The House Energy and Commerce Committee has issued subpoenas to the White House Chief of Staff and the Chief of Staff to the Vice President, seeking documents relating to the Solyndra loan scandal. Specifically, each subpoena asks for “[a]ll documents referring or relating in any way to the $535 million loan guarantee issued to Solyndra, [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Oversight of the Executive category.
Congress: Beware of the Justice Department’s Attempt to Change Rule 6(e)
In a decision issued this summer, Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia considered a petition to unseal the transcript of former President Nixon’s grand jury testimony in 1975. For reasons explained below, the court’s decision to grant the petition has important implications for the ability of congressional [...]
More Legal Misinformation About Congress
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. [...]
Kathleen Clark on the “Right to Counsel” in Intelligence Oversight
Professor Kathleen Clark recently published this article regarding congressional oversight of intelligence. In brief, she argues that when leaders of the intelligence committees are given restricted briefings by the executive branch, they should be able to share the information with cleared committee staff members from whom they need to obtain “counsel” (by which she means [...]
Law Professors Lecture Congress on Stuff They Know Nothing About
A group of law professors and labor policy experts have written this letter to Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (COGR), expressing their grave concerns over “threats to compel disclosure of privileged documents” from the National Labor Relations Board. COGR is investigating the NLRB’s decision to bring an action against [...]
“This is Not a Love Making Process”
So explained Charles Tiefer, former Solicitor and Deputy General Counsel to the House and former Assistant Senate Legal Counsel, speaking at a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform yesterday. Tiefer was not talking about the latest congressional sex scandal, but advocating for an aggressive congressional posture when the executive branch withholds [...]
Gang Territory: Improving Congressional Oversight of Intelligence
In the most recent edition of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vicki Divoll (former counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) argues for what she terms the “Full Access Doctrine” (FAD). That doctrine would provide that “under the Constitution, Congress is entitled to seek and receive any information from the executive [...]
The 9/11 Commission Recommendation Congress Forgot
As Congress conducts oversight of the executive branch in the wake of the Christmas day attack, it should also take a hard look at itself. As a former member of the 9/11 Commission noted today, Congress has failed to implement one key recommendation of that Commission—relating to how Congress organizes its own homeland security and [...]