Court orders Cheney deputy chief of staff deposition

LA Times

No, this is not some Halloween stunt. That guy you see over there being held accountable is actually the vice president of the United States.

The U.S. District Court in D.C. ruled today that Vice President Dick Cheney will have to let his deputy chief of staff, Claire O'Donnell, give testimony in a lawsuit over his records.

Cheney, with his well-known passion for secrecy, had argued that a vice president need only preserve records central to his job as the official who presides over the U.S. Senate or records relating to specific tasks assigned by the president. That would narrow the pile considerably.

A group of historians and others at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have filed a lawsuit, concerned about their eventual access to the vice president's records. In a second round victory, the court today denied Cheney's move to block discovery in the case.

Anne Weismann, CREW's chief counsel, hailed the decision.

Today's decision, allowing CREW discovery in our case against the office of the vice president, moves us one step closer to ensuring that important historical documents will not be lost to future generations. CREW looks forward to deposing Cheney’s Deputy Chief of Staff Claire O’Donnell to get to the bottom of what exactly the administration has been doing with documents that belong not to the vice president, but to the American people.

The vice president's office declined to comment, noting that the case was still in court. Where Cheney may well file an appeal.

-- Johanna Neuman