This shows the trap where Obama has fallen.

Jackson

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Dec 31, 2010
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Why Obama's Claim of Executive Privilege Won't Hold

1. Attorneys General do not get executive privilege on their own; federal agencies do answer to Congress as part of their oversight capacity, and Holder has to comply with lawful subpoenas. In order to claim executive privilege, Holder and the White House have to claim that the documents in question – consisting of tens of thousands of pages – relate directly to consultations and advice Obama engaged in during the course of his job as President.

2. However, the White House has consistently claimed never to have known about Operation Fast and Furious until its exposure with the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Holder and other officials at the Department of Justice and the ATF have made the same claim while testifying to Congress.

3. In order to make executive privilege stick and keep the documents out of the hands of Congress, the entire Obama administration will have to make the opposite claim, and tell a court that the documents can’t be released because they relate directly to actions taken by Obama himself.

4. Therefore, the Obama administration can’t claim executive privilege for actions that don’t involve the President, or his immediate staff in advising the President. The claim of privilege appears a tacit admission that previous claims that Obama and his White House staff were unaware of Operation Fast and Furious and uninvolved in it were false. That opens up potential criminal charges for anyone who testified differently under oath for perjury and obstruction of justice – the end results of most executive-branch scandals, most famously in Watergate.

5. Even that might not be enough. In the case involving the US Attorneys, there was no evidence that laws had been broken, since Presidents can dismiss political appointees at will. In Operation Fast and Furious, two American law-enforcement agents have been murdered with guns that the ATF allowed to flow over the border, violating the law and official procedure – not to mention hundreds dead in Mexico for the same reason. Under the precedent set in US v Nixon, a court would almost certainly find that a Congressional investigation into potential criminal activity would trump a claim of executive privilege, especially after the apparent misrepresentation of White House involvement in the operation.

6. By asserting executive privilege, the Obama administration has made it clear that they fear the exposure of ATF and Department of Justice documentation, and that Obama himself has some connection to the papers. The question that arises has more than a whiff of Watergate to it: what did the President know, and when did he know it? Thanks to the claim of executive privilege, the media will no longer be able to ignore the deadly outcomes of Operation Fast and Furious, and the timing of this scandal could ensure that Obama won’t have the ability to call on executive privilege after January.

7.. Until yesterday, there was little reason to believe that scandals would play a major role in the 2012 presidential election. That isn’t to say that the Barack Obama administration has been scandal-free, as Jonathan Alter tried to argue last year. The failure of Solyndra and the connection to the President’s fundraisers has been debated in the election cycle, but only as an issue to jobs and Obama’s economic and energy policies, along with other green-energy stimulus recipients who have either gone bankrupt or are approaching that status now.

Why Obama's Claim of Executive Privilege Won't Hold
 
Why Obama's Claim of Executive Privilege Won't Hold

In order to claim executive privilege, Holder and the White House have to claim that the documents in question – consisting of tens of thousands of pages – relate directly to consultations and advice Obama engaged in during the course of his job as President.

That is a false premise. The rest of the argument is based upon it, and therefore collapses.
 
The first ground is the valid need for protection of communications between high Government officials and those who advise and assist them in the performance of their manifold duties; the importance of this confidentiality is too plain to require further discussion.

United States v. Nixon.

Note it says "high Government officials". The Attorney General is a high Government official.

As I have stated time and time again, executive privilege extends to the Executive branch, not just the Chief Executive.


Separation of powers.
 
Why Obama's Claim of Executive Privilege Won't Hold

1. Attorneys General do not get executive privilege on their own; federal agencies do answer to Congress as part of their oversight capacity, and Holder has to comply with lawful subpoenas. In order to claim executive privilege, Holder and the White House have to claim that the documents in question – consisting of tens of thousands of pages – relate directly to consultations and advice Obama engaged in during the course of his job as President.

2. However, the White House has consistently claimed never to have known about Operation Fast and Furious until its exposure with the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Holder and other officials at the Department of Justice and the ATF have made the same claim while testifying to Congress.

3. In order to make executive privilege stick and keep the documents out of the hands of Congress, the entire Obama administration will have to make the opposite claim, and tell a court that the documents can’t be released because they relate directly to actions taken by Obama himself.

4. Therefore, the Obama administration can’t claim executive privilege for actions that don’t involve the President, or his immediate staff in advising the President. The claim of privilege appears a tacit admission that previous claims that Obama and his White House staff were unaware of Operation Fast and Furious and uninvolved in it were false. That opens up potential criminal charges for anyone who testified differently under oath for perjury and obstruction of justice – the end results of most executive-branch scandals, most famously in Watergate.

5. Even that might not be enough. In the case involving the US Attorneys, there was no evidence that laws had been broken, since Presidents can dismiss political appointees at will. In Operation Fast and Furious, two American law-enforcement agents have been murdered with guns that the ATF allowed to flow over the border, violating the law and official procedure – not to mention hundreds dead in Mexico for the same reason. Under the precedent set in US v Nixon, a court would almost certainly find that a Congressional investigation into potential criminal activity would trump a claim of executive privilege, especially after the apparent misrepresentation of White House involvement in the operation.

6. By asserting executive privilege, the Obama administration has made it clear that they fear the exposure of ATF and Department of Justice documentation, and that Obama himself has some connection to the papers. The question that arises has more than a whiff of Watergate to it: what did the President know, and when did he know it? Thanks to the claim of executive privilege, the media will no longer be able to ignore the deadly outcomes of Operation Fast and Furious, and the timing of this scandal could ensure that Obama won’t have the ability to call on executive privilege after January.

7.. Until yesterday, there was little reason to believe that scandals would play a major role in the 2012 presidential election. That isn’t to say that the Barack Obama administration has been scandal-free, as Jonathan Alter tried to argue last year. The failure of Solyndra and the connection to the President’s fundraisers has been debated in the election cycle, but only as an issue to jobs and Obama’s economic and energy policies, along with other green-energy stimulus recipients who have either gone bankrupt or are approaching that status now.

Why Obama's Claim of Executive Privilege Won't Hold

Obama Does not Care if it hold or not, he knows it will hold long enough to get past the Election, And that after that it will still likely take Years to then get to the bottom of it all.
 
Why Obama's Claim of Executive Privilege Won't Hold

1. Attorneys General do not get executive privilege on their own; federal agencies do answer to Congress as part of their oversight capacity, and Holder has to comply with lawful subpoenas. In order to claim executive privilege, Holder and the White House have to claim that the documents in question – consisting of tens of thousands of pages – relate directly to consultations and advice Obama engaged in during the course of his job as President.

2. However, the White House has consistently claimed never to have known about Operation Fast and Furious until its exposure with the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Holder and other officials at the Department of Justice and the ATF have made the same claim while testifying to Congress.

3. In order to make executive privilege stick and keep the documents out of the hands of Congress, the entire Obama administration will have to make the opposite claim, and tell a court that the documents can’t be released because they relate directly to actions taken by Obama himself.

4. Therefore, the Obama administration can’t claim executive privilege for actions that don’t involve the President, or his immediate staff in advising the President. The claim of privilege appears a tacit admission that previous claims that Obama and his White House staff were unaware of Operation Fast and Furious and uninvolved in it were false. That opens up potential criminal charges for anyone who testified differently under oath for perjury and obstruction of justice – the end results of most executive-branch scandals, most famously in Watergate.

5. Even that might not be enough. In the case involving the US Attorneys, there was no evidence that laws had been broken, since Presidents can dismiss political appointees at will. In Operation Fast and Furious, two American law-enforcement agents have been murdered with guns that the ATF allowed to flow over the border, violating the law and official procedure – not to mention hundreds dead in Mexico for the same reason. Under the precedent set in US v Nixon, a court would almost certainly find that a Congressional investigation into potential criminal activity would trump a claim of executive privilege, especially after the apparent misrepresentation of White House involvement in the operation.

6. By asserting executive privilege, the Obama administration has made it clear that they fear the exposure of ATF and Department of Justice documentation, and that Obama himself has some connection to the papers. The question that arises has more than a whiff of Watergate to it: what did the President know, and when did he know it? Thanks to the claim of executive privilege, the media will no longer be able to ignore the deadly outcomes of Operation Fast and Furious, and the timing of this scandal could ensure that Obama won’t have the ability to call on executive privilege after January.

7.. Until yesterday, there was little reason to believe that scandals would play a major role in the 2012 presidential election. That isn’t to say that the Barack Obama administration has been scandal-free, as Jonathan Alter tried to argue last year. The failure of Solyndra and the connection to the President’s fundraisers has been debated in the election cycle, but only as an issue to jobs and Obama’s economic and energy policies, along with other green-energy stimulus recipients who have either gone bankrupt or are approaching that status now.

Why Obama's Claim of Executive Privilege Won't Hold

Obama Does not Care if it hold or not, he knows it will hold long enough to get past the Election, And that after that it will still likely take Years to then get to the bottom of it all.

We have four months to get him to testify before Congress to explain why he has the right to assert this privilege. Then he will be lying to Congress. Think Clinton....Then Nixon.
 
For executive privilege to be overruled, there would have to be a strong indication the withheld documents contain information relevant to a criminal prosecution or proceeding.

If Congress is not seeking a criminal prosecution, they have no business violating the Executive branch's powers.

I would be very, very careful about trying to set some kind of bar in your partisan zeal. Doing things like that have a very bad habit of coming back to bite you.
 
I am frankly sick and tired of "Impeach!" being shouted every two to four years for the last decade and a half.

Partisan assholes treat impeachment like a cheap whore, and the Constitution like a tampon.
 
For executive privilege to be overruled, there would have to be a strong indication the withheld documents contain information relevant to a criminal prosecution or proceeding.

If Congress is not seeking a criminal prosecution, they have no business violating the Executive branch's powers.

I would be very, very careful about trying to set some kind of bar in your partisan zeal. Doing things like that have a very bad habit of coming back to bite you.

I understand, but Obama has already contradicted himself on tape. The only situation we look for now is to put him under oath. I understand what you are saying, but what this president is dead wrong.
 
I
I am frankly sick and tired of "Impeach!" being shouted every two to four years for the last decade and a half.

Partisan assholes treat impeachment like a cheap whore, and the Constitution like a tampon.

I agree, recall or leaving the state is much much better
 
I am frankly sick and tired of "Impeach!" being shouted every two to four years for the last decade and a half.

Partisan assholes treat impeachment like a cheap whore, and the Constitution like a tampon.

I understand where you are coming from g5000, but compare Clinton's actions to Obama or even Nixon's. Clinton's impeachment was sickening and miniscule and a 2 bit burglary brought down Nixon.

Here we have a president who thinks nothing of skirting Congress, ignoring laws on the books, telling HS to suspend ICE agreements, suing states, ignoring standard payback bankruptcy agreements and paying back "friends" instead of taxpayers in the case of Solyndra, alientating our allies and do I have to go on?

I'm not looking for impeachment, just for Congress or the SCOTUS to put him in place!
 
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I am frankly sick and tired of "Impeach!" being shouted every two to four years for the last decade and a half.

Partisan assholes treat impeachment like a cheap whore, and the Constitution like a tampon.

I understand where you are coming from g5000, but compare Clinton's actions to Obama or even Nixon's. Clinton's impeachment was sickening and miniscule and a 2 bit burglary brought down Nixon.

Here we have a president who thinks nothing of skirting Congress, ignoring laws on the books, telling HS to suspend ICE agreements, suing states, ignoring standard payback bankruptcy agreements and paying back "friends" instead of taxpayers in the case of Solyndra, alientating our allies and do I have to go on?

I'm not looking for impeachment, just for Congress or the SCOTUS to put him in place!

ALL of the things you listed are well within the established "powers" of the President and spun to look like they arent.

Obama has however commited an impeachable offense...however, as I support him over etch-a-sketch, its up to YOU to find it. Enjoy ;)
 
I am frankly sick and tired of "Impeach!" being shouted every two to four years for the last decade and a half.

Partisan assholes treat impeachment like a cheap whore, and the Constitution like a tampon.

I understand where you are coming from g5000, but compare Clinton's actions to Obama or even Nixon's. Clinton's impeachment was sickening and miniscule and a 2 bit burglary brought down Nixon.

Here we have a president who thinks nothing of skirting Congress, ignoring laws on the books, telling HS to suspend ICE agreements, suing states, ignoring standard payback bankruptcy agreements and paying back "friends" instead of taxpayers in the case of Solyndra, alientating our allies and do I have to go on?

I'm not looking for impeachment, just for Congress or the SCOTUS to put him in place!

ALL of the things you listed are well within the established "powers" of the President and spun to look like they arent.

Obama has however commited an impeachable offense...however, as I support him over etch-a-sketch, its up to YOU to find it. Enjoy ;)

We'll let the citizens decide, I guess. May the better man win.
 
I understand where you are coming from g5000, but compare Clinton's actions to Obama or even Nixon's. Clinton's impeachment was sickening and miniscule and a 2 bit burglary brought down Nixon.

Here we have a president who thinks nothing of skirting Congress, ignoring laws on the books, telling HS to suspend ICE agreements, suing states, ignoring standard payback bankruptcy agreements and paying back "friends" instead of taxpayers in the case of Solyndra, alientating our allies and do I have to go on?

I'm not looking for impeachment, just for Congress or the SCOTUS to put him in place!

ALL of the things you listed are well within the established "powers" of the President and spun to look like they arent.

Obama has however commited an impeachable offense...however, as I support him over etch-a-sketch, its up to YOU to find it. Enjoy ;)

We'll let the citizens decide, I guess. May the better man win.

If the Republicans wanted the better man to win, they wouldnt have nominated etch-a-sketch, theyd have nominated Huntsman.
 

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