‘This Is Mindboggling’: Congressman Says There Will Be Hearings Over Obama’s Illegal Terrorist Swap Deal
Representative Buck McKeon (R-CA) appeared on Fox News to announce that Republicans will hold hearings to investigate the legality of Obama’s Bergdahl terrorist swap deal. The negotiated release continues to anger many Americans beyond whether Bowe Bergdahl was a deserter, but that Obama didn’t even inform Congress of this deal raises a lot of questions of what purpose it served:
[Buck McKeon] cited the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed with bipartisan support that calls on the president to notify Congress at least 30 days prior to the release of detainees from Gitmo.
“We still have not been told what they’re going to do to ensure that these top five Taliban leaders don’t re-enter the fight,” McKeon said, adding that the blood of thousands of Afghans and Americans are on the terrorists’ hands.
Contrary to the administration’s claims, McKeon said Congress was not told about negotiations pertaining to Bergdahl’s release.
McKeon said the House will be holding hearings to look into the deal. “This president has a reputation, I think well deserved, of deciding which laws he’s going to enforce.”
He added, “We just are in the dark and that is a violation of law. […] It really is kind of ironic because this is kind of playing out much like Benghazi where they kind of do or don’t do something and then come up with a story afterwards of why they did or didn’t do something.”
It really is baffling that Obama would approve this swap and so blithely open up yet another opportunity for critics to accuse him of ignoring the law. The problem with the presidency is that if you have a commander-in-chief who actually follows the law, he becomes a lame duck in a second term. With a president like Obama who ignores the law, he becomes dangerous in a second term because he has nothing to lose.
