Issa issues first subpoena to Obama over Freedom of Information Act

House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa, has just sent the Obama Administration his first subpoena and they aren’t after Climategate, or misspent TARP funds, or ACORN. or any other conservative pet issue. Issa promised this year, to dispatch 280 investigations into the White House, and first on his list is to find out whether or not Homeland Security officials mishandled Freedom of Information Act requests from journalists and activists.

The Freedom of Information Act allows the public to request government documents that haven’t been released, and it’s a treasured tool for reporters trying to unearth the workings of the federal bureaucracy. Issa’s subpoenas are for depositions of two homeland security officials who handle FOIA requests. The department has assigned 15 lawyers and six support staff to deal with Issa’s requests, Radnofsky reports. And Issa has asked 180 other federal agencies to hand over records of their response to FOIA requests.

wikipedia

But there are nine exemptions to the law, and they include the following:

osec.doc.gov

No one expects Issa to play the game with the White House, in a nice manner. But Issa was the subject of a brutal profile in the New Yorker earlier this year; the article detailed the many unpleasant things the California congressman has been accused of, including stealing a car, leaving the scene of an accident, carrying a concealed weapon, firing an employee by showing him a gun, and burning down a building. The story also quoted Issa’s spokesman, Kurt Bardella, saying he wanted to make his boss a Washington star. One way to do that? Court the 500 or so people people in town “who track who’s up, who’s down, who wins, who loses”–the political press.

Yahoo

It has been suggested that this tactic, is what Issa is using to get the attention off of his alleged-car-theft stuff before he starts rolling out his real headline-grabbing subpoenas that are surely still to come.