You just can’t make this stuff up. A liberal activist judge -forced to follow the law and legal precedent- tells the DOJ they must turn over Fast and Furious documents. The DOJ refuse. The federal judge then gives the DOJ a deadline for producing the documents. The DOJ ignore the deadline, and again refuse. The judge is now in a position of having her own court order defied by the entity under her jurisdiction… so she punts, or, well, ‘kicks-the-can’ down past the election.
WASHINGTON DC – A federal judge has declined a House committee’s bid to have Attorney General Eric Holder held in contempt of court — and perhaps even jailed — for failing to turn over documents related to the Justice Department’ s response to Operation Fast and Furious.
However, in a ruling Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson also denied Holder’s request for an indefinite stay of her prior order that the attorney general must turn over any “non-privileged” documents the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoenaed as part of an investigation into the botched gunrunning investigation. The judge previously ruled that Holder must give the panel any documents that are not both predecisional and deliberative in nature.
Jackson called the House contempt motion “entirely unnecessary” and said it was evident that she was considering the government’s motion to lift her prior order. “Under those circumstances, the Court finds no basis to hold defendant in contempt,” she wrote.
But the judge also said she saw no reason to allow the Justice Department to withhold unprivileged documents until the case was complete. She ordered those records turned over to the committee by Nov. 3, along with a log of the records claimed to be privileged. (read more)