House Republicans want jail time for Holder and Tim Geithner must give up his personal memoirs

A motion filed by lawyers for the House Committee for Oversight and Government Reform and posted here reads in part:

October 1 has come and gone and the Attorney General has not produced to the Committee any documents.
Accordingly, the Committee now moves for entry of an order that directs the Attorney General to show cause, if any, why he should not be found in civil contempt for his failure to comply with the Court’s August 20 Order. Should the Court determine that the Attorney General has violated that Order, the Court should impose on the Attorney General an appropriate penalty to coerce his compliance with the August 20 Order, including an escalating daily monetary fine against Eric H. Holder, Jr., to be paid by Mr. Holder out of his personal assets, converting to incarceration if the payment of daily monetary fines does not produce compliance within a reasonable period of time.

In 2012 the House Committee filed suit in U.S. District Court before Judge Amy Berman Jackson. For more than 2 years the case has been hobbled by delays and negotiations. In a hearing on August 20 Judge Jackson found that the documents fell into 2 groups; those in which Obama could make a claim of executive privilege and another group in which no such claim could be supported. She ordered the Justice Department to begin turning over the documents from the second group by October 1. Justice threatened to appeal the ruling but never did nor did it turn over any documents to Oversight.
Last month, lawyers for Holder requested an extension of the Wednesday deadline, arguing that it made more sense for Jackson to rule on all the disputed records and then take the case to the D.C. Circuit for an appeal rather than proceed piecemeal. Committee lawyers said they want any documents they’re entitled to now, rather than waiting. The House committee did indicate earlier that it would not object to extending the deadline until Nov. 3. However, the new House motion argues the extension Holder sought was not to apply to all the documents he was required to turn over. The Justice Department contends it does.
Gee! Just as Holder thought he could slip out of town and spend some quality time with his ohbeeguynee wife and maybe take up mahjong or macrame in his golden years Republicans want to throw him in the slammer. One suspects that the Oversight lawyers know it will complicate and delay the case further if it is not settled while Holder is still AG. Also it would help to have something to leak to the public just prior to the election.
DOJ did not fare well in its other case where the claim of privileged information has been made. I have written several posts about the McGraw Hill lawsuit and the "retaliatory defense" but for those not familiar with the case here is a brief summary.
In August of 2011 shortly after Standard and Poor downgraded the U.S. credit rating Harold McGraw III, CEO of McGraw Hill, the parent company of Standard and Poor received an angry phone call from then Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner who warned that such an action could not occur without a response from the government. All 3 credit rating agencies, S&P, Moody's, and Fitch, were publicly blamed by the Obama administration for contributing to the financial meltdown of 2008 yet only S&P was named in a lawsuit. McGraw Hill lawyers argue the case was brought in bad faith as retaliation for the downgrading of U.S. debt. By reviewing the White House log they pinpointed the time of Geithner's call as 5 minutes after he left Obama's office meaning it was probably made from the White House.
After some back and forth District Court Judge David Carter allowed S&P to pursue its "retaliatory defense". Probably the DOJ was feeling pretty cocky about its chances at this time since Obama would surely claim executive privilege but funny thing happened on the way to a slam dunk victory. Geithner wrote his best selling book, “Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises.” Rather than subpoena White House records S&P lawyers subpoenaed Geithner's personal memoirs that he used to write his book. His lawyers say requests to hand over the papers compromise his privacy.
Nice try but no cigar!
“A former official cannot, on the one hand, withhold information in a case of significant public importance, while on the other, collect money from sales of a tell-all book that contains much the same information. The public has a right to every man’s evidence,” wrote Judge Carter.
On the brighter side this could return Geithner's book to the New York Times Bestseller’s list where it spent a month after debuting at number 4.