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White House Press Briefing by Dana Perino 5/4/07 (US Attorneys)
— Friday, May 04, 2007 — Q Dana, a Newsweek article reports that a couple of months ago Karl Rove was involved in some meetings where Justice Department officials were preparing for testimony. Did the meeting happen? Was Mr. Rove there? And was it appropriate for him to be there? MS. PERINO: I'm so confused by this, because Kyle -- in the first batch of documents that went out on March 13th, Kyle Sampson's documents included a meeting -- an announcement about a meeting that happened early in March. I'm not going to tell you who the participants are of internal White House meetings, but I will tell you, it is not at all unusual, nor is it inappropriate, for people at the White House to meet with members of the administration before they are going up to testify in front of Congress. And at the urging of the White House -- we were asking the Justice Department to be fully responsive to the Congress so that we could help get them the answers that they need. Q You don't think it creates an appearance of everybody getting their story straight? MS. PERINO: What I think is that -- what it appears is that anytime Karl Rove's name is mentioned is that there's some sort of nefarious action. I will tell you that, having worked on that issue intimately, and the whole time we were in Latin America, we were urging the Justice Department to be responsive to the Congress. That is not unusual, and we would have done that with any agency. Q Yes, but there was a sense at the time that the Justice Department, I believe from the podium it was suggested often that the Justice Department needs to get its -- all of its story in line, straight, and get it in, settled up to the Hill, but that it was the Justice Department's problem to solve, which would be different than having meetings at the White House to talk about any kind of strategy about how you're going to testify. MS. PERINO: Urging members of the administration to make sure that they're responsive to members of Congress is not at all inappropriate. In fact, I think we would be remiss if we hadn't done so. Q That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there were meetings at the White House about coordinating a strategy for how to deal with it. That's not exactly the kind of -- MS. PERINO: Look, I was at that meeting, and I will tell you that the way you're describing it, in terms of coordinating some sort of message, was not the case. It was encouraging them to make sure that all the information got out quickly so that the members of Congress could have what they needed so that we could move on from that story. Q You were there? MS. PERINO: I was there. Q Was Karl there? MS. PERINO: I'm not going to comment on anybody else; I will speak for myself.
Posted by White House Press Corps @ 5:38 AM
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