
Attorney General Eric Holder testifying in the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 12, 2012. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
(CNSNews.com) - Attorney General Eric Holder has refused to provide
written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in response to "questions for the record"
submitted to him by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R.-Ala.) that focus on Supreme
Court Justice Elena Kagan's involvement in the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act--AKA Obamacare--while she was President Barack
Obama's solicitor general.
Question: “Are you aware of any instances during
Justice Kagan’s tenure as Solicitor General of the United States in
which information related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act and/or litigation related thereto was relayed or provided to her?”
Question: “When did your staff begin ‘removing’
Solicitor General Kagan from meetings in this matter? On what basis did
you take this action? In what other matters was such action taken?”
Question: “Did you ever have a conversation with
Justice Kagan regarding her recusal from matters before the Supreme
Court related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? If so,
please describe the circumstances and substance of those
conversations.”
These are three of the eight questions that Sessions submitted to
Holder on Nov. 15, 2011 to be included as part of the official record
of Holder’s testimony in an oversight hearing that the Senate Judiciary
Committee held on Nov. 8, 2011. Sessions is a senior member of the
committee.
Holder did not provide the committee with a formal response to
Session's questions until June 7, 2012—seven months after Sessions
submitted them.
When he finally did officially respond, Holder did not answer any of the questions.
Instead, in responding to each, he simply referred the Judiciary Committee to a letter Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich had sent to Sessions on Feb. 24. This letter, in turn, responded to a letter
Sessions had sent to Holder on Jan. 31 noting that Holder had not yet
answered the questions that Session had submitted in November.
Weich’s February letter informed Sessions directly that the Justice
Department would decline to answer his questions to Holder about Kagan’s
involvement in Obamacare.
Back in March 2010, on the same day that President Obama signed his
health care law, Florida and Virginia sued the administration
challenging the law in federal court. At that time, Elena Kagan was
Obama’s solicitor general, and her job was to defend his
administration’s position in federal court disputes.
Obama did not nominate Kagan to the Supreme Court until May 10,
2010--seven weeks after he had signed the health care law and Florida
and Virginia had filed their suits against it. Kagan did not recuse
herself from her duties as solicitor general until after Obama nominated
her to the court.
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