Reply #17: that article doesn't 'bash' the Democrats, it offers a different course, IF

[bigtree]

IF the subpoenas are defied. It doesn't preclude charging criminal contempt as some are attempting to do, it just cites the obstacles to success and suggests a different way to get the accountability we all seek.

The piece is really rather sympathetic to the course of criminal contempt:


"Senator Leahy is correct in one important respect: In almost every single historical case where a House of Congress has issued a contempt citation or threatened to do so, that has prompted the Executive branch to further "accommodate" the legislature by providing information sufficient to allow Congress to proceed with its investigation. (One possible exception, from the Nixon Administration, was Senate Select Comm. on Presidential Campaign Activities v. Nixon, 498 F.2d 725 (D.C. Cir. 1974), in which the Administration successfully resisted a Senate subpoena.)

One might hope that the prospect of its officials being held in contempt would cause this Administration to do the same -- especially because the contempt is a crime punishable by up to a year in prison (see 2 U.S.C. 192), and because, as the Acting Attorney General has written, the court of appeals "has recognized that each branch has a 'constitutional mandate to seek optimal accommodation of each other's legitimate interests" (quoting U.S. v. AT&T, 567 F.2d at 127).