5 thoughts on “Holder Contempt Vote”

  1. What would a contempt finding actually mean? Would the house have the cojones actually jail Holder to compell compliance?

    1. Jail is not in the cards. Congressional contempt can be used to force compliance via a federal court. Don’t let the theoretical implications distract things. No official in a sitting administration will ever get threatened with more than a federal civil case for compliance. They don’t go to jail for pissing on Congress.

      So what’s the effect and why is this serious?

      A federal ruling forcing compliance is actionable against the entire agency/administration. The only way to circumvent it (dishonestly) is to keep the information so tightly restricted that only the actors can dig out the info, and they then jointly claim it does not exist. Not even Rove could do that – emails undid the US Attorney’s case a few years back and they intentionally tried to keep the actor count small.

      Holder won’t be handing over documents. The whole agency will. If this got to a judge who ordered compliance, Holder would be facing the real threat of a rash of career civil servants delivering emails, presentations, memos and meeting notes to the court (and then to Congress). Nobody will give up their jobs or their personal earnings/house to fight this for him. And it’s obvious there is a lot of paperwork out there.

      Civil servant like thier pensions. They won’t give them up for this. Or for that matter, anything.

      So the power behind these votes (they need at least two) is that the DoJ will turn against the DoJ leadership, in a rare show of just how much government can do when motivated. They will turn over literally anything even remotely associated with F&F, including the cases that smell like it but are not. You never know what will turn up, so you never let it go that far.

      Holder will fold some cards and try to trickle out some stuff. It’ll be up to the House leadership to decide whether they let him get away with the stalling tactics.

      1. Wouldn’t it be ironic if they uncovered previously unknown scandals because he was dragging his feet for so long?

  2. On a side note, the talk of an Independent Counsel for the recent spate of high-level leaks gave cover to leadership to go forward with this. The IG leak issue is big enough to make this look like less of a partisan witch hunt.

    I still don’t think leadership has their heart in this. They think guns are a loser for them, too.

  3. if holder and the doj set up this arms deal, or continued one, would they not be responsible directly or indirectly for the deaths of the 2 slain agents and countless mexican nationals that all got slain with the guns that where sent to mexico with there botched sting, and what was the point of this anyway. this was pure stupidity on anybodys part. they are not short of guns in mexico! the thousands of people that the druggies killed each year will prove that!

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