It is easy to understand why people seek government and the law is difficult to understand. The truth is: Government and law are often challenging to understand or explain.
Take the news this past week, when the House voted to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress. Garland is only the third attorney general to be impeached by Congress since the beginning of the American Republic in the 1780s.
It seems like a pretty big problem. On the other hand, much of the news coverage over the past few days has dismissed the idea of ​​Garland being sent to jail or even prosecuted. So the net effect of his disparaging quote is probably zero.
The Justice Department has told House Speaker Mike Johnson it will not prosecute Garland. Johnson has responded that the House will go to court to seek enforcement of the citation without the cooperation of the Judiciary.
In addition, the House could spend much of the remaining time this year on impeachment proceedings. But the only official impeached in Congress today, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, had the case dismissed in the Senate.
So showing “contempt of Congress” isn’t a big deal.
Except that earlier this month, we saw former President Donald Trump’s ally Steve Bannon exhausts his appeal and was ordered to prison to serve four months from July 1. Meanwhile, another former adviser to Trump, economic trade Peter Navarro, in a federal facility in Miami serving the same sentence now.
Both men were given shorter sentences than they could have faced. Still, he is serving a prison sentence. And two long-running court cases began with citations for contempt of Congress.
So at first shy, the average citizen might be confused. Alternatively, they may be prone to claim that the former president and all his minions are also victims of unprecedented political persecution. These claims often come from Trump himself, who sees them all as “weaponizing” the government and the law against him.
Sorting all of this out takes time and information. It may take more than two of the most we have available. So it’s easier to sell a version of the story that politicians or the media prefer to hear.
Who despises whom?
Contempt proceedings are only the final stage in exercising Congress’s power to search and compel evidence in the course of an investigation. Conflicts can develop when Congress uses its oversight powers to investigate other parts of the government.
Where Congress wants to see something, executive branch agencies can object or be directed to object by the White House. That raises a series of questions: Are certain witnesses protected or certain documents privileged under the constitutional separation of powers?
Usually, negotiation resolves the question. But difficulties may arise when the target of the subpoena defies not only the subpoena but the legitimacy of the authority issuing the subpoena. This only gets worse when the target of the subpoena refuses to negotiate or seek accommodation.
That’s what happened with Bannon and Navarro. No one is willing to acknowledge the authority of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the Capitol. He said he had no authority because congressional leaders on the Republican side did not give him his blessing.
He was charged in 2021, tried in federal court and convicted by a jury and sentenced by a trial judge. A series of appeals over the years delayed the detention date. Bannon is still seeking a review of the order revoking bail and moving the detention date.
Garland was called into contempt because he would not hand over the tapes to congressional committees of Biden’s interview with a special prosecutor named Robert Hur.
Garland has named Hur to review Biden’s retention of classified documents since becoming vice president. Hur said it would be difficult to get a conviction for having a criminal record because Biden would present jurors as a sympathetic, forgetful parent.
Home wants to hear the interview. Garland provided the transcript but said the White House had executive privilege over the tapes.
Thus frustrated, the DPR has now taken the next step by impeaching him. And Garland’s DOJ has announced it will not prosecute him, depending on the precedent set by others in his position.
The precedent was strengthened when Trump’s Attorney General William Barr was humiliated by Congress in 2020. Barr had been Trump’s second attorney general in 2019 and he constantly clashed with House Democrats who had just controlled the majority of the chamber that year. show in the 2018 election.
Among other things, Democrats want documents related to citizenship questions that the Trump administration is trying to add to the 2020 Census forms. The Commerce Department under Secretary Wilbur Ross rejected the Democrats, and Barr supported the decision. So House in July 2019 found Ross and Barr in contempt.
But Barr’s DOJ declined to prosecute him, citing “the Justice Department’s long-standing position … that we will not prosecute officials who defy Congress by refusing to provide information under the president’s claim of executive privilege.”
At the time, House Democrats sought to enforce the contempt citation in federal court — just as House Republican Johnson wants to do now. The Democratic effort was unsuccessful.
Barr has become the second attorney general to be called for contempt. The first was Eric Holder, who was appointed by President Obama and headed the Department of Justice since 2009 and headed the Judiciary for six years. Like Barr and Garland, Holder clashed with opposition party leaders when the party was newly in control of the House of Representatives and eager to challenge the president.
The holder balked at the subpoena for the document which the Obama White House has exercised executive privilege. That caused him to be called contemptible, just like Barr and Garland since then. Citing departmental policy and precedent, Holder’s DOJ declined to prosecute him, as Barr and Garland would. The House began impeachment proceedings against Holder that were dismissed when he resigned in September 2014.
Good point or turning point?
All of the issues discussed here may result in relatively good laws that are unnecessary for ordinary citizens. Absence of dramatic confrontations, which are almost always avoided, may be different and the complications disappear.
At that point, we might be forgiven for turning the page or changing the channel.
But when one side or the other presses the case, or insists on a resolution, the lack of information and understanding in the general public becomes a problem.
Because we usually know little about certain procedures in government or the law, it’s easier to sell a version of the story that politicians or the media prefer to hear.
The best shield against such deception is knowledge. And that starts with basic civic education and goes beyond that which requires accurate and verifiable information. Whether today’s media meets these needs is an open and painful question.
If citizens had more information about how to vote, counted and certified, would it be easy to convince tens of millions that the 2020 election has been hijacked or stolen?
A study by the Brookings Institution in 2020 questioned whether US schools still teach the basics of citizenship as they once did. While almost every state requires at least one citizenship course before students graduate from high school, few require the course for more than one semester.
The study noted that the public school curriculum underwent major changes after the “Sputnik moment” in 1957 left Americans worried that they were losing the Soviet Union in the space race. Brookings also cited a 2018 study that found “while reading and math scores have improved in recent years, there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in eighth-grade civics.”
So government and law can be complicated and sometimes seem contradictory. What else is new?
We are used to denying issues such as the level of information and understanding of citizens and voters. If it’s a problem for democracy, it’s a problem we’ve been living with for almost 250 years. So how bad can it be?
We may soon find out.
In the prosperous “America era” that followed World War II, several generations of Americans had been involved in politics, many with an attachment to one of the two major parties. But as a rule, real differences and partisan feelings do not change the sense of being a stakeholder in the bigger picture.
Some may call it greater America. Others might call it democracy. Some still believe it can be both.
But are those beliefs still strong enough to change their differences?