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Obama’s Claim of Executive Privilege: It’s Frivolous

Friday, June 22, 2012 6:30
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(Before It's News)

John Hinderaker / PowerlineBlog.com

Today Deputy Attorney General James Cole advised Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, that the Department of Justice will not respond to the committee’s subpoena of certain documents relating to the Fast and Furious scandal. Instead, the Obama administration is asserting a claim of executive privilege for the reasons laid out in Eric Holder’s letter to President Obama dated June 19.

Holder’s letter is a remarkable document. Viewed from a strictly technical standpoint, it is a terrible piece of legal work. Its arguments are weak at best; in some cases, they are so frivolous as to invite the imposition of sanctions if they were asserted in court. I will explain why momentarily, but first this observation: if an opposing party requests documents that plainly are protected by a privilege, a lawyer will routinely assert the privilege, on principle, even though there is nothing hurtful to his case in those documents. On the other hand, a lawyer will not assert a lousy claim of privilege unless he badly wants to keep the documents in question out of the opponent’s hands because of their damaging nature. If I am correct that the administration’s assertion of executive privilege is baseless, it is reasonable to infer that the documents, if made public, would be highly damaging to President Obama, Attorney General Holder, or other senior administration officials. Now, as to Holder’s letter:

continue at Powerline:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/06/obamas-claim-of-executive-privilege-its-frivolous.php

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  • Holder and Obama are being idiots about this. The Congress will get those documents at some time. If Holder releases them now and then resigns – then Obama could pardon him before vacating the presidency (after losing the election). But if Holder keeps on stonewalling, any legal action against him will begin after Obama is removed and then there will be no one to pardon him.
    Of course, if the documents lead to Obama, then the story is different.

  • If he or Barry is part of gun running, One of our Border Guards were killed by his guns and hundreds of Mexicans, WhiIe if anyone in commission of a crime ,if someone is killed anyone involved is guilty of murder as the one who pulled the trigger !

    We know gun running is a felony and a felony crime to do this from public office even to reach an unconstitutional; a mandate to stop Americans from baring arm as a right in our Constitution !

    Why he is trying to use executive order ?

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