Will “Unprecedented Obstruction of Congress” Become The New Democrat Meme?

The NYT tests out a new Trump attack . . . and after 8 years of Obama, the NYT discovers “unprecedented obstruction” of Congressional Oversight.

Unprecedented ObstructionThe NYT editorial board is in high dudgeon.  Apparently, “Donald Trump Shows a New Level of Contempt for Congress.” Many presidents,” the NYT editors tell us, “have resisted congressional demands for testimony and documents. But not quite like Mr. Trump.” Really? Are they high? Or did the eight years of the Obama administration simply not count?

So what exactly has Trump done, . . . besides fully complying with a two-year fishing expedition for criminality that was the worst political dirty trick in our nation’s history. According to the NYT:

Mr. Trump’s top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, has declined an invitation to discuss immigration policy;

Stephen Miller is not an agency head who would normally be subject to a subpoena over public policy.  So how is his declining an “invitation” that he is free to accept or decline without recourse in any way obstructing Congress?

the Justice Department has rebuffed a subpoena for John Gore, a deputy attorney general, to answer questions about the 2020 census;

Here’s what the NYT editors don’t say.  Gore was set to testify but the House Democrats set it up so that he had to refuse:

The Justice Department said Wednesday that it was defying a subpoena from House Democrats on the Oversight Committee for testimony this week from John Gore, a top lawyer in the department’s civil rights division, because the [Elijah Cummings] isn’t allowing a DOJ attorney to be present.

“In keeping with longstanding Department of Justice policy, neither Mr. Gore nor anyone else in the Department will be forced to testify in their capacity as a DOJ official on DOJ matters without DOJ counsel,” department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said.

This is not thwarting oversight, it is Kabuki theater with Democrats and the NYT both with starring roles.  So the complaint about Gore is more Dem./NYT b.s.  What next from the NYT?

and the White House has instructed a former staffer, Carl Kline, not to provide information about how security clearances are granted.

Again, b.s.  Here’s what the NYT editors don’t say:

Kline was slated to appear before the committee for an interview on Wednesday but was told by the White House to ignore the subpoena, unless a representative from the White House counsel is permitted to attend the interview.

Okay, what next?

Mr. Trump called the subpoena for Donald McGahn, the former White House counsel, “ridiculous.”

Trump has attorney-client privilege.  Did he waive it when he produced material by McGhan to the Special Prosecutor?  This might be the only thing that the Times writes that might state a colorable claim, but it is not so colorable as to be an easy case.

And lastly from the NYT:

And while the Internal Revenue Service is still officially considering the request by the House Ways and Means Committee for Mr. Trump’s tax returns, the president’s acting chief of staff has already declared that Democrats will “never” get their hands on them.

What right do the progressives have to go fishing for crimes?  And what right do the progressives have to publicize Trump’s tax returns when he has chosen himself not to publicize them or share them beyond what he is legally required to do?  The Fourth Amendment limits the power of the state in regards to every citizen and IRS tax returns are protected by law from exposure.  Trump is well within his rights to tell the proggies to go pound sand.

So according to the NYT, the above examples (of their mostly half truths and lies by omission) amounts to lawlessly resisting of rightful demands by Congress.  To show just how lawless Trump is, the NYT, being fair of course, shows that the Obama administration did a tiny bit of resisting as well:

The Obama White House rejected Congress’s demand for documents related to Operation Fast and Furious, the failed gun-trafficking investigation. The resulting showdown led to a legal defeat for the administration, which wound up having to surrender the documents; Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. became the first sitting cabinet member to be held in contempt of Congress.

Yet that is all the NYT seems to remember from the past eight years of a regime so lawless it turned the whole system of Congressional Oversight into a joke.  No administration in history showed more contempt for Congress than the eight-year-long Obama administration, repeatedly stonewalling lawful Congressional subpoenas, not to mention their own inspector general oversight.  But for a supine Congress deathly afraid of the race card — and a media willing not just to look the other way, but cheer on the stonewalling — Obama got away with it.  Just for example, how about three more egregious examples from the Obama years?

IRS Targeting of Conservative Organizations

. . . When the IRS targeting scandal was uncovered 2 years ago, many Democrats said there was never a smidgen of corruption. . . .

. . . Rather than transparency, we had obstructionism at every turn. Commissioner Koskinen recently had a chance to apologize for gaffes and untimely notification of Congress that the tax agency had lost thousands of emails sought by investigators.

At a hearing Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, noted a letter that Mr. Koskinen sent the Senate Finance Committee saying the IRS had handed over everything. Curiously, the letter didn’t even mention that the former Exempt Organizations chief Lois Lerner’s emails had been lost. . . .

Of course, it took the Inspector General to find the emails, proving they weren’t destroyed. Yet there, too, Mr. Koskinen remained defiant. . . .

It is another disappointment in the long and sordid story of the Lerner e-mail information.

NOAA & Scientist’s Right of Privacy?

In June, [2015] Tom Karl, a top level official at NOAA released a study, “Possible Artifacts Of Data Biases In The Recent Global Warming Hiatus,” purporting to show that temperatures over the past two decades have not paused but, instead, have been steadily increasing. On the recommendations in that paper, both NOAA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (“GISS”) have altered America’s historic temperature records. It was an incredibly fortuitous study as it not only found warming that science’s best minds and increasingly accurate measurements had missed, but it did so just as the UN prepares to host the Paris Conference and just before the EPA released its Clean Power Plan.

Karl’s study is problematic at best. . . .

Congress has decided to investigate this most recent change and has subpoenaed NOAA’s records related to the Karl study. The other day, NOAA announced that it will not honor the subpoena, citing to “the confidentiality of the requested documents and the integrity of the scientific process .” Obviously Mr. Karl has a very dark sense of humor to claim that the “integrity of the scientific process” is at stake by making all taxpayer-funded documents about a scientific study public. . . .

Benghazi

Lawmakers on the House Select Committee on Benghazi are protesting the State Department’s “stonewalling” as they seek to finalize a long-awaited report about the 2012 terrorist attacks.

Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) on Monday accused the Obama administration of purposefully deceiving his panel.

“Whatever the administration is hiding, its justifications for doing so are imaginary and appear to be invented for the sake of convenience,” Gowdy said in a statement. “That’s not how complying with a congressional subpoena works, and it’s well past time the department stops stonewalling.”

And just as a reminder, had the Obama State Department been forced to honor Congressional Subpoenas instead of use them for toilet paper, Hillary’s use of a private server to conduct all State Department business would have been exposed before 2012 and perhaps the damage to our national security would never have been in question.

And it was not just Congressional Oversight.  The Obama agencies, across the board, all but shut down the inspector generals in each agency.  Recall this from 2014:

In all, 47 inspectors general from across the federal government — many of them appointed by Obama — wrote to Congress this month warning that their work and investigations were being unlawfully impeded. Among other concerns, the officials cited denial of access to documents, wild interpretations of statutes purporting to authorize the stonewalling, undermining the independence of the inspectors general, and similar tactics being used by top administration officials. Analysts said the scheming was merely an extension of Obama’s ongoing “war on transparency. . . .

So, at any rate, fake news is alive and well on the banks of the Hudson.  If Trump were actually as lawless as the Obama administration, then Congress really would have ample grounds for impeachment.


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