If there were an award for cramming the most amount of legal misinformation into the shortest segment, Friday’s edition of “Nightly Scoreboard” would surely earn a nomination. The subject was a potential congressional subpoena for White House emails concerning Solyndra, and the discussion took place between host David Asman and former federal prosecutor Annmarie McAvoy. [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Contempt of Congress category.
The Strange Case of Scott Bloch
Scott Bloch, the former head of the Office of Special Counsel, the office charged with protecting government whistleblowers against retaliation, wasn’t very popular with the employees in his former office, and they went to Congress to complain. Among other things, they accused him of retaliating against those who voiced concerns about his policies. You get [...]
Rove Seeks Legal Advice of Noted Constitutional Scholar
The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed Karl Rove to appear and testify at a hearing on Monday, February 2. Rove’s attorney has responded by forwarding the subpoena to the Obama White House and asking, in essence, whether President Obama agrees that Rove should continue to abide by former President Bush’s instruction not to appear. [...]
DC Circuit Grants Stay in Miers Case
The D.C. Circuit has at last ruled on the stay motion in the Miers case. In a brief per curium opinion, the court grants the motion to stay and denies the motion for an expedited briefing schedule. The court first holds that there is appellate jurisdiction, noting that the declaratory judgment that Miers [...]
D.C. Circuit Considers a Stay in the Miers Case
I attended yesterday’s D.C. Circuit argument on the Justice Department’s stay application in the Miers case. The panel consisted of Judges Randolph, Ginsburg and Tatel. A few takeaways: Despite having asked the parties to brief appellate jurisdiction, the court didn’t seem interested in that subject. The sense I got was that the judges [...]
DC Circuit to hear argument in Miers Case
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit today set oral argument in the White House subpoena case for September 16th at 2:30 p.m. before Circuit Judges Douglas Ginsburg, David Tatel, and Raymond Randolph. The sides each have 15 minutes.
Miers Case on Hold Until Wednesday
A panel of judges (Ginsburg, Randolph and Tatel) of the D.C. Circuit has granted an “administrative stay” of Judge Bates’s order in the Miers contempt case. This stay is not the relief that the Executive Branch is asking for, which is a stay pending appeal, but a brief stay while the court considers whether [...]
Judge Bates Denies a Stay
Judge Bates denies the Justice Department’s request for a stay in the Miers case. His analysis of the four stay factors largely proceeds along the lines I expected. While I thought he might give some credit to the Executive’s chances of prevailing on appeal simply based on the novelty of the issues presented, he [...]
Will Judge Bates Issue a Stay in the Miers Case?
In his July 31 decision on the congressional subpoenas to Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten, Judge Bates noted “the likelihood of appeal of this decision,” and he observed that “given the significance of the issues involved, a stay pending appeal is at least possible.” The court will now have to resolve this issue because [...]
The Miers Case- Where do the Parties Go from Here?
The six points laid out by Judge Bates (listed in my last post) should be instructive to both parties as they move forward. For the executive branch, it should be evident that it made a mistake in refusing to have Miers appear in response to the congressional subpoena. By doing so, it presented the court [...]