contempt of Congress

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Issa Confirms Civil Lawsuit To Be Filed Against Eric Holder

August 13, 2012 by 1 Comment

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) confirmed last night by Twitter that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will be filing their civil lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder in US District Court today. The suit is being brought to force Holder to turn over the subpoenaed documents that he and the Justice Department have been withholding.

Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News first reported that the lawsuit was to be filed yesterday afternoon.

The contempt vote had two possible tracks for enforcement: criminal and civil. But shortly after the House vote, the Department of Justice announced it would not pursue a criminal case against its own Attorney General and did not believe any crime had been committed. The civil lawsuit expected to be filed Monday would ask a federal judge to order the Justice Department to turn over the documents.

Matt Boyle of The Daily Caller has more here.

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Bar Ethics Complaint Against Holder Makes Fox News

July 12, 2012 by 2 Comments

The formal ethics complaint filed with the DC Bar by Mike Vanderboegh and David Codrea got some airtime today on Fox News.

William LaJeunesse of Fox discussed the complaint with Brian Darling of the Heritage Foundation and Michael Frisch of Georgetown Law Center. Frisch was formerly senior assistant bar counsel to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. As might be expected, they differed in the seriousness of the ethics complaint and how it would be treated by the DC Bar.

Darling, who is a Senior Fellow for Government Studies at Heritage, thought the complaint was on solid ground. However, he didn’t expect them to take it up until next year.

“It is clearly a reasonable basis for a complaint against Eric Holder to say ‘you are in charge of the Justice Department, the Justice Department is refusing to produce documents that were subpoenaed by Congress and as a result you were held in contempt to Congress not once, but twice’,” he said.

Frisch, who is an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown, didn’t think the DC Bar would take the complaint seriously and would likely dismiss it.

“Because this particular complaint is written as if the attorney general had already been convicted of a crime, I think it will likely be rejected on its face,” said Michael Frisch, former member of the D.C. Bar Counsel and current Georgetown Law School professor.

Frisch goes on to add that the DC Bar has the option of deferring any action until such time as a parallel proceeding such as a civil proceeding is completed.

Mike and David fired a shot across the bow and it was a brilliant strategic move. Whether it is squashed or not by the DC Bar is actually irrelevant because it has kept the issue of Holder and contempt alive in the mainstream media.

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FoxNews Sunday On Fast And Furious

July 2, 2012 by 1 Comment

In a web-only roundtable discussion, Chris Wallace discusses the contempt citation for Attorney General Eric Holder with Brit Hume of Fox, Liz Marlantes of the Christian Science Monitor, Shannon Bream of Fox, and Charles Lane of the Washington Post.

Brit Hume says of Holder that “he is damaged goods” but that Obama won’t ditch him before the election. Prior to saying this, Hume goes over some of the characteristics that most Attorneys General share including being above the fray, being respected by members of both parties, and being seen as non-political as much as they can be. He says that Holder doesn’t share these characteristics.

Liz Marlantes of the Christian Science Monitor buys into the Fortune Magazine story. As such, I dismissed everything else she had to say.

Shannon Bream isn’t much better but did make a somewhat insightful comment when she said that for those just learning of Operation Fast and Furious, this will seem political and a witch hunt. To which, Chris Wallace brought up the near mainstream media blackout on the scandal until Obama invoked executive privilege. He is correct. With the exception of CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson and Fox’s William LaJeunesse, the mainstream media ignored the story.

Finally, Charles Lane doesn’t think the contempt citation will leave a lasting taint on Holder. I think he’ll be found wrong on this.

Watch the latest video at <a href=”http://video.foxnews.com”>video.foxnews.com</a>

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Delusional

July 2, 2012 by

Former Speaker and current House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is delusional. In this clip from today’s Meet the Press, she insists to David Gregory that the Republican leadership brought the contempt charges for Attorney General Eric Holder merely as payback. The payback is for what she calls “voter suppression” (sic) or what the rest of us call requiring voters to present identification showing that they are who they say they are.

No mention is made of the deaths of Federal law enforcement agents Brian Terry or Jaime Zapata nor is any mention made of the deaths of an estimated 300 Mexican nationals.

As I said in the headline, delusional.

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Sorry Heath, This Doesn’t Cut It

June 29, 2012 by 8 Comments

Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) is usually a reliable vote on Second Amendment issues and is one of the leaders of the Blue Dog Democrats. He decided not to run for re-election earlier this year. His Chief of Staff, Hayden Rogers, is the Democratic nominee for the seat and was endorsed in the primary by the NRA-PVF. Rogers will face the winner of the Republican run-off primary.

Yesterday, Shuler was one of the 67 no votes on H. Res. 711 which is the contempt citation for Attorney General Eric Holder. He released this to press explaining his vote.

“Today the House of Representatives proved once again that dysfunction and partisanship rule the day. The vote to hold Attorney General Holder in Contempt of Congress after the Department of Justice released the requested information demonstrates that Congress has lost touch. While I strongly believe that the Department of Justice should fully cooperate with Congress to ensure transparency in the “Fast and Furious” operation, this motion lacks an enforcement mechanism to make it anything more than politically motivated. Further, I am disappointed that though an agreement could have been reached, the Majority has opted to use this vote as a fundraising mechanism to rally the base. It is no wonder I have opted to retire.”

I’m sorry but I have to raise the BS flag on this. The Department of Justice did NOT release the requested information prior to the vote. The DOJ has given the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approximately 7,600 documents out of an estimated 140,000 (or even larger 250,000 documents according to some sources). If Mr. Shuler considers this releasing the requested information, he is sorely mistaken.

If there is a problem with the enforcement mechanism, it is only because a) the US Attorney for the District of Columbia is a Democrat and b) the Republican leadership does not want to use their inherent contempt power to arrest Holder.

As to his impending retirement, with four years in the NFL and six in Congress, we should all be so lucky to get the retirement checks he’ll be getting for 10 years of work.

So, Heath, this BS Flag is for you!

BS Flag gif
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Grassley On Contempt Vote

June 29, 2012 by

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) had this to say about the House finding Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress.

The House of Representatives today voted to enforce a subpoena to obtain records on Operation Fast and Furious by holding the U.S. attorney general in contempt of Congress. Sen. Chuck Grassley began investigating the circumstances of the death of border patrol agent Brian Terry 18 months ago after whistleblowers came to him with concerns. Grassley made the following comment on the House action.

“When a person dies in service to his country, and his own government may have contributed to his death, covered up evidence about the circumstances, or both, the survivors’ families and the American people have a right to know the truth. That was the case with Pat Tillman, and it’s the case with Brian Terry. The government should own up to any policies and practices that led to the harm of Mexican citizens as well. Those who don’t seem to want the truth or accountability default to accusations of political motivation against those seeking answers. Remember, the Justice Department insisted there was no gun-walking, then retracted that statement and reversed itself. The Justice Department is proven unreliable on this topic. The only way to try to get an accurate, complete account of what happened to Agent Terry and why is to obtain every possible record and account of the facts. We can only draw fair, informed conclusions from the complete facts. The fulfillment of the House’s pursuit of complete records from the Justice Department is necessary. Without it, we might never know what happened to Agent Terry. That can’t stand.”

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Wayne LaPierre On The Contempt Vote

June 29, 2012 by 1 Comment

Wayne LaPierre of the NRA spoke with Ginny Simone and Cam Edwards of NRA News about the vote to find Attorney General Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress. Among the topics he touched upon were the claim that this was all the NRA’s doing, the Fortune Magazine article by Katherine Eban, and the mainstream media’s response to Operation Fast and Furious.

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Comment Of The Day

June 29, 2012 by 1 Comment

Dave Hardy at Of Arms and the Law blog has an interesting post about the contempt proceedings for Attorney General Eric Holder. Though not used since 1934, the House could send its Sergeant-at-Arms out to arrest Holder and then have the trial in the Capitol.

One of his commenters has this to say:


Holding Holder in contempt of Congress. Well deserved.

Obama claiming executive privilege over documents he denies ever seeing. Astonishing.

Holder having his arrogant perjurious ass thrown in the Capitol jail. Priceless.

Though the House could legitimately do this, I tend to agree with Sebastian that Speaker Boehner would never have the cojones to do this.  I have been sorely tempted more than once to send him a set of these.

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CCRKBA On The Vote For Contempt

June 29, 2012 by

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms issued statement last night saying that the vote to find Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress was “necessary for justice to be served.”

The full statement is below:

BELLEVUE, WA – The historic 255-67 vote by the House of Representatives to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing to provide documents relating to the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious was “necessary for justice to be served,” the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said.

Holder repeatedly did not comply with a subpoena issued last October by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Instead, he successfully appealed to President Barack Obama to claim executive privilege at the last minute in an attempt to shield the documents from Congressional review.

“As the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the nation, the attorney general is not above the law,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb declared. “It should not have come to this. Eric Holder should have complied with the subpoena. If he had cooperated fully with the Fast and Furious investigation from the outset, none of this would have been necessary and he knows it.

“The only conceivable reason that Holder and the Obama administration do not want to turn these documents over,” he said, “is that they contain damning evidence of either incompetence or complicity, or both.

“We are disappointed, but not surprised,” Gottlieb continued, “that Holder’s Democrat cheerleaders tried to portray this as a witch hunt, and tried to blame the Bush administration, but their arguments do not wash. This is about the rule of law and finding the truth about a horribly mis-managed gun trafficking operation, the murder of an American Border Patrol agent and what appears to have been a cover-up by the Department of Justice.”

CCRKBA had urged gun owners to contact their congressional representatives in support of the contempt vote.

“We are proud,” Gottlieb noted, “of the 17 Democrats who joined the Republican majority on this vote. This was not about partisanship, but accountability and transparency. Fast and Furious has a body count, and so long as people provide cover to the attorney general, the blood is on their hands.”