McCarthy: A subpoena is not a "request."
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It is a demand:
It borders on the hilarious, then, that the DOJ and the bureau have replied to subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee, now under Republican control, with a snippy letter wondering why Congress is not tripping over itself to negotiate with the Biden administration over the subpoenas’ demands, and why the committee is acting as if its assessments of its needs take precedence over the priorities of the unelected bureaucrats who run agencies that Congress created and that depend on Congress to fund their operations.
I mean, who does Jim Jordan think he is? Bennie Thompson?
If you remember Thompson and Liz Cheney, the chairman and vice chairwoman, respectively, of the norm-busting congressional inquisition known as the House January 6 committee, then you’ll grasp the downright quaintness of the letter sent by Justice Department Legislative Affairs chief Carlos Felipe Uriarte to House Judiciary Committee chairman Jordan. The first rule of politics is worth repeating every day: What goes around, comes around. If Democrats truly revere interbranch comity, bipartisan cohesion, and cooperation over coercion, then they should have thought of that before they blew those conventions up in spasms of anti-Trump derangement.
Justice Department officials should be the last people who need to be told a subpoena is not a suggestion. That is especially so given how they treat the people they regard as suspects, including the American parents they chose — in coordination with the Biden White House and other Democratic operatives — to smear as domestic terrorists. A congressional subpoena is not a polite, optional request. It is not the start of a negotiation. It is compulsory — the kind of requirement that bureaucrats in progressive administrations revel in punitively applying to citizens and businesses who dare to question or cross them.
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Time to perp-walk an example?
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@Jolly well, there's the problem. We've seen the likes of Bannon get perp-walked, while people like Holder and Lerner skate away while defying supboenas.
More from the article:
The Justice Department and FBI have no excuse for temporizing at this point. They’ve known for well over a year that this probe was coming in the likely event that Republicans took control of the House. They should be fully cooperating with the Judiciary Committee’s investigation, not bucking it.
Comparison to law enforcement’s response to the House January 6 committee’s demands is instructive. The panel was in a hurry because it knew it had a short lease on life. If it wanted to get its ducks in a row to make the partisan impact it was planning to make in the 2022 midterms, it didn’t have time for such passé niceties as deferential interbranch collaboration, negotiations, resort to judicial intervention in hashing out disagreements, etc. When Democrats decide something is opportune, immediate compliance is required. The committee thus issued subpoenas on tight time frames. Witnesses were held in contempt if they didn’t comply. They were castigated publicly if they dared rely on legal privileges to resist — the kind of demagogy that would result in a mistrial if a prosecutor pulled it in front of a jury.
The outrageous omnibus budget bill for fiscal year 2023, enacted before the lame-duck Congress slipped out of town for the holidays, contained a mind-blowing $38 billion for the Justice Department, including $11.3 billion for the FBI. That is an increase of about $3 billion over last year’s budget, and of $6 billion over the DOJ’s budget when Biden took office. The administration claimed the steep raise was necessary for pursuit of such priorities as domestic extremism — you know, America’s parents. This is your government in action: The DOJ inspector general issues reports of scandal after humiliating scandal, and the political class annually responds by adding billions upon billions to DOJ’s war chest.
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@George-K said in McCarthy: A subpoena is not a "request.":
@Jolly well, there's the problem. We've seen the likes of Bannon get perp-walked, while people like Holder and Lerner skate away while defying supboenas.
More from the article:
The Justice Department and FBI have no excuse for temporizing at this point. They’ve known for well over a year that this probe was coming in the likely event that Republicans took control of the House. They should be fully cooperating with the Judiciary Committee’s investigation, not bucking it.
Comparison to law enforcement’s response to the House January 6 committee’s demands is instructive. The panel was in a hurry because it knew it had a short lease on life. If it wanted to get its ducks in a row to make the partisan impact it was planning to make in the 2022 midterms, it didn’t have time for such passé niceties as deferential interbranch collaboration, negotiations, resort to judicial intervention in hashing out disagreements, etc. When Democrats decide something is opportune, immediate compliance is required. The committee thus issued subpoenas on tight time frames. Witnesses were held in contempt if they didn’t comply. They were castigated publicly if they dared rely on legal privileges to resist — the kind of demagogy that would result in a mistrial if a prosecutor pulled it in front of a jury.
The outrageous omnibus budget bill for fiscal year 2023, enacted before the lame-duck Congress slipped out of town for the holidays, contained a mind-blowing $38 billion for the Justice Department, including $11.3 billion for the FBI. That is an increase of about $3 billion over last year’s budget, and of $6 billion over the DOJ’s budget when Biden took office. The administration claimed the steep raise was necessary for pursuit of such priorities as domestic extremism — you know, America’s parents. This is your government in action: The DOJ inspector general issues reports of scandal after humiliating scandal, and the political class annually responds by adding billions upon billions to DOJ’s war chest.
Then let's get some of that money back. Congress controls the purse strings.