Department of Education Miguel Cardona continues to interfere with—to obstruct—House investigations. This time, he’s interfering with subpoenas the House’s Committee on Education & the Workforce has sent to five separate student loan servicers (Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority; Nelnet Servicing, LLC; Maximus dba Aidvantage; Edfinancial Services; and Central Research, Inc) to compel their testimony regarding…student loans. Cardona is trying to block their appearance under the risible fiction that his Department has legal authority to review and approve materials before they are sent to the committee, including documents sent by the servicers and held by DoEd personnel.
There is a solution to this, and I’ve written about it before.
The House can use the Jurney v MacCracken case to arrest Miguel Cardona; his Department legal counsel, Lisa Brown; and her unnamed Department contract officer and haul them before the relevant House committees to testify under oath regarding their obstruction. Applying Jurney to sitting government officials may be a stretch, though.
On the other hand, Jurney is directly applicable to those five student loan servicers, and that would emphasize the criminal nature of Cardona’s obstruction as well as force the servicer personages to testify regardless of Cardona’s obstruction.
There are statutes barring obstruction of Congressional investigations by individuals, including government officials. There also are contempt of Congress statutes, applicable even to government officials. Unfortunately, they depend on enforcement by the Biden-Garland DoJ, and that’s entirely too questionable.
Jurney, however, would allow to House to skip over Garland’s lack of performance, to ignore his DoJ altogether: under that Supreme Court ruling (in a Senae case, but it would apply to both houses of Congress), the Speaker can send the Sergeant at Arms and sufficient Capital Police to go get the managers of the five loan servicers, under arrest if necessary, and detain them in House facilities until they’ve testified, and produced originals of the documents currently held up by Cardona’s DoEd.