Can we impeach Eric Holder now?

**Posted by Phineas

I’ve called before for the impeachment of Attorney General Holder; there’s plenty of evidence to justify hearings before a House committee, and I’ll bet my last dollar the facts they would uncover would make impeachment unavoidable. Eric Holder is a corrupt Attorney General who places ideology ahead of the impartial enforcement of the law. Today brings another example, this time from indefatigable election attorney J. Christian Adams, of Eric Holder’s guiding theory of justice — “It depends:”

Eric Holder’s Justice Department has even politicized compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. According to documents I have obtained, FOIA requests from liberals or politically connected civil rights groups are often given same day turn-around by the DOJ. But requests from conservatives or Republicans face long delays, if they are fulfilled at all.

The documents show a pattern of politicized compliance within the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. In particular, I have obtained FOIA logs that demonstrate as of August 2010, the most transparent administration in history is anything but. The logs provide the index number of the information request, the date of the request, the requestor, and the date of compliance.

For example, Republican election attorney Chris Ashby of LeClair Ryan made a request for the records of five submissions made under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Ashby waited nearly eight months for a response. Afterwards, Susan Somach of the β€œGeorgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda,” a group headed by Rev. Joseph Lowery, made requests for 23 of the same type of records. While Ashby waited many months for five records, Somach waited only 20 days for 23 records.

Under the Obama DOJ, FOIA requests from conservative media never obtained any response from the Civil Rights Division, while National Public Radio obtained a response in five days.

Adams goes on to recount instance after instance in which individuals and organizations friendly to the Obama administration had their FOIA requests promptly filled, while conservatives and Republicans have had to wait long past the legal deadlines — if they get any response at all. (Pajamas Media, for whom Adams writes, has filed their own lawsuit to force the DoJ to comply with their FOIA request.) To answer the obvious counter-charge that “they all do it, so it’s no big deal,” Adams recounts how the Bush administration in its waning days rushed to fill a request from a hostile journalist, knowing he would use the information to savagely attack them. In other words, the Bush administration complied with the law without regard to the cost to itself.

The pattern is far too clear to be a coincidence: the Department of Justice under Attorney General Eric Holder willingly violates the Freedom of Information Act when the requester is a conservative or a Republican — it breaks the law.

While slow-boating FOIA requests probably won’t elicit the outrage that racially-discriminatory enforcement of the Voting Rights Act does (Or should. Hello, MSM??), I submit that it is another piece of evidence that the enforcement of our laws under Eric Holder is ideologically driven, highly politicized, and ethically corrupt. When added to Holder’s obvious left-wing dogmatism and stunning incompetence regarding civilian trials for captured al Qaeda terrorists, there can be only one conclusion: Eric Holder has got to go. Since we can’t expect his boss to give him the axe*, our only recourse is impeachment.

Gentlemen of the House Judiciary Committee, you may start your hearings.

*Eek! Violent rhetoric!

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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