House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers decided Wednesday not to hold a vote on a contempt citation for Attorney General Michael Mukasey for refusing to turn over subpoenaed documents to the panel after the Department of Justice released 681-pages of documents related to a voter identification law implemented last year in the state of Georgia that the Michigan Democrat had sought.

Conyers said Tuesday he planned to call a vote to hold Mukasey in contempt of congress for refusing to comply with the subpoena.

In June, Conyers subpoenaed the DOJ demanding a wide-range of documents related to several issues the committee has been probing, including unredacted transcripts of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney’s interviews with Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed to investigate the leak covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

The DOJ refused to comply with the subpoena. Keith Nelson, a deputy attorney general, said in a letter sent in June to Conyers and Subcommittee Chairwoman Linda Sánchez, (D-Calif.), that the House panel does not have “government-wide oversight jurisdiction and it does not have jurisdiction over the White House.”

“While we appreciate that the Committee has oversight authority over the Department of Justice, we do not understand how the Committee’s jurisdiction could extend to the alleged conduct at the White House,” Nelson wrote. “The executive branch has substantial confidentiality interests in these documents, which have been created and maintained by the Department but consist of White House information.”

Late Tuesday, Nelson sent Conyers a four-page letter stating the DOJ was concerned with “the Committee’s notice of action on a resolution to hold the Attorney General in contempt in connection with our responses to the Committee’s subpoena…” The DOJ agreed to turn over documents to stave off a vote on a contempt resolution against Mukasey.

“Enclosed are an additional 681 pages of documents provided by the [Civil Rights] Division relating to communications with individuals and entities outside of the Department about the 2005 Georgia photo identification submission, category eight of the Subpoena [issued by the House Judiciary Committee June 27," says Nelson's Sept. 9 letter to Conyers. "In accordance with our discussions with staff, records of communications with the submitting authorities in Georgia are not within the scope of this category. There are no redactions in these documents."

The newly released documents satisfied Conyers enough to "defer" a vote on holding Mukasey in contempt. However, Conyers stressed "the importance of reaching agreement [with the DOJ] promptly on production of the remaining subpoenaed documents.”

“I have deferred action for now on a contempt of Congress resolution,” Conyers wrote Wednesday in response to Nelson’s letter. “I hope that we and our staffs can redouble our efforts and can reach agreement concerning production of the remaining subpoenaed documents in advance of our meeting this week, and certainly before next week’s Judiciary Committee markup.”

Conyers and Sanchez sent a letter to Nelson June 5 seeking various documents Fitzgerald, the special counsel who probed the CIA leak case, obtained during the course of his probe into the disclosure of Plame’s identity to the media. Their committee had been investigating whether Bush, Cheney, and White House officials obstructed justice or broke other federal laws in an attempt to cover-up the roles of senior administration officials’ culpability in the scandal. Last month, Bush asserted executive privilege and blocked the DOJ from releasing transcripts of interviews Fitzgerald conducted with the president and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, also subpoenaed Plame-related documents from the DOJ.

The interest in the Plame leak resurfaced following the publication in June of former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s memoir, which suggests Bush and Cheney might have played a larger role in the controversy than both have acknowledged publicly.

In addition, Conyers subpoenaed documents related to the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, a Democrat; documents regarding the replacement of the U.S. attorney for Minnesota Tom Heffelfinger, memorandums from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel, including an Oct. 23, 2001, memo about the use of American military forces to combat terrorism within the United States, and documents related to the 2002 election in which Republican operatives jammed the telephone lines of a Democratic initiative to encourage New Hampshire residents to vote.

In his letter to Conyers Tuesday, Nelson said the DOJ is prepared to accommodate your interests in discrete questions relating to the New Hampshire Phone Jamming matter, the fourth subpoena category, through a briefing for Committee staff in the next several weeks.”

“The briefing will respond to your information needs about the timing of the [New England Regional Political Director for the Republican National Committee James] Tobin indictment, the decision not to indict the New Hampshire Republican Party, and the decision to intervene in the state civil case; it will likely include access to certain germane documents,” Nelson wrote.

However, as far as documents related to the prosecution of former Gov. Siegelman, Nelson said the DOJ is not “in a position to provide additional documents” to the Judiciary Committee because the case is being appealed.

Additionally, Conyers requested documents from the Civil Rights Division related to redistricting in the state of Mississippi. Nelson said the DOJ might soon turn up documents related to the issue.

“We continue to search for records responsive to the Civil Rights Division categories of the subpoena and believe that additional documents will be available in the near future,” Nelson wrote. Some of the records must be retrieved from other locations, given their age, and they may implicate significant confidentiality interests. We worked successfully with staff to revise category six to identify matters of interest to the Committee, and we hope to be in a position to provide responsive information in the near future.”