Will Eric Holder be his bunkmate?
Should the House have held Eric Holder in contempt? The question is not whether they should have; the question is why they did not do it earlier.
Despite the attempts by the Democrats to spin this into something it is not, the contempt is very straightforward: Darryl Issa’s committee issued a subpoena for documents relating to the Fast and Furious scandal. Congress, like the courts, has subpoena power. A subpoena is simply an order to appear at a certain date at a certain time to give testimony. A subpoena can also command someone to bring items or documents with them for their testimony. This is what has been happening in the House of Representatives.
When someone receives a subpoena, they can either comply or challenge the subpoena on certain legal grounds or claim the documents are privileged. What they cannot do is ignore the subpoena and that is what Holder did. For months, Holder has ignored the subpoena. When Darryl Issa asked if the documents had been assembled within the Justice Department, Holder refused to answer. In short, he was thumbing his nose at the committee.
Contempt is what is called a remedial power. If you fail to comply with a subpoena, you can be jailed until you do comply. You can also be jailed for contempt as a separate offense. Not shockingly, the most corrupt administration since the Nixon administration quickly announced after the contempt vote that it would not prosecute Eric Holder for contempt.
Steve Bannon Loses Appeal
A federal appeals court panel on Friday upheld the criminal conviction of Steve Bannon for defying a subpoena from the House committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol. A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit rejected Bannon’s challenges to his contempt of Congress conviction, the AP reports. Bannon had been sentenced to four months in prison, but the judge overseeing the case had allowed him to stay free pending appeal.
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