncovers information necessitating his testimony, the Committee will also have the right to depose William Kelley, a former White House lawyer who played a role in the U.S. Attorney firings.

Committee chair John Conyers called the agreement a victory:

I have long said that I would see this matter through to the end and am encouraged that we have finally broken through the Bush Administration's claims of absolute immunity. This is a victory for the separation of powers and congressional oversight. It is also a vindication of the search for truth. I am determined to have it known whether U.S. Attorneys in the Department of Justice were fired for political reasons, and if so, by whom.

Today was the deadline a court had set for the Obama administration to file a brief in the Miers-Bolten case, indicating whether or not it supports the Bush White House's claim of executive privilege. White House counsel Greg Craig has reportedly been working with the Judiciary committee and with former Bush White House officials to forge a deal.

Late Update: It's worth noting that TPMDC's Matt Cooper pointed to something like this outcome in a post from January...

So today was the day that Karl Rove was supposed to appear before the House Judiciary committee to testify about the US Attorney firings. And of course, Rove didn't show.

That wasn't a surprise. After getting the deadline pushed back, Rove had already publicly indicated he didn't plan on being there, citing President Bush's claim of executive privilege. Rove's lawyer had then asked for a second postponement, a request that Judiciary chair John Conyers had declined to grant.

It's a bit unclear where things go now. The next key date is March 4th -- the new deadline for the Obama administration to weigh in on the Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten case, in which President Bush also asserted executive privilege. The new administration's stance on that case could well also determine how a judge would rule on the Rove case, should the issue go to court.

And given Rove's continuing failure to cooperate, it looks like that's where we're heading.

The Bush years may be over, but the U.S. Attorney firings scandal isn't. In fact, Karl Rove and Congress are still locked in battle about whether he'll ever have to reveal, under oath, what he knows.

So you'll be excited to hear that we've updated our authoritative timeline of events in the years-long saga -- and given it a new look.

You can check it out here.

Another development in the ongoing saga of Karl Rove's long-sought testimony on the US Attorney firings.

House Judiciary chair John Conyers has sent a letter to Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, enclosing a subpoena for Rove to appear before the committee February 23. That date had already been agreed to in a prior exchange of letters late last month.

But things are getting slippery again. Rove had originally been scheduled to appear February 2, but the two sides agreed to a delay, in part thanks to a scheduling conflict on Rove's part.

But apparently, Luskin, in the intervening time, had asked for a second delay. In addition, Rove had announced in a recent speech in California that he didn't intend to appear, citing an executive privilege claimed by President Bush.

In today's letter issuing the subpoena, Conyers informs Luskin that he won't agree to the requested second delay. Conyers writes:

Given Mr. Rove's public statements that he does not intend to comply with the subpoena, I am puzzled as to why Mr. Rove needs a mutually convenient date to fail to appear.

Conyers also writes that he can't accept Luskin's request to have Rove's testimony be limited to the matter of the Don Siegelman case, meaning he would stay mum on the US Attorneys firings.

Next week, the Obama White House is scheduled to formally weigh in on the contempt proceedings currently being brought by Conyers' committee against two other former Bush aides, Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten, for their testimony on the firings. The position the White House takes could well determine whether Rove will ultimately be required to testify by a court -- which is where things seem to be heading.

So does that letter Newsweek obtained, sent January 16 by the Bush White House to Karl Rove's lawyer, instructing Rove not to respond to any subpoenas that might be issued, change the state of play as to whether Rove will end up testifying on the US Attorneys firings? After all, President Bush is now on the record claiming the right to assert executive privilege even after leaving office.

Not according to Neil Eggleston, who specialized in executive privilege issues for President Clinton's White House. Eggleston told TPMmuckraker that, since President Obama has already issued an executive order that appears to take the view that a former president can't assert executive privilege, he's unlikely to back Bush's claim. And assuming things then wind up in court, Eggleston said he'd be very surprised if a court sided with Bush, ruling that executive privilege can be asserted retroactively.

"Remember what Obama kept saying during the transition: 'There's only one president at a time?'" asked Eggleston. "This is one where I think a court's going to decide there's only one president at a time."

Eggleston told TPMmuckraker last week that Obama's order seemed designed to help gain access to Bush White House documents and testimony that Congress has been seeking, including on the US Attorney firings matter.

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff has obtained the letter sent by White House counsel Fred Fielding to Karl Rove's lawyer Robert Luskin, just a few days before Bush left office, instructing Luskin that Rove "should not appear before Congress" in response to any subpoenas issued. The letter makes clear that Bush is continuing to assert a retrospective executive privilege over his White House years.

The Wall Street Journal had reported the existence of the letter -- which makes clear the lengths to wish the former president is wiling to go to keep a lid on what happened inside his White House -- earlier this week.

Earlier this week, the House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena to Rove, ordering him to testify February 2 about the US Attorney firings, and the prosecution of ex Alabama governor Don Siegelman. Luskin told us he had forwarded the subpoena to the Obama White House, which must decide whether to back Bush's claim of retroactive privilege. If it doesn't, but Bush continues to assert it -- which it would appear from the letter he will -- the matter looks headed for the courts. There is no settled legal precedent to guide how a court might rule.

The Obama White House told Newsweek it's still studying the issue.

Fielding also sent a near identical letter to former White House counsel Harriet Miers, instructing her not to appear for a scheduled deposition in front of the Judiciary committee. The issue of whether Miers and another Bush White House aide, Josh Bolten, can testify is currently the subject of a court fight between the committee and the Bush White House.

The Obama White House is scheduled to file a brief in that case by February 18, in which it may make clear whether or not it intends to back Bush's executive privilege claim.

Those directives issued by President Obama last week, reversing the Bush administration's policy of secrecy, have really shaken things up.

Earlier this week, the House Judiciary committee subponaed Karl Rove for testimony in the US Attorney firings matter. That move appears to have been in response to the Obama's moves, since Rove had long been claiming executive privilege backed by President Bush.

Now, McClatchy reports, the ACLU has asked the new administration to release Bush Justice Department memos justifying harsh interrogation methods, eavesdropping, and secret prisons.

The Bush administration had long refused to release them, citing national security concerns, among other things.

It's clear that Obama's moves -- specifically, his rescinding of a Bush DOJ memo that gave backing to agencies when they refused to disclose material, and his issuing of an executive order urging agencies to take a broader view of the Freedom of Information Act -- triggered the request.

"The president has made a very visible and clear commitment to transparency. We're eager to see that put into practice," an ACLU staffer told McClatchy.

Pro Publica has a rundown of the missing memos.

As McClatchy notes, Obama's nominee to head the Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen, has written articles suggesting she thinks that in general, such memos should be released.

So this could be another set of crucial Bush records that will finally see the light of day.

Last week, we talked to a number of experts who said that President Obama's executive order on presidential records might well affect the ongoing effort to get information about the Bush White House's role in the US Attorney firings.

And it looks like John Conyers is of the same mind. The House Judiciary chair this afternoon issued a subpoena to Karl Rove to testify before the committee on February 2.

Rove had claimed immunity from an earlier Conyers-issued subpoena, citing executive privilege. As a press release accompanying today's subpoena points out, "[t]hat "absolute immunity" position was supported by then-President Bush, but it has been rejected by U.S. District Judge John Bates and President Obama has previously dismissed the claim as 'completely misguided.'"

In other words, although Obama's order on records directly addressed only the question of a former president's material docuement -- not testimony from his aides -- there's reason to think that the principle of openness over secrecy that Obama has outlined both in the order and elsewhere could strengthen Conyers' position on this issue.

Said Conyers:

I have said many times that I will carry this investigation forward to its conclusion, whether in Congress or in court, and today's action is an important step along the way. Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it. After two years of stonewalling, it's time for him to talk.

We'll be watching this very closely...

The experts' verdicts on the potential impact of President Obama's executive order on presidential records are starting to come in. And they're bolstering our initial take that Obama's move could significantly boost efforts to release crucial records that the Bush administration has fought to keep secret.

Doug Kmiec, a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine law school and expert on executive privilege, told TPMmuckraker that the order makes it harder for former presidents to block the release of their documents.

And, crucially, he said it could impact current high-profile struggles over Bush's records, "whether it be the dismissal of US Attorneys, whether it be other assertions of executive privilege dealing with White House emails and the like."

Congress and the Bush White House have been struggling over a key memo that details the level of White House involvement in the US Attorney firings of 2006. And open-government groups have sued the Bush administration to gain access to White House emails on a range of subjects, including the Valerie Plame leak probe and the decision to invade Iraq.

Kmiec, a noted conservative legal scholar who nonetheless supported Obama's campaign, said he had done some work with the Obama transition team, and had offered his assistance to the new administration.

Kmiec said the order appears to shift power from former presidents to the current administration, and to the National Archivist. Under an order issued by President Bush, former presidents and vice presidents could compel the Archivist to keep documents secret. Under the new order, former presidents can still ask the Archives to do so. But the burden of proof is squarely on the former president to prove that secrecy is in the nation's interest, and the Obama administration can decline the request if it's not convinced. That approach reorients things toward the original intention of the Presidential Records Act, passed in the wake of Watergate.

"If the Archivist were to make a determination that those materials would be made public," explained Kimiec, "then holding it back would take something extraordinary," in terms of an argument from the former president.

Kmiec's view is supported by open-government advocates. Scott Nelson of Public Citizen believes, in the words of the Associated Press, that "researchers should find it easier to gain access to records under the new order."

And yesterday, Anne Weissman of CREW, which unsuccessfully brought a lawsuit against Dick Cheney's office to compel him to hand over records to the Archives, told TPMmuckraker that the order "does have the potential to impact ongoing litigation," including over the US Attorney documents.

So when might we see those documents? If the Archivist and the Obama administration agree to it (in practice, the Archivist would likely defer to the administration), they could be made public as soon as the Archivist has prepared them for public display. Of course, President Bush could sue to stop the move -- but it looks like he'd face an uphill climb in convincing a court that there's a pressing need to keep them secret.

It really is a new day.

Over at TPM, Josh and David have been mulling the significance of the executive order, issued today by President Obama, concerning the Presidential Records Act. Could it apply retroactively to previous administrations, making it easier to pry loose records that the Bush White House has fought to keep secret?

According to Anne Weismann, a lawyer for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the tentative answer is yes.

As David notes, the order says:

Going forward, anytime the American people want to know something that I or a former President wants to withhold, we will have to consult with the Attorney General and the White House Counsel, whose business it is to ensure compliance with the rule of law.

As a result, Weismann told TPMmuckraker, the order could affect any case in which the White House has claimed executive privilege over presidential (or, to be clear, vice presidential) records. Most important, it would subject those claims to review by the Justice Department. "It does have the potential to impact ongoing litigation," she said.

Weismann specifically cited the ongoing legal fight between the House Judiciary committee and the Bush White House, over documents relating to the US Attorney firings. Among other documents, Congress has been seeking a key memo written by a White House counsel, which might shed light on White House involvement in the firings.

Weismann told TPMmuckraker that that the order likely would not affect a lawsuit she had been working on, on behalf of CREW, which sought to compel Dick Cheney's office to hand over all his records to the National Archives. On Monday a judge declined to order Cheney to do so. Weismann said that case turned on an interpretation of the Presidential Records Act itself, rather than on a claim of executive privilege.

Still, it certainly seems possible that on his first full day in office, the new president has dealt significant a blow to the Bush administration's efforts to permanently keep information from the public. But a lot more questions than answers remain, and we've got calls out to some experts in executive privilege who might be able to shed further light on what Obama's order does and doesn't do.