Congressman Darrell Issa, the controversial Republican Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has issued his first subpoena to the Obama Administration, requiring testimony from two Department of Homeland Security employees regarding allegedly questionable FOIA practices. Democratic members of the committee have consistently criticized Issa’s efforts as partisan and his methods as inappropriately unilateral, with ranking member Elijah Cummings claiming, “The coercive power of this committee should be used only when the purpose of the subpoena is clear and reasonable efforts to obtain the information have been exhausted.” Some critics have further noted that Issa’s recent interest in freedom of information contrasts starkly with his prior efforts to exempt the Bush Administration’s DHS from some elements of FOIA and to separately kill a 2007 bill that sought an expansion of the FOIA system. Issa maintains that the DHS subpoena, and the other recent subpoenas issued by the committee, including one to Bank of America for information regarding potentially preferential mortgage treatment for VIPs including Democratic Congressmen, are entirely legitimate. Issa’s then-spokesman Kurt Bardella, retorted, “Another day, another complaint and more righteous indignation, what else is new?”
Bardella’s comment proved to be one of his last as Issa’s spokesman. The man whom Issa labeled “my secret weapon,” whose ostensible goal was to “make Darrell Issa an actual political figure” by “focus[ing] like a laser beam on the five hundred people here who care…who’s up, who’s down, who wins, who loses,” was fired shortly after Politico reported that Bardella was “sending correspondence with journalists to [Mark] Leibovich [a New York Times reporter] for a book project on the machinations of modern Washington.” The scandal has caused some Republicans to question Issa’s leadership of the committee. One anonymous Republican staffer aptly noted the hostile media relationship developing between Issa and the press, claiming that “Issa actually has a job to do. He needs the press and the public to trust him to be able to do that job effectively.” Another Republican congressman reportedly bemoaned that Issa’s “ego has returned with a vengeance.” (more…)
