Mukasey Contradicts Cheney And Addington: Vice President Is ‘Obviously’ In Executive Branch

Last year, House investigators revealed that Vice President Cheney exempted his office from an executive order designed to safeguard classified national security information by claiming that the Office of the Vice President is not an “entity within the executive branch.”

Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington reaffirmed before Congress last month that the Vice President’s office is “attached” to the legislature:

[P]erhaps the best that can be said is that the vice president belongs neither to the executive nor to the legislative branch, but is attached by the constitution to the latter.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, Attorney General Michael Mukasey had an entirely different take than Addington and Cheney on the matter:

It’s my own belief that the Vice President is a member of the executive branch. … The Vice President is obviously one of the closest advisers to the president, and he is a close adviser to the president within the executive branch. That in my view is where he sits.

Watch it:

The idea of ambiguously tying Cheney to the legislative branch seems to be grounded in political convenience rather than fact. Cheney himself has said (on camera) that “the vice president’s become an important part of the administration of the executive branch.” Some other examples:

– In 2001, the White House argued that a probe into Cheney’s energy task force “would unconstitutionally interfere with the functioning of the executive branch.” [Link]

– Cheney said that a probe concerned “meetings in the Executive Branch between the Vice President and other individuals.” [Link]

– On April 9, 2003, Cheney lauded a recent court ruling, stating, “I think it restored some of the legitimate authority of the executive branch, the president and the vice president, to be able to conduct their business.” [Link]

Rather than the Vice President title, Cheney apparently prefers to be tagged with the label “unique creature.”