Subpoenas are being issued to two former White House officials, the first to be subpoenaed in the fired U.S. attorneys investigation.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday issued a subpoena to Sara Taylor, former White House political director. About the same time, it was announced that the House Judiciary Committee will issue a subpoena in the same case to former White House counsel Harriet Miers.

Both committees say they will also subpoena documents from the White House, also a first in the investigation.

The committees have issued subpoenas for officials and documents from the Justice Department. The committees are investigating whether the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year were politically motivated and whether the White House was involved.

E-mails and documents released by the Justice Department so far show the White House and other administration officials were more involved in the dismissals, and much earlier, than they had acknowledged.

Taylor resigned from her White House job a couple of weeks ago. Miers resigned her White House post in January. President Bush nominated Miers to serve on the Supreme Court but later withdrew her nomination. A day earlier, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that the last batch of e-mails provided to investigators by the Justice Department, “shows again that there was no wrongdoing in the replacement of U.S. attorneys.”

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been authorized to subpoena several current and former White House officials including Taylor, Miers and Karl Rove, President Bush’s top political adviser.

Two Democratic congressional sources say they decided not to subpoena Rove because they are building their case by talking to and gathering information from lower level witnesses and officials, before they get to the more senior, more important witnesses.

“We want to build up and get documents to have basis to ask questions of Rove,” one of the sources said. “It’s the way you do it in any investigation.”

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