Executive Privilege Kicks Off Regular Season

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PJMedia:

President Obama’s assertion of executive privilege today is a bit like the kickoff for the NFL regular season. It doesn’t end the Fast and Furious scandal; it just takes it to another level. Everything so far was the pre-season. Now people will start to pay attention.

(Read my review of the book Fast and Furious here for a great primer on the scandal.)

A president doesn’t assert executive privilege lightly. It is a relic from the powers of the king. Some things were not for parliament’s eyes, such as national security statecraft. This new phase of the Fast and Furious scandal begins with Americans who had paid no attention to the scandal hearing the news today and asking, “what are they trying to hide?”

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The new phase might possibly include members of the old media asking why the Most Transparent Administration in History, isn’t. Or, it might see them going all out to defend their president.

Pay attention to how often they use the term “botched” gun running operation. This is government-generated language. If you read Pavlich’s book, you know there was nothing “botched” about Fast and Furious except the architecture. The government wants you to think the builders screwed up, not the anti-Second Amendment architects.

One thing executive privilege can’t accomplish for Eric Holder is hiding his Department’s wrongdoing. Richard Nixon got that scolding from the Supreme Court in 1974 in a case deliciously named United States v. Nixon.

In that case, the Supreme Court held,

neither the doctrine of separation of powers nor the need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances.

Executive privilege cannot be used to cover up criminal wrongdoing, such as lying to Congress.

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Washington Times

 

Obama claims privilege in gunrunning probe

 

The White House ignited a full-fledged constitutional showdown Wednesday when President Obama asserted executive privilege in refusing to turn over documents subpoenaed by a House committee in its investigation of the botched Fast and Furious gunrunning investigation. The committee replied by voting to recommend Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. be held in contempt of Congress.

It’s a stunning escalation in a 15-month-long fight, and marks the first time Mr. Obama has asserted the privilege during his term of office. But the move could be politically poisonous because courts have held that a president may claim privilege only if he or a top White House aide was part of the deliberations over Fast and Furious — meaning Mr. Obama is either defying precedent or tacitly acknowledging that someone in the White House was involved.

 

 

House Republican leaders said Wednesday afternoon that they will hold a contempt vote in the full House next week unless Mr. Holder produces the requested documents.

 

“Despite being given multiple opportunities to provide the documents necessary for Congress‘ investigation into Fast and Furious, Attorney General Holder continues to stonewall,” House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio and Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia said in a joint statement. “Fast and Furious was a reckless operation that led to the death of an American border agent, and the American people deserve to know the facts to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.”

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/20/obama-claims-privilege-in-gunrunning-probe/

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National Review

 

Hiding Behind Executive Privilege

 

President Barack Obama has long tried to distance himself from the “Fast and Furious” scandal at the Justice Department, which stems from a program under which Mexican drug cartels were allowed to acquire U.S. firearms that were later used against U.S. law-enforcement personnel. By invoking executive privilege to stymie congressional investigation of the case, the president has placed himself squarely in the center of it.

President Obama, who had been a bitter critic of the Bush administration’s use of executive privilege, today through his representatives protested that he is only doing what the Bush administration did before him. The same man who once accused President Bush of “hiding behind executive privilege” is now hiding behind George W. Bush.

Executive privilege serves a necessary function in our constitutional order, reinforcing the separation of powers and protecting sensitive deliberations within the executive branch, and it is especially strong when the president or his closest advisers in the White House are involved in the communication. In this case, the administration has long denied that the president was directly involved. Instead, Attorney General Eric Holder wasted everyone’s time invoking a spurious form of deliberative privilege that was completely decoupled from executive privilege. Such a privilege has no force vis-à-vis Congress. By finally invoking executive privilege yesterday, the president belatedly acknowledged that his attorney general was full of it.

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/303538/hiding-behind-executive-privilege-editors