Posted on 07/15/2014 7:07:44 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
White House political director David Simas will not appear before the House Oversight Committee to testify Wednesday, despite a subpoena from Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the White House said Tuesday.
In a letter to Issa on Tuesday, White House counsel Neil Eggleston said the California congressman had "made no effort to justify your extraordinary demand that one of the president's immediate advisers testify at a committee hearing."
In the letter, the White House argues Simas is "immune from congressional compulsion to testify on matters relating to his official duties" because doing so would threaten "longstanding interests of the Executive Branch in preserving the president's independence and autonomy." Issa is investigating the relaunch of the White House Office of Political Strategy and Outreach earlier this year. The Republican lawmaker says he's concerned the White House has used staffers for partisan campaign activities, which are prohibited under the Hatch Act.
But Issa has not produced evidence of a specific instance of the White House violating the law, something Eggleston repeatedly emphasized in his letter.
"Your hasty decision to subpoena Mr. Simas is all the more unfounded because the Committee has been unable to point to any indication" the White House broke the law, Eggleston wrote.
Earlier this week, the White House had asked Issa to remove the subpoena, and offered a staff-level briefing on the political office for Issa's investigators.
But Issa said he would not withdraw the subpoena on Tuesday, following a 75-minute gathering between administration officials and committee staff.
“The committee has outstanding questions for Mr. Simas, who did not take part in the briefing, and it is necessary for him to appear at tomorrow’s hearing,” Issa said in a letter to the White House.
“I believe his on-the-record testimony will provide valuable insight into White House efforts to ensure appropriate use of taxpayer funds,” Issa continued.
In his letter, Eggleston said his staff briefed Issa's for 75 minutes and "stayed until the Committee staff determined they had completed their questioning — responding to over forty questions in total."
He also dismissed specific concerns raised by Issa in his letter — including whether the White House press shop pursued corrections to news articles and what officials were involved in the decision to reopen the office — as irrelevant to the question of Hatch Act compliance.
It's not clear what Issa's reaction to the rebuke will be.
In 2012, the House voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt over his refusal to turn over documents tied to the Fast and Furious gun running program.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest dismissed Issa’s probe last Friday, stating that the political office “operates in full compliance with the Hatch Act, and to date there is not even any suggestion or let alone evidence that we've deviated from the requirements of the Hatch Act.”
Earlier Tuesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest dismissed Issa’s probe last Friday, stating that the political office “operates in full compliance with the Hatch Act, and to date there is not even any suggestion or let alone evidence that we've deviated from the requirements of the Hatch Act."
Issa should put White House political director David Simas In jail when he does not show up. Let the whitehouse fight that.
Eggleston has, in short, "been there and done that"...
Eggleston served as an associate counsel in Bill Clinton’s White House during the Whitewater hearings, after serving earlier as a deputy chief counsel of the congressional committee that investigated Iran-Contra. After leaving the White House, he represented Clinton in a pair of high-profile court battles over executive privilege.
Eggleston is a lawyer who knows what it takes to defend a guilty president under threat of impeachment.
That’s not as simple or straightforward as you might think ...
Contempt of Congress
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Congress
The list, Ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
The problem remains that absolutely no one can see it.
And then there is this?
"Patrick aides still openly marvel at Simas’s grassroots organizing skills, and the fact that he has a working phone bank in the basement of his Taunton home."
No potential for staffer Simas to undertake campaign activities there, right?
Nahhh!
.
"Flouting a federal judge's opinion about our system of checks and balances is yet another attack on our Nation's Constitution by this President," Issa said in a statement. "We already know that two members of President Obama's Cabinet violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits the use of taxpayer funds for political campaigning. Given these examples of known wrongdoing, assertions that this Administration's taxpayer-funded political efforts should be above Congressional oversight are absurd."
If it’s not a legally defensible action for the Office of the President of the United States of America in regards to this person, then it should be a real easy court case to maintain that Congressional action. I would advise filing that court case right away.
Hold the AH in contempt.
I’d advise you to kiss my ass right away numbnuts.
Give one example of someone in an administration out and out defying a Congressional subpoena. Just one.
I can see why you have some manner of difficulty in comprehending the issue here ... :-) ...
Here’s an article for you ...
Executive Privilege
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_privilege
In the United States government, executive privilege is the power claimed by the President of the United States and other members of the executive branch to resist certain subpoenas and other interventions by the legislative and judicial branches of government to access information and personnel relating to the executive branch. The concept of executive privilege is not mentioned explicitly in the United States Constitution, but the Supreme Court of the United States ruled it to be an element of the separation of powers doctrine, and/or derived from the supremacy of executive branch in its own area of Constitutional activity.
The Supreme Court confirmed the legitimacy of this doctrine in United States v. Nixon, but only to the extent of confirming that there is a qualified privilege. Once invoked, a presumption of privilege is established, requiring the Prosecutor to make a “sufficient showing” that the “Presidential material” is “essential to the justice of the case” (418 U.S. at 713-14). Chief Justice Burger further stated that executive privilege would most effectively apply when the oversight of the executive would impair that branch’s national security concerns.
[ ... see the rest of the article at link ... ]
I don’t defend Obama, but I do defend the “Office of the President of the United States of America” as that’s something that transcends individuals and is a component of the US Constitution and the Separation of Powers between the three branches of government.
Nope, you’re just an Obama-loving douchebag.
You’ll never find any of my posts backing up your delusions ... :-) ...
Everbody here knows you’re a liberal troll.
Having trouble finding any comments of mine supporting Obama? ... LOL ...
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