Contempt of Congress [1] is the act of obstructing the work of the United States Congress or one of its committees. Historically, the bribery of a U.S. senator or U.S. representative was considered contempt of Congress. In modern times, contempt of Congress has generally applied to the refusal to comply with a subpoena issued by a congressional committee or subcommittee—usually seeking to compel either testimony or the production of requested documents. [2]
In the late 1790s, declaring contempt of Congress was considered an "implied power" of the legislature, in a similar manner as the British Parliament could make findings of contempt of Parliament—early Congresses issued contempt citations against numerous individuals for a variety of actions. Some instances of contempt of Congress included citations against:
In Anderson v. Dunn (1821), [6] the Supreme Court of the United States held that Congress' power to hold someone in contempt was essential to ensure that Congress was "... not exposed to every indignity and interruption that rudeness, caprice, or even conspiracy, may mediate against it." [6] The historical interpretation that bribery of a senator or representative was considered contempt of Congress has long since been abandoned in favor of criminal statutes. In 1857, Congress enacted a law that made "contempt of Congress" a criminal offense against the United States. [7]
In the Air Mail Scandal of 1934, William MacCracken, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, was sentenced to ten days of detention for destroying evidence under subpoena. MacCracken appealed his sentence to the Supreme Court in Jurney v. MacCracken . After losing his case, he surrendered to Chesley Jurney, Senate sergeant at arms, who detained him in a room at the Willard Hotel.
While it has been said that "Congress is handcuffed in getting obstinate witnesses to comply", [8] cases have been referred to the United States Department of Justice. [9] The Office of Legal Counsel has asserted that the President of the United States is protected from contempt by executive privilege. [10] [11]
The Supreme Court affirmed in Watkins v. United States (1957) that "[the] power of the Congress to conduct investigations is inherent in the legislative process" and that "[it] is unquestionably the duty of all citizens to cooperate with the Congress in its efforts to obtain the facts needed for intelligent legislative action. It is their unremitting obligation to respond to subpoenas, to respect the dignity of the Congress and its committees and to testify fully with respect to matters within the province of proper investigation." [12] Congressional rules empower all its standing committees with the authority to compel witnesses to produce testimony and documents for subjects under its jurisdiction. Committee rules may provide for the full committee to issue a subpoena, or permit subcommittees or the chairman (acting alone or with the ranking member) to issue subpoenas.
As announced in Wilkinson v. United States (1961), [13] a congressional committee must meet three requirements for its subpoenas to be "legally sufficient." First, the committee's investigation of the broad subject area must be authorized by its chamber; second, the investigation must pursue "a valid legislative purpose" but does not need to involve legislation and does not need to specify the ultimate intent of Congress; and third, the specific inquiries must be pertinent to the subject matter area that has been authorized for investigation.
The Court held in Eastland v. United States Servicemen's Fund (1975) [14] that congressional subpoenas are within the scope of the Speech or Debate clause which provides "an absolute bar to judicial interference" once it is determined that Members are acting within the "legitimate legislative sphere" with such compulsory process. Under that ruling, courts generally do not hear motions to quash congressional subpoenas; even when executive branch officials refuse to comply, courts tend to rule that such matters are "political questions" unsuitable for judicial remedy. In fact, many legal rights usually associated with a judicial subpoena do not apply to a congressional subpoena. For example, attorney–client privilege and information that is normally protected under the Trade Secrets Act do not need to be recognized. [15]
Following the refusal of a witness to produce documents or to testify, the committee is entitled to report a resolution of contempt to its parent chamber. A committee may also cite a person for contempt but not immediately report the resolution to the floor. In the case of subcommittees, they report the resolution of contempt to the full committee, which then has the option of rejecting it, accepting it but not reporting it to the floor, or accepting it and reporting it to the floor of the chamber for action. On the floor of the House or the Senate, the reported resolution is considered privileged and, if the resolution of contempt is passed, the chamber has several options to enforce its mandate.
Under this process, the procedure for holding a person in contempt involves only the chamber concerned. Following a contempt citation, the person cited is arrested by the Sergeant-at-Arms for the House or Senate, brought to the floor of the chamber, held to answer charges by the presiding officer, and then subjected to punishment as the chamber may dictate (usually imprisonment for punishment, imprisonment for coercion, or release from the contempt citation). [16]
Concerned with the time-consuming nature of a contempt proceeding and the inability to extend punishment further than the session of the Congress concerned (under Supreme Court rulings), Congress created a statutory process in 1857. While Congress retains its "inherent contempt" authority and may exercise it at any time, this inherent contempt process was last used by the Senate in 1934, in a Senate investigation of airlines and the U.S. Postmaster. After a one-week trial on the Senate floor (presided over by Vice President John Nance Garner, in his capacity as Senate President), William P. MacCracken Jr., a lawyer and former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics who was charged with allowing clients to remove or rip up subpoenaed documents, was found guilty and sentenced to 10 days imprisonment. [17]
MacCracken filed a petition of habeas corpus in federal courts to overturn his arrest, but after litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress had acted constitutionally, and denied the petition in the case Jurney v. MacCracken . [18] [19]
Following a contempt citation, the presiding officer of the chamber is instructed to refer the matter to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; [20] according to the law it is the duty of the U.S. Attorney to refer the matter to a grand jury for action.
The criminal offense of contempt of Congress sets the penalty at not less than one month nor more than twelve months in jail and a fine of not more than $100,000 or less than $100. [9]
Senate Rules authorize the Senate to direct the Senate Legal Counsel to file a civil action against any private individual found in contempt. Upon motion by the Senate, the federal district court issues another order for a person to comply with Senate process. If the subject then refuses to comply with the Court's order, the person may be cited for contempt of court and may incur sanctions imposed by the Court. The process has been used at least six times.
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Person | Subcommittee/Committee | Chamber | Ultimate Disposition |
---|---|---|---|
Rogers C.B. Morton, Secretary of Commerce | November 11, 1975 Subcommittee of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce | Not considered | Morton released the material to the subcommittee. |
Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State | November 15, 1975 House Select Committee on Intelligence | Not considered | Citation dismissed after "substantial compliance" with subpoena. |
Joseph A. Califano Jr., Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare | August 6, 1978 Subcommittee of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce | Not considered | Califano complied with the subpoena about one month after the subcommittee citation. |
Charles W. Duncan Jr., Secretary of Energy | April 29, 1980 Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations | Not considered | Duncan supplied the material by May 14, 1980. |
James B. Edwards, Secretary of Energy | July 23, 1981 Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Subcommittee of the House Committee on Government Operations | Not considered | Documents were delivered to Congress prior to full Committee consideration of the contempt citation. |
James G. Watt, Secretary of the Interior | February 9, 1982 Subcommittee of House Committee on Energy and Commerce February 25, 1982 House Committee on Energy and Commerce | Not considered | The White House delivered documents to the Rayburn House Office Building for review by Committee members for four hours, providing for no staff or photocopies. |
Anne Gorsuch, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency | December 2, 1982 Oversight Subcommittee of the House Committee on Public Works and Transportation | House of Representatives | U.S. Attorney Stanley S. Harris never presented the case to a Grand Jury as required by law. [21] After legal cases and a court dismissal of the Executive Branch's suit, the parties reached an agreement to provide documents and withdrew contempt citation. |
Rita Lavelle, EPA official | April 26, 1983 House Committee on Energy and Commerce | House of Representatives | Indicted for lying to Congress but acquitted in a trial; Later convicted for lying to Congress and sentenced to 6 months in prison, 5 years probation thereafter, and a fine of $10,000 |
Jack Quinn, White House Counsel | May 9, 1996 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform | Not considered | Subpoenaed documents were provided hours before the House of Representatives was set to consider the contempt citation. |
David Watkins, White House Director of Administration Matthew Moore, White House aide | |||
Janet Reno, Attorney General | August 6, 1998 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform | Not considered | The majority of documents in question were released following the conclusion of the Department of Justice investigation into campaign finance violations of 1996. However, an additional memo was withheld and later claimed as privileged by the George W. Bush administration. [22] |
Harriet Miers, Former White House Counsel | July 25, 2007 House Committee on the Judiciary [23] | February 14, 2008 House of Representatives [24] | On March 4, 2009, Miers and former Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bush Karl Rove agreed to testify under oath before Congress about the firings of U.S. attorneys |
Joshua Bolten, White House Chief of Staff | |||
Eric Holder, Attorney General | June 20, 2012 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform [25] | June 28, 2012 House of Representatives | Found in contempt by a vote of 255–67 [26] [27] |
Lois Lerner Director of the IRS Exempt Organizations Division | March 11, 2014 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform [28] | May 7, 2014 [29] House of Representatives | Found in contempt for her role in the 2013 IRS controversy and refusal to testify. The Department of Justice declined to prosecute. (See: Finding Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress (H.Res. 574; 113th Congress)) |
Bryan Pagliano IT director, Hillary Clinton aide | September 13, 2016 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform [30] [31] | Not considered | House Committee voted, 19–15, to recommend Pagliano for a contempt resolution for failing to appear during a September 13 and 22, 2016, hearing after being subpoenaed and submitting a written Fifth Amendment plea in lieu of appearing in person. [30] [31] [32] No contempt resolution was considered by the chamber but Committee member Jason Chaffetz subsequently addressed a letter to the US Attorney General, writing as an individual member of Congress, requesting DOJ prosecution of Pagliano for misdemeanor "contumacious conduct." [33] |
Backpage.com | March 17, 2016 Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations | March 17, 2016 [34] Senate | Found in contempt for failing to provide documents in an investigation into human trafficking. |
William P. Barr, United States Attorney General | House Committee on Oversight and Reform | July 17, 2019, House of Representatives [35] | Refusal to Comply with Subpoenas Duly Issued by the Committee on Oversight and Reform |
Chad Wolf, United States Secretary of Homeland Security | September 17, 2020 House Homeland Security Committee [36] | Not considered | Acting Homeland Secretary Chad Wolf defies subpoena and skips House hearing as he faces whistleblower allegations that he urged department officials to alter intelligence. |
Steve Bannon | October 18, 2021 | October 21, 2021, House of Representatives | Found guilty by a Federal Jury of unlawfully defying a subpoena issued by the January 6th Committee. Sentenced to 4 months in prison. Stayed pending appeals process. |
Mark Meadows, White House Chief of Staff | December 13, 2021 | House of Representatives | December 14, 2021, House of Representatives |
Peter Navarro, White House Adviser | February 23, 2022 | House of Representatives | Found guilty by a Federal Jury of unlawfully defying a subpoena issued by the January 6th Committee on September 7, 2023. Began serving his 4 month sentence on March 19, 2024, after his appeal was rejected by the Supreme Court. [39] |
Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden | January 10, 2024 House Committee on the Judiciary, House Committee on Oversight and Reform [40] | House of Representatives [41] | Biden agrees to provide a deposition to Committee on Oversight and Reform. [42] |
The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Senators and representatives are chosen through direct election, though vacancies in the Senate may be filled by a governor's appointment. Congress has 535 voting members: 100 senators and 435 representatives. The U.S. vice president has a vote in the Senate only when senators are evenly divided. The House of Representatives has six non-voting members.
Executive privilege is the right of the president of the United States and other members of the executive branch to maintain confidential communications under certain circumstances within the executive branch and to resist some subpoenas and other oversight by the legislative and judicial branches of government in pursuit of particular information or personnel relating to those confidential communications. The right comes into effect when revealing the information would impair governmental functions. Neither executive privilege nor the oversight power of Congress is explicitly mentioned in the United States Constitution. However, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that executive privilege and congressional oversight each are a consequence of the doctrine of the separation of powers, derived from the supremacy of each branch in its area of constitutional activity.
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The bill was passed by the 85th United States Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 9, 1957.
Congressional oversight is oversight by the United States Congress over the executive branch, including the numerous U.S. federal agencies. Congressional oversight includes the review, monitoring, and supervision of federal agencies, programs, activities, and policy implementation. Congress exercises this power largely through its congressional committee system. Oversight also occurs in a wide variety of congressional activities and contexts. These include authorization, appropriations, investigative, and legislative hearings by standing committees; which is specialized investigations by select committees; and reviews and studies by congressional support agencies and staff.
Reporter's privilege in the United States, is a "reporter's protection under constitutional or statutory law, from being compelled to testify about confidential information or sources." It may be described in the US as the qualified (limited) First Amendment or statutory right many jurisdictions have given to journalists in protecting their confidential sources from discovery.
In countries with a parliamentary system of government, contempt of parliament is the offence of obstructing the legislature in the carrying out of its functions, or in the hindering any legislator in the performance of their duties.
A United States congressional hearing is the principal formal method by which United States congressional committees collect and analyze information in the early stages of legislative policymaking. Whether confirmation hearings, legislative, oversight, investigative, or a combination of these, all hearings share common elements of preparation and conduct. Hearings usually include oral testimony from witnesses and questioning of the witnesses by members of Congress. George B. Galloway termed congressional hearings a goldmine of information for all the public problems of the United States. A leading authority on U.S. government publications has referred to the published hearings as "the most important publications originating within Congress." The Senate Library in a similar vein noted "Hearings are among the most important publications originating in Congress."
Jeffrey A. Taylor is the former interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. He is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School.
Jurney v. MacCracken, 294 U.S. 125 (1935), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that Congress has an implicit power to find one in contempt of Congress. During a Senate investigation of airlines and of the U.S. Postmaster General, the attorney William P. MacCracken, Jr. allowed his clients to destroy subpoenaed documents. After a one-week trial on the Senate floor, MacCracken, a lawyer and former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, was found guilty and sentenced to 10 days imprisonment. MacCracken filed a petition of habeas corpus with the federal courts to overturn his arrest, but, after litigation, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress had acted constitutionally, and denied the petition.
William Patterson MacCracken Jr. was the first U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics. His department was awarded the Collier Trophy of 1928 for its contribution to the "development of airways and air navigation facilities". Later he was convicted of contempt of congress in the Air Mail scandal in 1934.
Lois Gail Lerner is an American attorney and former United States federal civil service employee. Lerner became director of the Exempt Organizations Unit of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2005, and subsequently became the central figure in the 2013 IRS targeting controversy in the targeting of politically aligned groups, either denying them tax-exempt status outright or delaying that status until they could no longer take effective part in the 2012 election. On May 10, 2013, in a conference call with reporters, Lerner apologized that Tea Party groups and other groups had been targeted for audits of their applications for tax-exemption. Both conservative and liberal groups were scrutinized. Only three groups—all branches of the Democratic group Emerge America—had tax exemptions revoked. Lerner resigned over the controversy. An investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation, completed in 2015, found "substantial evidence of mismanagement, poor judgment and institutional inertia" but "found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt, or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution".
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Amit Priyavadan Mehta is an American lawyer who has served as United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia since 2014. In 2021, Mehta became a judge on the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
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In re: Don McGahn is a U.S. constitutional case lawsuit (1:19-cv-02379) filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia by the House Judiciary Committee to compel the testimony of former White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn Jr. under subpoena. McGahn was put under subpoena to testify regarding his knowledge of the Russia investigation and Mueller Report and whether President Donald Trump's actions could constitute obstruction of justice. The case gained importance as the House launched impeachment proceedings against Trump regarding the Trump–Ukraine scandal.
This is a timeline of major events in second half of 2019 related to the investigations into the myriad links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies that are suspected of being inappropriate, relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections before and after July 2016 up until election day November 8, and the transition, the first and second halves of 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, and the first half of 2019, but precedes that of 2020 and 2021.
In the United States, federal impeachment is the process by which the House of Representatives charges the president, vice president, or another civil federal officer for alleged misconduct. The House can impeach an individual with a simple majority of the present members or other criteria adopted by the House according to Article One, Section 2, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution.
Obstruction of justice is the impediment of governmental activities. There are a host of federal criminal laws that prohibit obstructions of justice. The six most general outlaw obstruction of judicial proceedings (18 U.S.C. 1503), witness tampering (18 U.S.C. 1512), witness retaliation (18 U.S.C. 1513), obstruction of congressional or administrative proceedings (18 U.S.C. 1505), conspiracy to defraud the United States (18 U.S.C. 371), and contempt (a creature of statute, rule and common law). All but Section 1503 cover congressional activities.
In the event Mr. Pagliano fails to appear, the Committee will consider the following: Resolution and Report recommending that the House of Representatives find Bryan Pagliano in Contempt of Congress for Refusal to Comply with a Subpoena Duly Issued by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.