Obstruction at Justice

By Scott Horton

On Tuesday, the House and Senate oversight committees reached decisions to press their case for documents from the Justice Department – and particularly the curiously missing documents from the prior dumps. How will Justice reply?

Email traffic and earlier reports show that Justice department politicos were plotting a series of tactics designed to obstruct Congressional oversight, and indeed had arranged coaching sessions to teach other government agencies about how to evade the scrutiny of Congress. Kyle Sampson spoke in his emails of “gumming up the works” by stonewalling Congressional inquiries, pleading that they would cooperate in good faith but needed more time.

As the showdown draws near, and as Congressional investigators struggle for a better view inside the Justice Department before Gonzales’ appearance on the Hill on April 17, it seems clear that an obstruction campaign has been settled upon. The Washington Post takes a look at the process in its Wednesday edition and finds the next card to be played will be privacy:

"Much of the information that the Congress seeks pertains to individuals other than the U.S. attorneys who resigned," Roehrkasse said. "Furthermore, many of the documents Congress is now seeking have already been available to them for review. Because there are individual privacy interests implicated by publicly releasing this information, it is unfortunate the Congress would choose this option."

Is there any merit to the claims coming out of Justice? According to those I have spoken with, this is “pretty thin gruel.” The Post quotes the smartest constitutional scholar I know:

"I'm not sure how the administration could win on this claim, in terms of keeping those documents," said Martin S. Lederman, a visiting law professor at Georgetown University who worked in Justice's Office of Legal Counsel from 1994 to 2002.