Justice Dept. Should Charge House Dems with Extortion for Barr Contempt Threat

An interesting argument from yet another conservative — this time, the idea that the White House should charge House Dems with extortion — and the author’s opening paragraph is funny:

When the Republican-controlled House threatened Obama Attorney General Eric Holder with contempt for refusing to respond to a subpoena in the “Fast and Furious” scandal, he was able to laugh it off. It was like the joke about the dispute between God and the devil over the boundary between heaven and hell. When God threatened to sue, the devil wryly replied, “Where are you going to get the lawyers?”

Now House Democrats are on the verge of voting to hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt for failing to provide them a fully unredacted copy of the Mueller report. Barr has already legally given them transparency beyond what the law requires. For Barr to go further would violate the law that protects confidential information such as what comes from grand jury proceedings.

The initial distinction between the Holder contempt matter and what may happen to Barr is that the former involved hiding from Congress information about lawbreaking by the government, while the latter would require Barr to violate the law to comply with the subpoena issued by Democrats under House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler. That’s an important distinction for observers who aren’t so overwhelmed with Trump Derangement Syndrome that they can think clearly.

Another major distinction is that the threat to hold Barr in contempt could boomerang back at House Democrats with two potential criminal charges. The crime of solicitation involves soliciting another person to commit a crime. The crime of extortion may involve using the threat of prosecution to coercively dispossess what is owned or possessed by another. Extortion initially was a crime that applied to public officials only.

Read more: Daily Caller

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