Otherwise, the government could force all of us to testify against ourselves.Īnother concern is that holding contempt trials would take considerable time that legislators might profitably use on other business. But again, this bargain is a feature of democracy, not a bug. The only way around that, he said rather grimly, would be to vote the witnesses immunity, which would make it hard to prosecute them. Here’s another objection: I recently heard a television commentator complain that even if called, witnesses could refuse to answer questions by pleading the Fifth Amendment. After all, it’s easy to vote for contempt when all the work after the initial signal is done by someone else.ĭeschler’s Precedents (the semi-official handbook of House rules) says “a major shortcoming” of the process is “that the witness could be imprisoned only as long as the House remained in session.” But this aspect mirrors the same rule that typically holds for reluctant grand jury witnesses, and it is an important protection against vindictive authority. Rather than offload the costs of enforcement onto other branches, they’d be forced to get their hands dirty. Perhaps most important, by acting on their own initiative to lock up those who refuse to answer their questions, lawmakers would be unable to distance themselves from the act. And by investing their own time and resources in the process - there could be a congressional trial! - members would show the depth of their own concern about depriving a citizen of liberty.
Use of the inherent contempt power rather than a criminal referral or a civil lawsuit would make clear to the public the seriousness of holding a witness in contempt. A finding of contempt should have consequences - not just for the witness but for the senators or representatives who vote for it. The vote is pure theater - and essentially pointless, apart from allowing the members to signal their constituencies which side they’re on. Having cast a ballot, House members can move on to other matters. Nowadays, a contempt vote is easy and essentially costless. The Chicago Tribune dismissed him as “a serious annoyance to the representatives of the press, who, as a general thing, are gentlemen.” The sergeant-at-arms was ordered to hold him “in close custody until he shall purge himself of said contempt.” Wikoff was locked up in what historians tell us was a storeroom in the Capitol basement, although the editors of the Herald, which employed Wikoff, reported that he was held in “a dungeon” where he “slept on a iron rack.” (The press hardly leaped to Wikoff’s defense. The chair of the committee assured them that they would be told “at the proper time.”) (Some members of the House were uncertain what question Wikoff had declined to answer.
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Dissatisfied with the Chevalier’s refusal to disclose his source, the committee asked the full House to find him in contempt, which it promptly did. The committee called Mary Lincoln’s friend Henry Wikoff, known as the Chevalier, whom historians agree was the leaker. (Yes, back then, the publication of even the most mundane secrets of the executive branch was considered a matter of national moment.) The inherent contempt power, apparently uninvoked since 1935, might seem like a 19th-century relic, but maybe its prominence should be restored.Īlthough congressional assertion of an independent authority to punish contempt dates to 1795, its most notorious use came in 1862, when the House Judiciary Committee was investigating how President Abraham Lincoln’s message to Congress came to be printed in the New York Herald before being delivered.
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