White House Rebuffs Congress on Miller Testimony, Setting up Privilege Fight

We are living in a time that many of us never believed that we would see, in which the executive branch of our government is openly defying Congress – an equal but separate branch.

This all comes as the Mueller report’s ripples continue to jostle the buoys on Lake USA, detailing nearly a dozen instances in which Robert Mueller was concerned that the President of the United States may have obstructed justice.

The revelation has stirred a hornets’ nest on the left side fo the aisle, with the already shell-shocked democratic party frantically attempting to unite behind a single plan for the future; one that could possibly include impeachment, if you listen to the more precocious progressives.

As congressional lawmakers continue to push for answers in the case of “RussiaGate”, the White House is pushing back.  Now, after legislators have requested that presidential aide Stephen Miller testify before Congress in the matter, President Trump and his administration are simply saying “no”.

The White House will not allow senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration’s latest immigration overhaul and Homeland Security reorganization, to testify before the House Oversight Committee. Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings requested last week that Miller appear before the committee on May 1 to discuss immigration.

White House Counsel Pat Cipollone sent a letter to Cummings Thursday informing the committee that Miller would not testify, but that the administration was willing to make other officials available to the committee. The letter was first reported by the Washington Post.

A senior White House official told CBS News that the administration has offered up “cabinet secretaries and other agency leaders” to discuss immigration in front of various congressional committees. The official also pointed to precedent established by both previous Republican and Democratic administrations who also denied requests for White House staffers to testify.

The request was made as Miller has been outed as the purported figurehead of Trump’s hardline immigration policies, and likely participated in the decision-making process that led to the forced resignation of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Cummings is on the warpath, no doubt, having requested testimony from, and subpoenaed, several members of the Trump administration to little avail.  Democrats will soon vote on whether or not to hold one such man, White House Personnel Security Director Carl Kline, in contempt of court after he refused to testify regarding his role in providing security clearances for Jared Kushner.