Ted Lieu: we should use INHERENT CONTEMPT .... (ie Congress should lock up witnesses in contempt)

[Baked Potato]

41. Inherent Contempt looks interesting, a Report

Excerpt from Page 13 of 90 of the Report:Congress’s Contempt Power and the Enforcement of Congressional Subpoenas: Law, History, Practice, and Procedure


Inherent Contempt Proceedings by Committees of Congress

As has been indicated, although the majority of the inherent contempt actions by both the House and the Senate were conducted via trial at the bar of the full body, there is historical evidence to support the notion that this is not the exclusive procedure by which such proceeding can occur. This history, when combined with a 1992 Supreme Court decision addressing the power of Congress to make its own rules for the conduct of impeachment trials,96 strongly suggests that the inherent contempt process can be supported and facilitated by the conduct of evidentiary proceedings and the development of recommendations at the committee level.

And, Page 34:

Enforcement of a Criminal or Inherent Contempt Resolution Against an Executive Branch Official

Although the DOJ appears to have acknowledged that properly authorized procedures for seeking civil enforcement provide the preferred method of enforcing a subpoena directed against an executive branch official,260 the executive branch has consistently taken the position that Congress cannot, as a matter of statutory or constitutional law, invoke either its inherent contempt authority or the criminal contempt of Congress procedures261 against an executive branch official acting on instructions by the President to assert executive privilege in response to a congressional subpoena. Under such circumstances, the Attorney General has previously directed the U.S. Attorney to refrain from pursuing a criminal contempt prosecution under 2 U.S.C. §§192, 194.262 This view is most fully articulated in two opinions by the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from the mid-1980s,263 and further evidenced by actions taken by the DOJ in the Burford, Miers, and Holder disputes, discussed below.264 As a result, when an executive branch official is invoking executive privilege at the behest of the President, the criminal contempt provision may prove ineffective, forcing Congress to rely on other avenues to enforce subpoenas, including civil enforcement through the federal courts.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RL/RL34097

I don’t think Lewandowski was an “Executive Branch Official”. I don’t know how binding the report is, but it covers a lot of what’s been going on. Lotsa case law and legalese.