Reply #3: There's two separate issues....

[cascadiance]

First the Democratic Party led committees now want to have more time than the original deadline of responding to subpoenas that would have only given them a week to study what was in them before responding to the subpoenas. Some might argue that the stonewalling of the investigations and these tight deadlines were intentional from the Rethugs and those behind the scenes' point of view.

Now in the case of Carol Lam, she has until February 15th to oversee any indictments on her watch before a newer U.S. attorney replaces her with the "purge" that is going on of U.S. Attorneys, which also likely was also by design. Probably want to limit how much she can combine in terms of getting more than just Wilkes prosecuted. Had she still been working after February 15th, I'm sure they would have strung it out at least another month or two after the House and Senate investigative committees were able to follow up more on things and then she would have nailed Wilkes later along with Hunter, Doolittle, and/or whoever else they ultimately want to get. Her hand is being forced now though, so I think she's getting what she can. Unfortunately once Wilkes is indicted and convicted, that will make it harder to cut a deal with him to get stronger evidence against others, which is I'm sure why he hasn't been nailed already just yet. Duke Cunningham is an example of how he's been a lot less cooperative once he already had his sentence in hand, and his cooperation with investigations wasn't going to do him much good after that.

The Republicans are definitely playing some games with this, and it is hard from a distance to guess what the true game is just yet. I'm guessing we'll see a bit more though in the coming weeks.