Americans for Limited Government (ALG) has submitted a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) asking it to investigate the attorneys who provided the legal justification for Barack Obama’s unconstitutional recess appointments.
The complaint – submitted to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) – requests that Assistant Attorney General Virginia A. Seitz and other attorneys at the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) be investigated for their roles in drafting a January 6, 2012 memo that retroactively justified Obama’s appointees to the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) and the recently-created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
“The Obama administration is deliberately trampling on the Constitution in an effort to advance its radical anti-free market agenda,” said ALG President Bill Wilson. “This isn’t just an abuse of power – it’s an unconstitutional usurpation of power. All Americans should condemn Obama for the contempt he is showing for the rule of law – and the Justice Department attorneys who aided and abetted this usurpation must be held accountable for violating their oaths.”
According to the ALG complaint, the DOJ memo authored by Seitz “leaves no practical constraints on the appointment power of the President, regardless of whether the Senate considers itself in recess or not. The memo also utterly ignores the constitutional right of the Senate set its own schedule and rules.”
(To view the complaint, click here)
“Obama is stripping the legislative branch of its constitutional prerogative so that he can continue to appease his union allies,” Wilson said. “It’s one thing for him to continue rewarding the labor leaders who bankrolled his election, it’s something else entirely for his administration to violate the Constitution in the process.”
There is legal and political precedent for the OPR to conduct precisely the sort of inquiry that ALG is requesting. In fact the agency spent several years investigating former Justice Department attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee regarding the advice they provided former
