It’s not common to see a congressional subpoena served in the middle of an oversight hearing, but it happened Monday. House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, informed FBI special agent Jason Herring that he was being served, and had the staffer hand over the legal notice.
Herring was before the committee, trying to explain why the bureau had withheld information that Congress requested, giving the committee documents that were blacked out and keeping back others altogether.
“I get to see it all,” Chaffetz said. “There is no legal reason why you should withhold any of this information from the United States Congress.”
Presidents and their administrations forget that Congress is a coequal branch of government. It’s especially easy for this to happen when Congress is trying to learn more about the President Obama’s Justice Department and its investigation of the Democratic presidential nominee.
Ever since the FBI released interview notes showing that Hillary Clinton lied to FBI investigators, the obvious dots revealed by the investigation have been left glaringly unconnected. Congress wants answers, and the administration is legally bound to give them — all of them — even those that cannot be shared with the public. The FBI’s refusal to do so is just one of several pieces of interference by the administration to help Clinton win the election. The State Department is slow-walking Freedom of Information requests that might damage her chances. Until now, State’s foot-dragging was the most obvious constitutionally-improper behavior by Obama’s officials. But now the Justice Department is increasingly active in the same effort.
Why, for example, did Obama’s Justice Department grant immunity from prosecution to Paul Combetta, a Clinton contractor who had destroyed evidence that was under congressional subpoena? By his own admission in May, Combetta knew when he erased the emails using a program called BleachBit that there was a legal order to preserve them.
Once he was immunized, why did the FBI allow Combetta not to answer questions?
Now that Combetta and Clinton staffer Bryan Pagliano (the one who set up the unsecured private server in Clinton’s home) have immunity from prosecution, how can they invoke the Fifth Amendment? Since the right to avoid self-incrimination is now moot, shouldn’t they be forced to answer every questions Congress asks them under oath? There is no Fifth Amendment right to remain silent for those not facing prosecution. Yet these two men, granted immunity in connection with an investigation that the FBI has said is now closed, refused to testify on Tuesday. Pagliano refused even to show up.
If there is some special reason within their immunity agreements that somehow justifies this unusual arrangement, the FBI has not told Congress what it is. Top Republicans found out about Combetta’s immunity deal only by reading the New York Times.
Perhaps there is an innocent explanation for what appears to be obstruction by a Democratic administration to benefit a Democratic presidential nominee. If so, the FBI, the Justice Department and the Obama administration need to explain themselves to the people’s representatives in Congress.
The president is given immense power. In consequence, he and every executive branch employee acting on his behalf must submit faithfully to congressional oversight.
Presidents from both parties have failed to live up to this duty of transparency and accountability. But few if any have given such an odious foretaste of obstruction and concealment as we are now getting from Clinton. She isn’t even president yet, but is doggedly resisting transparency and accountability. Voters cannot, surely, want this to be the character of their government.
