Seven House Judiciary Members Demand DOJ Investigate James Clapper For Lying To Congress

from the now-we're-getting-somewhere dept

Congressional oversight depends on truthful testimony--witnesses cannot be allowed to lie to Congress. Accordingly, we request you to investigate the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's "erroneous" statements to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence earlier this year.



[....] 18 U.S.C. § 1001 makes it a crime to "knowingly and willfully" make any "materially false" statement in the course of any "investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee." One of the hallmarks of American democracy is that no one is above the law...



[....] Director Clapper has served his country with distinction, and we have no doubt he believed he was acting in its best interest. Nevertheless, the law is clear. He was asked a question and he was obligated to answer truthfully. He could have declined to answer. He could have offered to answer in a classified setting. He could have corrected himself immediately following the hearing. He did none of these things despite advance warning that the question was coming.



The country's interests are best served when its leaders deal truthfully with its citizens. The mutual sense of good faith it fosters permits compromise and concessions in those cases that warrant it. Director Clapper's willful lie under oath fuels the unhealthy cynicism and distrust that citizens feel toward their government and undermines Congress's ability to perform its Constitutional function.



There are differences of opinion about the propriety of the NSA's data collection programs. There can be no disagreement, however, on the basic premise that congressional witnesses must answer truthfully.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community. Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis. While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Since the Snowden revelations first started coming out, forcing James Clapper to admit that he flat-out lied to Congress , we've been somewhat perplexed as to how Clapper could come out of the whole thing "unscathed." Congress seemed willing to look the other way, and the President didn't appear to have any interest in firing Clapper or Keith Alexander, so as not to "let Snowden win." But, it's never made much sense. Lying to Congress is a pretty serious crime -- and considering the lying was to cover up a program that just this week was found to be unconstitutional, it seems even more serious. The fact that anyone in Congress thinks that Clapper can even be remotely trusted to tell the truth going forward when he got away with lying, seems bizarre.Hopefully that will be changing now.Back in October, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the author of the PATRIOT Act, argued that Clapper should be fired and prosecuted , but hadn't done anything to move that forward. However, with Monday's ruling now making it pretty clear that the program that Clapper lied about (in response to a question from Senator Ron Wyden), Sensenbrenner, along with six of his colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee have sent a letter to Eric Holder, demanding an investigation into Clapper's lying to Congress . The letter is quite a read. They're pretty direct about calling out Clapper for lying, how this is against the law, how others in government have been prosecuted for the same thing, and even how allowing this to go unpunished contributes to "cynicism" about the government.It seems unlikely that Holder will do anything, but this is the first official move we've seen towards actually punishing Clapper for lying to Congress. It would be nice if others in Congress supported this effort as well.

Filed Under: eric holder, house judiciary committee, james clapper, jim sensenbrenner, lying to congress, nsa, nsa surveillance, ron wyden