Press Briefing by Dana Perino

Business Wire, March 27, 2007

MS. PERINO: Again, I am not going to question someone's constitutional right that they made the decision based on with their lawyer. I would refer you to her attorney, who made a statement yesterday, to pursue that, or to the Justice Department as to --

Q Does this interface at all, or underscore for you the other part of this discussion, which has been about the terms in which White House staff will be able to have conversations with the Judiciary Committees? Because it just shows the complexity of communication, that perhaps the rules that are in place, how we do this, transcript, so forth, should be in place here?

MS. PERINO: I still believe that what we could have done at the White House is told the Judiciary Committees that no one at the White House was going to talk to them at all. Instead, what the President did was say, I've got -- you have requests to speak to four individuals, four members of my administration, close advisors, and I'm willing to have them meet with you and to have a meeting and discuss this. And I don't think that anything that she would have said, or her lawyer would have said on her behalf yesterday changes that for us.

Q Senator Specter also said that he had heard comments from Senator Leahy that he felt were prejudicial. Did the President think that the Senate Judiciary Committee had a presumption of guilt, and did that weigh in to his decision to not let Karl Rove and Harriet Miers be sworn and --

MS. PERINO: No, I've not heard the President express it that way. What we've talked about, going back, is to the principle of the equal branches of government as established by the founders of our nation under our Constitution. That was the President's principle that he was thinking of.

Q So separation of powers, and not a presumption of guilt?

MS. PERINO: Correct. But I will tell you what the President said, as well, is that what he provided was an opportunity for the members of the Congress to get to the facts that they said that they wanted to get to, in a way that was consistent with presidential prerogatives, and that he was going to resist subpoenas, of course, because of the desire on behalf of some Democrats, it seems, that they would rather have a public spectacle made out of this whole deal, rather than get to the facts that they said they want.

Peter.

Q What's the White House view on the congressional Democrat calls for safeguarding political emails by the party or by anyone in the White House who may have a sort of political email account?

MS. PERINO: What I know -- I checked into this -- is that certain White House officials and staff members who have responsibilities that straddle both worlds, that have responsibilities in communication, regular interface with political organizations, do have a separate email account for those political communications. That is entirely appropriate, especially when you think of it in this case, that the practice is in place and followed precisely to avoid any inadvertent violations of what is called the Hatch Act. And so there are some members of the administration that do straddle both worlds. And so under an abundance of caution so that they don't violate the Hatch Act, they have these separate emails.