Posted on 01/30/2018 1:34:46 PM PST by oxcart
There was a time when even the mere appearance of impropriety was justification enough for Congressional Republicans to exercise their oversight authority to demand that the White House and executive branch justify their actions.
During the infamous 2012-13 Benghazi investigation, reports surfaced that threats were being made by Obama administration officials against government employees who wanted to cooperate with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committees (OGR) investigation. OGR Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), my boss at the time, responded aggressively.
Issa sent a letter to the Obama administration noting that these allegations are serious because retaliation against employees who communicate with Congress does grave harm to those brave individuals who report mismanagement at their own risk and creates a chilling effect on other employees who may be considering coming forward to assist the Committee.
This is “responding aggressively”?! Making threats like that is not obstruction of justice, but saying “I hope you can see your way to not pursuing Flynn, he’s a good guy and didn’t do anything wrong” IS?!
Yes, sometime after. I think the WH will want to review it.
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Time to get someone in the House with real teeth and stop turning all the investigations over to the toy poodles who love to bark but have no desire to actually bite!!
IT’s not Issa’s or Gowdy’s fault that their investigations went nowhere. All they can do is investigate and if criminal activity is uncovered turn it over the DOJ for prosecution. The DOJ was the most corrupt federal agency at the time being headed up by either Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch. We’ve never in our history had an eight year period to compare to the obama years. Any other DOJ, regardless of party , would have allowed criminal investigations to proceed based on the House recommendations.
It’s not the Oversight Committee Chairman who has no teeth, it’s the House of Reresentatives.
The investigations proved to the American people who bothered to pay attention that crimes were committed and covered up by the obama administration. We would never even have known that had the dem’s been running the House.
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Beg to differ. Congress has the ONE tool to make sure things get done: the Power of the Purse.
They just fail to utilize it to get things done.
Failure to follow through? How ‘bout a minimized budget until the job is done?
Corruption? Abuse of power? How ‘bout a budget of ZERO taxpayer $$?
Hell, they could wipe ‘em out entirely...all legal.
But, as they fail to exercise even the smallest of their powers, so too do they fail to defend and uphold the Constitution themselves (DHS, NSA, TSA, NCLB, TARP, etc.)
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