In the legal standoff between Congress and the White House, a group of 24 former federal prosecutors is siding with Congress.

The attorneys joined in a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that Congress should be allowed to issue subpoenas to White House aides to investigate political influence at the Department of Justice.

AP reports:

The list of former U.S. attorneys who filed the documents in U.S. District Court includes David C. Iglesias, who says he was fired as New Mexico's top prosecutor for political reasons. The prosecutors said that, without congressional oversight, presidents would be free to meddle in prosecutorial decisions.

"If permitted to enforce its subpoenas for documents and testimony, Congress has a unique ability to address improper partisan influence in the prosecutorial process," the former prosecutors wrote. "No other institution will fill the vacuum if Congress is unable to investigate and respond to this evil."

So much for all those negotiations:

The subpoena issued Thursday orders Rove to testify before the House panel on July 10. He is expected to face questions about the White House's role in firing nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 and the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, a Democrat.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers had negotiated with Rove's attorneys for more than a year over whether the former top political adviser to President Bush would testify voluntarily.

Will Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) do some ass-kicking (his words) now?

Late Update: Rep. Conyers released a statement following the vote to issue the subpoena:

"It is unfortunate that Mr. Rove has failed to cooperate with our requests," Conyers said. "Although he does not seem the least bit hesitant to discuss these very issues weekly on cable television and in the print news media, Mr. Rove and his attorney have apparently concluded that a public hearing room would not be appropriate. Unfortunately, I have no choice today but to compel his testimony on these very important matters."

Later Update: Conyers released the latest correspondence between Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, and the committee, part of a lengthy back-and-forth between the parties. Apparently the subpoena was issued today after Luskin told the committee in a letter yesterday that Rove would not voluntarily testify, essentially ending the negotiations.

Still Later Update: Here's is the cover letter that Cnyers sent Luskin along with the subpoena.

Greg Sargent at TPM Election Central reports on the return of former U.S. Attorney and Karl Rove aide Tim Griffin to oppo research.

As I wrote on the main blog, TPM, especially TPMmuckraker, has a long history with Griffin. His return to doing oppo research for the RNC brings his story full circle.

For newer readers, here's our Tim Griffin reporting over the last 18 months or so. For you regulars, it's a trip down muck memory lane.

Throughout the House Judiciary Committee's struggle to obtain White House documents and have Harriet Miers testify about the U.S. Attorney firings, House Republicans adopted a contrary stance.

They're firm believers in Congressional oversight, they said, but citing Miers and White House chief of staff Josh Bolten with contempt of Congress was the wrong way to go. If they lost the battle in court, then the executive would come out much stronger. It would "make the presidency in America, a much stronger, imperial office," as Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) put it. Democrats, of course, think we're already there.

Well, now House Republicans have brought their opposition to court. In a filing yesterday, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Rep. Cannon asked the court to allow them to file a brief in the case arguing against the House's suit and with the administration. They are just trying to save the House from itself, they write:

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Last Friday, administration lawyers for the first time laid out their argument against the House's lawsuit to enforce Congressional subpoenas from the U.S. Attorney firings scandal. The House is seeking to enforce the House Judiciary Committee's subpoena of former White House counsel Harriet Miers and current chief of staff Josh Bolten.

The 83-page motion laid out a number of arguments for why the judge should dismiss the suit, but the central one was that the courts should not get involved because historically, they haven't. From the AP:

"For over two hundred years, when disputes have arisen between the political branches concerning the testimony of executive branch witnesses before Congress, or the production of executive branch documents to Congress, the branches have engaged in negotiation and compromise," Justice Department lawyers wrote....

"Never in American history has a federal court ordered an executive branch official to testify before Congress," lawyers for the White House wrote.

That makes for a murky area of law, and the Bush administration is urging U.S. District Judge John D. Bates not to tidy it up. The ambiguity fosters compromise, political solutions and the kind of give and take that the Founding Father envisioned, attorneys said.

Clearing it up "would forever alter the accommodation process that has served the Nation so well for over two centuries," attorneys wrote.

As part of their argument, the administration lawyers cited Congress' considerable leverage as the more traditional means of getting what it wants. This is from the motion:

And the Legislative Branch may vindicate its interests without enlisting judicial support: Congress has a variety of other means by which it can exert pressure on the Executive Branch, such as the withholding of consent for Presidential nominations, reducing Executive Branch appropriations, and the exercise of other powers Congress has under the Constitution.

It's not a tactic that Congress has employed over the past couple years, with a few exceptions. But maybe they ought to take the administration up on its own advice and see how it goes.

Last July, the House Judiciary Committee requested documents from the Justice Department about three cases that seemed to be the worst cases of selective prosecutions undertaken by George Bush's DoJ. In each case, the U.S. attorney had pursued a flawed case that hurt a prominent Democrat.

Since that time, the Department has refused to turn over all but a few documents -- though one of the produced emails showed a DoJ official troubled by one of the cases, the Georgia Thompson prosecution (the other two cases are ex-Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL) and Cyril Wecht). And in a letter on Friday, Conyers warned Attorney General Michael Mukasey that if the Department did not take notice, "we will have little choice but to consider the compulsory process." You can see that letter here.

Conyers included in his letter a three-page chart of requests (pdf) made by the committee that have gone unanswered by the Department. "We very much that the pending requests can be resolved voluntarily," he writes.