"Executive Privilege" must have been a last ditch effort, because as of about 7 a.m. talking heads were saying that the fact it had not been claimed made for an interesting twist. I think the reason the administration waited until now to claim it says two things:
- They realize that being in any way associated with "Fast & Furious" would be toxic to their reelection efforts and as long as they avoided responding at the White House level they could keep the complicity of most of the MSM in not talking about it. So Holder could stonewall all he wanted and as long as the media didn't talk about it, the White House could refuse to get involved.
- They know that the information sought by Issa et al. would indicate criminal malfeasance on the administration's part, and so when Issa & Co. refused to back down and accept the stonewalling, the administration's hand was forced and Obama had to claim executive privilege. Once they realized that Congress is dead serious about this and that Holder would be held in contempt, there could have only been limited possible outcomes, none of them good for Obama.
Borrowing heavily from Wikipedia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Congress):
While the law pronounces the duty of the U.S. Attorney is to impanel a grand jury for its action on the matter, some proponents of the unitary executive theory believe that the Congress cannot properly compel the U.S. Attorney to take this action against the Executive Branch, asserting that the U.S. Attorney is a member of the Executive Branch who ultimately reports only to the President and that compelling the Attorney amounts to compelling the President himself. They believe that to allow Congress to force the President to take action against a subordinate following his directives would be a violation of the separation of powers and infringe on the power of the Executive branch. The legal basis for this belief, they contend, can be found in Federalist 49, in which James Madison wrote "“The several departments being perfectly co-ordinate by the terms of their common commission, none of them, it is evident, can pretend to an exclusive or superior right of settling the boundaries between their respective powers.” This approach to government is commonly known as "departmentalism” or “coordinate construction”[citation needed]
Others believe that, under Article II, the principal duty of the President is to execute the law; that, under Article I, the law is what the lawmaker—e.g. Congress, in the case of statutory contempt—says it is and the Executive Branch cannot either define the meaning of the law (such powers of legislation being reserved to Congress) or interpret the law (such powers being reserved to the several Federal Courts); any attempt by the Executive to define or interpret the law would be a violation of the separation of powers; the Executive may only—and is obligated to—execute the law consistent with its definition and interpretation; and if the law specifies a duty on one of the President's subordinates, then the President must "take care" to see that the duty specified in the law is executed. To avoid or neglect the performance of this duty would not be faithful execution of the law, and would thus be a violation of the separation of powers, which the Congress and the Courts have several options to remedy.
Personally, I don't believe that James Madison (the author of Federalist 49) would agree that the Executive is above the law. Wikipedia notes that Congress created the modern statutory process for Contempt of Congress charges in 1857. The president at the time (Franklin Pierce) would have certainly had the power of veto, and he didn't do it. Furthermore, the last time it was used in 1934, the Supreme Court in
Jurney v. MacCracken apparently upheld the law's constitutionality. So, with SCOTUS precedent on the side of Issa and Congress, it seems like it would be very difficult for the Obama administration to simply shrug off such charges.
All of that said, I believe that, were all of this allowed to play out, the process would take so long that it would last beyond this coming November, and we would never see either Holder forced out of office, or Obama impeached. However, the good news is that if the process plays out, the media will HAVE to talk about it, and given the that view among those in the general public who were aware of it was overwhelming against Fast & Furious, Obama's reelection will simply go down in flames, and THAT is the most important thing. Cut the head off, and the snake dies. When the voters remove Obama from power, Holder and his tawdry actions will cease to affect us so long as Romney follows through on his promises to appoint conservative justices etc., etc.
Some interesting articles:
Pre-executive privilege claim:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/op ... TgIv6EV3pI
NYT upholds executive privilege (big surprise):
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/06/ ... ml?_r=2&hp
Senator Obama decries executive privilege

:
[youtube]
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bpwYh9TD6Nc[/youtube]
Grassley raises a good question
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... r-ff-docs/:
Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who first began the Fast and Furious investigation, said the assertion by the White House of executive privilege raises “monumental questions.”
“How can the president assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement? How can the president exert executive privilege over documents he’s supposedly never seen? Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme?
Indeed!
Holder retracts his claim that the Bush administration knew about F&F:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/holder-re ... le/2500157
From the Romney camp
http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/rom ... ous-decisi:
Romney Press Secretary Andrea Saul attacked President Barack Obama's decision to invoke executive privilege on documents pertaining to the Fast and Furious scandal requested by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“President Obama’s pledge to run the most open and transparent administration in history has turned out to be just another broken promise,” she said in a statement to BuzzFeed.
The scandal has largely been ignored by the media and the American public, but is entering the mainstream as the committee prepares to vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over the documents.
The administration is unraveling, and I couldn't be happier.