Drip. Drip. Drip. That's the sound of the FBI and Department of Justice releasing documents ordered by Congressional oversight groups. Requests are slow-walked. Months pass without action. Then the agencies release a trickle of documents, always heavily redacted. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Two house committees are losing patience with the government foot-dragging. Committee chairmen are threatening to slap subpoenas on the nation's top law enforcement agency and the justice department over what appears to be a deliberate attempt to thwart Congressional investigations.
The simmering dispute threatens to boil over into a Constitutional crisis. The FBI and Department of Justice are acting as if they are above the law. They were warned in December to produce documents in a timely manner or face contempt citations. The agencies just shrugged.
While stonewalling Congress, the FBI and DOJ have treated the media to a flood of information. Both have leaked details on the probes to newspaper and television reporters, while obstructing the Congressional investigations with flimsy excuses for noncompliance.
The House Judiciary Committee and the House Intelligence Committee are growing impatient. Only a fraction of the hundreds of thousands requested by the committees have been released by justice and the FBI. Both agencies blithely admit they have been negligent, unafraid of blowback.
Justice Department official Ian Prior acknowledged his agency has discovered more than 30,000 documents responsive to Judiciary's request. Thus far it has delivered 3,000 documents, Prior publicly conceded. He claimed two dozen FBI agents were assisting on the document search.
The House Intelligence Committee has experienced the same government stiff arm. It has asked for 1.2 million documents related to its probe on the government's actions with regard to charges of spying on the Trump campaign. To date, the FBI has handed over a few thousand documents.
The government's behavior raises troubling questions about why they have not been forthcoming. What are they hiding? Have documents been destroyed? Are the two agencies complicit in a cover up? Who are they protecting? Only full disclosure can resolve those issues and restore credibility.
The two high-ranking government officials gumming the document discovery process are FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. They have unambiguous authority to order their departments to fully comply with document requests in a timely manner.
After blistering Congressional condemnations, director Wray has lifted the embargo, if only slightly. He announced plans last week to double the FBI agents to 54 on the document search. In a rare moment of contrition, he said the current pace was "too slow." A tortoise is speedier than the FBI.
If these agencies continue to frustrate the investigations, the House should vote to impeach Wray and Rosenstein. It is time to hold them accountable for the action of their employees. The underlings (aka Deep State) in their agencies cannot be allowed to obstruct Congress without facing consequences.
Imagine for a moment if the FBI or DOJ had requested documents of a business firm as part of a government investigation. What do you think would happen if the business decided to dribble a tiny portion of the documents? The CEO would face an obstruction of justice charge and jail time.
The FBI and DOJ cannot be allowed to skirt the same laws they are duty bound to enforce. The two agencies are behaving as anarchists who are unaccountable to Congress. Both are losing the trust of Americans who are convinced the agencies have been corrupted by politically partisanship.
There is a way to restore confidence. The House should vote to appoint a special counsel to get to the bottom of the FBI's handling of Hillary Clinton's email server investigation and the DOJ involvement in authorizing FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign, including alleged FISA court abuses.
If the DOJ and FBI have nothing to conceal, they should welcome an opportunity to clear the air. However, they obviously don't want anyone snooping in their business. Otherwise they would have long ago surrendered the documents sought by Congress. So what are they hiding? And why?
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