The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has refused an appeal by the administration to overturn a lower court’s discovery order that requires Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force to turn over the names of companies that participated in drawing up the administration’s energy policy.

In making the en banc ruling on a 5-3 vote Wednesday, the court endorsed an earlier 2-1 decision of a smaller panel of appeals court judges which ruled that the Bush Administration was asking it to transform “executive privilege from a doctrine designed to protect presidential communications into virtual immunity from suit” and that “this court has no authority to ‘extend’ the law beyond its well-prescribed bounds.” The next stop could be the Supreme Court, if the Justice Department decides to pursue its appeal.

The action came in a suit filed in 2001 by Judicial Watch, a non-profit advocacy group pursuing strict ethical standards, which sought the records of the Energy Task Force, including how it operated and the vice president’s role. The administration had appealed a discovery ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan that required the Task Force to produce its records. The Sierra Club has joined with Judicial Watch in the case.

Earlier, the General Accounting Office (GAO), an arm of the Congress, ended its own pursuit of those same records following an adverse court ruling. At the time GAO noted the cost of continuing and the fact that it could gain access to the records if the Judicial Watch suit were successful (see Daily GPI, Feb. 10).

The lawsuit marked the first time the GAO had brought legal action against the executive branch to compel production of information and records. The agency filed the lawsuit against the Bush administration in February 2002, after having had its requests for task force records and documents rebuffed several times by the White House.

The GAO initiated its pursuit of the energy task force records at the urging of Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and John Dingell (D-MI), who suspected that large Bush campaign contributors, such as former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay, had unduly influenced the drafting of the energy policy.

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