Devastating: Liberal Law Professor Clinically Dismantles Democrats' Contempt Case Against Barr
Guy Benson
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Posted: May 09, 2019 1:05 PM
@guypbenson
Left-leaning law professor Jonathan Turley -- who has stood out in recent years as a rare legal analyst unwilling to allow his political views to cloud his constitutional judgments -- has written an absolutely devastating column addressing House Democrats' efforts to hold Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt of Congress. Anti-Trump partisans have compiled a list of grievances against Barr, many of them specious, but House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler has chosen to focus the contempt charge on the Attorney General's unwillingness to release a tiny redacted fraction of the Mueller report. Turley says this is "the weakest possible contempt claim," warning that pursuing it will damage the House, not the administration. Here's the core of his argument on the redactions-based contempt complaint:
The problem is that the contempt action against Barr is long on action and short on contempt. Indeed, with a superficial charge, the House could seriously undermine its credibility in the ongoing conflicts with the White House...As someone who has represented the House of Representatives, my concern is that this one violates a legal version of the Hippocratic oath to “first do no harm.†This could do great harm, not to Barr, but to the House. It is the weakest possible case to bring against the administration, and likely to be an example of a bad case making bad law for the House...Barr promised to release as much of the report as possible, and he has delivered. Indeed, he is not expressly given the authority to release the confidential report. Yet, he not only released it but declared executive privilege waived on its content. The key obstruction portion of the report is virtually unredacted. Just 8 percent of the public report was redacted, largely to remove material that could undermine ongoing investigations. The sealed version of the report given to Congress only had 2 percent redacted. Democrats are therefore seeking a contempt sanction on a report that is 98 percent disclosed and only lacks grand jury material.
Barr restricted access to the 98 percent disclosed report, as opposed to the 92 percent public report, due to the inclusion of evidence impacting ongoing prosecutions. He has offered to expand the number of members and staff to review that material but insists on it remaining protected. But this has nothing to do with the redactions. It is the 2 percent solution to a major political dilemma of the left. Faced with a report that rejected the collusion theories of their running narrative, Democrats want to focus on those 2 percent of redactions rather than over 400 pages of findings. So Congress now will ask a court to find civil contempt for Barr refusing to release grand jury information. The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals recently rejected a district court claim to have the “inherent supervisory authority†to disclose grand jury matters because of great public interest. To make matters worse, the Justice Department has now said the president has invoked executive privilege over the entire report, making this contempt claim even less likely to prevail over the long run.
more
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2019/05/09/liberal-law-professor-democrats-contempt-case-against-barr-is-extremely-weak-n2546087
