For those of us who’ve been following the refusal of former White House official Carl Kline, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office who overrode findings against awarding security clearances to various Trump progeny and others, I should think there was some tittering over this remark by his lawyer:
In a separate letter Monday, Kline’s attorney, Robert Driscoll, told the panel that his client would adhere to the White House recommendation.
“With two masters from two equal branches of government, we will follow the instructions of the one that employs him,” Driscoll wrote. [WaPo]
And how often does this happen in other areas of the law? Exactly zero. You don’t get to decide not to testify because your employer told you not to; you testify because the law said that this is an appropriate subject on which to testify, and, outside of Second Amendment considerations, you either do it or you end up in the pokey.
Now, the House Oversight Committee may not have the power to jail the dude, but they should make it very clear that he should be testifying because of the danger in which his decisions has potentially placed the United States, and because that’s the honorable thing to do. So President Trump told him not to. Big fucking deal. If the Administration is fucking things up, he should be hastening to give that testimony – not sitting on his ass with staples through his lips.
