Senate Judiciary Chairman to subpoena Karl Rove

From Raw Story:

BREAKING NEWS: Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) will subpoena White House aide Karl Rove over the firing of eight US Attorneys.
MORE SOON.

Update from TPM:

Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) announced today he is issuing subpoenas compelling White House officials Karl Rove and J. Scott Jennings to provide testimony and information into the firings of U.S. attorneys.

“What the White House stonewalling is preventing is conclusive evidence of who made the decisions to fire these federal prosecutors,” Leahy wrote.“Indeed, the evidence we have been able to collect points to Karl Rove and the political operatives at the White House.”

Leahy's statement:

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is issuing subpoenas to political operatives at the White House for documents and testimony related to the Committee’s ongoing investigation into the mass firings of U.S. Attorneys and politicization of hiring and firing within the Department of Justice. This is not a step I take lightly. For over four months, I have exhausted every avenue seeking the voluntary cooperation of Karl Rove and J. Scott Jennings, but to no avail. They and the White House have stonewalled every request. Indeed, the White House is choosing to withhold documents and is instructing witnesses who are former officials to refuse to answer questions and provide relevant information and documents.

We have now reached a point where the accumulated evidence shows that political considerations factored into the unprecedented firing of at least nine United States Attorneys last year. Testimony and documents show that the list was compiled based on input from the highest political ranks in the White House, including Mr. Rove and Mr. Jennings. The evidence shows that senior officials were apparently focused on the political impact of federal prosecutions and whether federal prosecutors were doing enough to bring partisan voter fraud and corruption cases. It is obvious that the reasons given for these firings were contrived as part of a cover up and that the stonewalling by the White House is part and parcel of that same effort. Just yesterday during his sworn testimony, Mr. Gonzales contrasted these firings with the replacement of other United States Attorneys for “legitimate cause.”

The White House has asserted blanket claims of executive privilege, despite testimony under oath and on the record that the President was not involved. The White House refuses to provide a factual basis for its blanket claims. The White House has instructed former White House officials not to testify about what they know and instructed Harriet Miers to refuse even to appear as required by a House Judiciary Committee subpoena. The White House has withheld relevant documents and instructed other witnesses not to produce relevant documents to the Congress but only to the White House.

More on Leahy's statement.