Posted on 01/25/2007 12:00:29 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - As a senior member of the House ethics committee, Rep. Jim McDermott (news, bio, voting record) had an obligation not to disclose the contents of an illegally taped telephone call involving House Republican leaders, a lawyer for one of the House Republicans said Thursday.
Just as a federal judge should not reveal confidential information about a case, McDermott should not have given reporters access to the taped telephone call, regardless of how it was obtained, said lawyer Michael Carvin.
"He had a duty not to disclose, therefore he can't claim First Amendment rights" allowing him to make the tape public, Carvin told a federal appeals court. "Any third-grader would know it's absolutely improper."
Carvin represents House Minority Leader John Boehner (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, who was among several GOP leaders heard on the 1996 call, which involved ethics allegations against then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.
McDermott, a Washington state Democrat who was serving on the ethics panel at the time, leaked the tape to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The New York Times, which published stories on the case in January 1997.
Gingrich, who was heard on the call telling Boehner and others how to react to allegations, was later fined $300,000 and reprimanded by the House.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled against McDermott last March. The 2-1 opinion upheld a lower court ruling that McDermott had violated Boehner's rights.
The full nine-member appeals court later vacated the ruling and heard arguments in the case last fall. On Thursday, it heard a second round of arguments that focused more narrowly on House rules and committee members' obligations.
The ethics panel said in a report released in December that McDermott had failed to meet his obligations as a committee leader by giving reporters access to the taped call.
McDermott's lawyer, Christopher Landau, disputed Carvin's assertion that the committee's report showed McDermott had violated House rules, saying the committee found McDermott violated only the spirit of its rules.
Judge A. Raymond Randolph compared McDermott to an agent from the Internal Revenue Service who discloses confidential information about a taxpayer.
The House panel took no further action against McDermott beyond release of its Dec. 11 report.
Lawyers for 18 news organizations _ including ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Washington Post _ have filed a brief backing McDermott in the civil case. A ruling against him could chill the media's ability to gather information on important public issues, they said.
The case is Boehner v. McDermott, 04-7203.
Nothing to see here,,, There is no Culture of Corruption in the Democratic party, altho dems have been and are jailed today for transgressions along side their compadres on the other side of the aisle..
Baghdad Pelosi
and
Baghdad Reid
This all happened in 1996? Why are they rushing this thing?
Good question.. Jim is special, don'tcha know.
Can't say I'm really fond of him.
This took ten years? What a joke.
Can we be far from vigilantee justice?
Hell, it took "vigilantees" to bring public attention to our ignored borders.
It's either that, or legalize dueling...
Nothing else will get the Congress critters and other "public servants" back in line with the LAW.
Semper Fi
And folks wonder why the "restless natives" out here are leaning on the "old way" to deal with lawless scalawags...
Can we be far from vigilantee justice?
Hell, it took "vigilantees" to bring public attention to our ignored borders.
It's either that, or legalize dueling...
Nothing else will get the Congress critters and other "public servants" back in line with the LAW.
---
I don't like to think the hell that will befall some and deservedly so should we be attacked again and on a massive scale.
There isn't a mineshaft deep enough to protect the likes of Pelosi,Reid, Kennedy and cohorts were such an event to occur, and no measure that should be discounted as them being unworthy of receiving.
The "ethics" committee is a joke. Has been, continues to be, and will continue to be. No doubt there is another deal in the works to overlook some minor Republican "sin" in exchange for McDermott having his hand smacked.
".....should we be attacked again......."
There is NO doubt in my mind that the next, and larger attack WILL come, and sooner rather than later.
With the Democrats (Defeatists) in control of Congress - the most opportune time for an attack is fast approaching..
Semper Fi
Those who trust in the rule of law had best be prepared to fend for themselves, if and when it occurs.
It won't be anywhere near as clean as 24 portrays it.
IIRC, Newt voluntarily paid the "fine" for the time spent by the House on this issue. He was being investigated for making history tapes for use by college students. He was a college professor, prior to being in the House; not a phony one like pols who get teaching jobs after politics, but a credentialed prof. I think that his courses were just too patriotic. The DBM was also out to get him for every word that he said.
He proposed orphanages for kids living in crack houses and was reviled for it. Too bad he didn't call them boarding schools. Many from another lost generation could have been saved. Instead, they stayed growing up in a crack house. The libs are for-the-children dontcha know.
McDermott was one of three Congressmen who went on Saddam’s propaganda tour of Iraq in Fall 2002. The trip was funded by Life for Relief and Development (LRD), a “charity” which laundered money to terrorist group Hamas’ Jordanian operation. LRD is funded in part by Shakir Al-Khafaji, a man who did about $70 million in business with Saddam [Hussein] through his Falcon Trading Group company (based in South Africa). LRD’s Iraqi offices were raided by US troops last week, and the Detroit-area “charity” is suspected of funding uprisings, such as the one in Fallujah. Its officials bragged of doing so at a recent private US fundraiser.The legal defense fund to which this agent of Saddam gave money was to defend McDermott from charges relating to his disclosure of the illegally taped conversation between Gingrich and Boehner. In the mind of a liberal, eavesdropping is bad if the NSA does it to terrorists, but perfectly OK if Democrat operatives do it to their political opponents.
Mr. Alkhafaji, one of two Americans named in Iraqi newspapers as a participant in Saddam’s “Oil for Food” scam, gave Congressman McDermott $5,000 in October 2002 for McDermott’s legal defense fund in a lawsuit against him…. http://www.bowlingfortruth.com/fahrenheit911/terrorists.htm
* Shaker Al-Khaffaji : The beneficiary list (found in the archives of the Iraqi Oil Ministry and translated into English by the Middle East Media Research Institute) should be deeply embarrassing to many prominent people. In the United States, those listed include Iraqi American businessman Shaker Al-Khaffaji, who put up $400,000 to produce a film by ex-U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, which aimed to discredit weapons inspections in Iraq.
Also, British Labor MP George Galloway, a strident foe of taking action against Saddam, is listed as a recipient or co-recipient of 19.5 million barrels. Other recipients include: former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua (12 million barrels); Patrick Maugein, CEO of the oil company Soco International and financial backer of French President Jacques Chirac (25 million); former French Ambassador to the United Nations Jean-Bernard Merimee (11 million); Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri (10 million); and Syrian businessman Farras Mustafa Tlass, the son of longtime Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass (6 million). Leith Shbeilat, chairman of the anti-corruption committee of the Jordanian Parliament, received 15.5 million. 7 posted on 04/21/2004 2:35:40 AM PDT by kcvl
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