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Comment by bobthepanda | Hacker News Reader

Does the House have the sole power to do this? Or do you need both?

It's my understanding that Congress has the power to summon anybody, arrest and jail them for failure to appear. It sounds like they have neither the bodies nor the jail to actually execute that power -- nor have they tried to acquire such resources. The net effect is that the white house has refused to permit folks to appear before Congress, and Congress has acquiesced every time... setting a precedent that the Executive branch cannot, in fact, be checked by the Legislative branch.

This is just interesting trivia, but the House and Senate can both ask their respective Sergeant at Arms to perform an arrest. This has never happened as far as I know, but from my reading seems to be permissible for a failure to appear.

There are plenty of logistical issues. I'm not sure the Sergeant at Arms even owns handcuffs, much less a place to keep people being held, and I'm sure it would suddenly become a huge scandal - but it would be very interesting.

In 1934, a man named William P. MacCracken Jr. was held overnight at a local hotel before being transferred to a DC jail.

There is no actual jail on premises.

In 1922, the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms deputized someone who then traveled to Ohio and arrested the brother of the sitting Attorney General after he ignored a Senate subpoena and was cited for contempt of Congress. The arrest was upheld by the Supreme Court in McGrain v. Daugherty in 1927.

In 1934, the Senate cited two men for contempt of Congress and sentenced them to 10 days in the DC jail. One, William P. MacCracken, Jr, fought the case in court, eventually losing in the Supreme Court case Jurney v. MacCracken of 1935. He served one night of his sentence in the home of the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms and another in the Willard hotel... I was unable to figure out if he ever actually ended up in the DC jail.

> He served one night of his sentence in the home of the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms

"Sir, this is my guest room, please don't break the window trying to escape or my wife will be the one deputized to recapture you."

> I'm not sure the Sergeant at Arms even owns handcuffs

Maybe not, but the House and Senate Sergeants-at-Arms jointly supervise the Capitol Police, whose officers I'm sure either can deputize at need. I'm fairly certain that the Capitol Police both have and are intimately familiar with the use of the whole panoply of law enforcement gear.

>It's my understanding that Congress has the power to summon anybody, arrest and jail them for failure to appear.

AIUI, that's true. However, action (and inaction) by the Executive and inaction by Congress, not just recently either, complicates matters.

A pretty good article at Lawfare[0] discusses this at some length.

Also a bill[1] was introduced in the House last June to clarify some of these issues.

Hopefully more attention will be paid to ensuring that Congressional oversight is able to function effectively.

However, one must also guard against politicization of those processes -- but, IMHO, that's less important than making sure the Congress can effectively exercise its oversight role.

[0] https://www.lawfareblog.com/can-congress-fine-federal-offici...

[1] https://lieu.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-lieu-...

Traditionally Congress has referred enforcement to the US Department of Justice. The flaws of this should probably be obvious in the current political environment.

A lot of this came up during the investigations prior to the Trump impeachment in the context of forcing witnesses to appear.

They do have holding cells in the Capitol Building as I recall, and Congress can refer things to DoJ. If the President stonewalls, there may be some need for someone to get creative, but the Courts are unlikely to intervene in any obstructive fashion whatsoever.

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