By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket
President Barack Obama invoked executive privilege on Wednesday for the first time since taking office to withhold certain Justice Department documents tied to the flawed "Operation Fast and Furious" gun-smuggling investigation from a House panel demanding them. Obama's 11th-hour decision, revealed in a letter from the Justice Department to House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa,
did not derail the California Republican's plans to hold a vote declaring Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress.
"I write now to inform you that the President has asserted executive privilege" over the documents, Deputy Attorney General James Cole told Issa.
"Although we are deeply disappointed that the Committee appears intent on proceeding with a contempt vote, the Department remains willing to work with the Committee to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution of the outstanding issues," Cole wrote in the letter.
Issa read from Cole's letter as his committee opened the hearing, and said he was "evaluating" the situation but would not hold off on the contempt vote.
Issa met with Holder late Tuesday to find a last-minute path out of the expanding constitutional conflict, but said afterwards that they had failed to reach a satisfactory arrangement regarding lawmakers' access to documents connected to "Fast and Furious." The operation aimed to track the flow of guns from the United States into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, but many firearms went missing and two turned up at the scene of the killing of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
Republicans have accused Holder of misleading them on what he knew about the operation and when. Holder has blamed Republicans of playing politics by rejecting his offers to make some of the materials available.
The White House, in an email to reporters announcing the move, noted that Obama's Republican predecessor President George W. Bush had invoked executive privilege six times, and former President Bill Clinton relied on the doctrine 14 times. Republicans hit back by sending reporters a snippet from a March 2007 interview in which Obama's condemned the Bush Administration's use of executive privilege "every time there's something a little shaky that's taking place" and urging that administration to "come clean."
By invoking "executive privilege," the Administration was essentially asserting a right to withhold documents that Issa's committee has sought using a congressional subpoena. The Supreme Court has ruled in the past that the privilege has its roots in the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.
"In brief, the compelled production to Congress of these internal Executive Branch documents generated in the course of the deliberative process concerning the Department's response to congressional oversight and related media inquiries would have significant, damaging consequences," Cole wrote to Issa.
"As I explained at our meeting yesterday, it would inhibit the candor of such Executive Branch deliberations in the future and significantly impair the Executive Branch's ability to respond independently and effectively to congressional oversight," Cole said.
"Such compelled disclosure would be inconsistent with the separation of powers established in the Constitution and would potentially create an imbalance in the relationship between these two co-equal branches of the Government," the deputy attorney general wrote to Issa.
Republican House Speaker John Boehner's office seized on Obama's decision, arguing that it suggested White House involvement in a "cover-up" of the errors in "Fast and Furious."
"Until now, everyone believed that the decisions regarding 'Fast and Furious' were confined to the Department of Justice. The White House decision to invoke executive privilege implies that White House officials were either involved in the 'Fast and Furious' operation or the cover-up that followed," said Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck. "The Administration has always insisted that wasn't the case. Were they lying, or are they now bending the law to hide the truth?" Buck said in a statement emailed to reporters.
MTW- These two, Holder and Obama, have evidence that this Operation Fast and Furious is directly responsible for an American's death. This is wrong. They need to go. This Holder did a great job on this one, but why is Obama bailing him out? Nobama-Nobiden in 2012!
GOD BLESS YOU ALL.
Posted by Michael T. Wayne- A Little Crazy
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