Texas leads coalition of states in lawsuit against Obama immigration actions

Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott announced Wednesday that Texas is leading a 17-state coalition suing the Obama administration over the president's executive actions on immigration. 
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Texas on Wednesday, and names the heads of the top immigration enforcement agencies as defendants. 
Abbott, in a news conference in Austin, said the "broken" immigration system should be fixed by Congress, not by "presidential fiat." 
He said President Obama's recently announced executive actions -- a move designed to spare as many as 5 million people living illegally in the United States from deportation -- "directly violate the fundamental promise to the American people" by running afoul of the Constitution. 
"The ability of the president to dispense with laws was specifically considered and unanimously rejected at the Constitutional Convention," he said. 
Abbott specifically cited Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution which states the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." 
He said the lawsuit asks the court to require Obama to go through Congress before enforcing laws, "rather than making them up himself." 
However, a White House official defended the actions as perfectly within the president's authority.
“The Supreme Court and Congress have made clear that federal officials can set priorities in enforcing our immigration laws, and we are confident that the President’s executive actions are well within his legal authorities," the official told Fox News.
The announcement opens a new front in the roiling debate across the country over the immigration actions. 
The legal action comes as a separate legislative battle plays out on Capitol Hill. Some Republicans want to use a must-pass spending bill as leverage to defund the president's immigration initiatives. But House Speaker John Boehner is trying to push off that battle until next year, when his party will control both chambers. 
Under Obama's order, announced Nov. 20, protection from deportation and the right to work will be extended to an estimated 4.1 million parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents who have lived in the U.S. for at least five years and to hundreds of thousands more young people. 
In the lawsuit, Texas is joined by 16 other, mostly southern and Midwestern states, including Alabama, Georgia, Idaho and Indiana. 
Abbott argued Wednesday that Obama's action "tramples" portions of the U.S. Constitution. 
The lawsuit raises three objections: that Obama violated the "Take Care Clause" of the U.S. Constitution that limits the scope of presidential power; that the federal government violated rulemaking procedures; and that the order will "exacerbate the humanitarian crisis along the southern border, which will affect increased state investment in law enforcement, health care and education." 
Wednesday's announcement marks the 31st time the Texas attorney general has brought action against the federal government since Obama took office in 2009. The only other high-profile lawsuit against the immigration action has come on behalf of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. 
Potential 2016 presidential candidate and current Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who leaves office in January, also spoke out against the executive order earlier Wednesday, saying it could trigger a new flood of people pouring across the Texas-Mexico border. Perry and Abbott also have said the order will promote a culture of lawlessness. 
Perry said at a news conference that Obama's 2012 executive order delaying the deportation of children brought into the U.S. illegally by their parents triggered an unprecedented wave of unaccompanied minors and families, mostly from Central America, crossing into the U.S. this summer. 
"In effect, his action placed a neon sign on our border, assuring people that they could ignore the law of the United States," said Perry, who has deployed up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the border. 
The federal lawsuit involves the following states: Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Republicans vow to probe EPA paid leave linked to 'alleged serious misconduct'

EXCLUSIVE: Republican legislators, as they prepare for the incoming 114^th Congress in January, are vowing to keep a wary eye on the Environmental Protection Agency and its practice of granting paid administrative leave to staffers involved in possible “serious misconduct,” lawmakers tell Fox News.
“Bringing transparency to the EPA will continue to be at the top of our agenda with the new conservative majority,” says Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, ranking member of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee and one of the EPA’s leading critics in the outgoing 113^th Congress.  “EPA has allowed a number of employees to waste millions of taxpayer dollars in the last few years through lax internal controls and substandard management.”
His sentiments are echoed by Rep. Darrell Issa of California, who is finishing up a three-year term as chairman of the powerful House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Issa clashed often with EPA over the strange case of John Beale, a top EPA official who was jailed a year ago for taking more than $800,000 worth of time off from his job while falsely claiming to be a CIA agent.

“Bringing transparency to the EPA will continue to be at the top of our agenda with the new conservative majority.”- Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana

The Beale case, in turn, sparked a recent “early warning” report of EPA’s Office of the Inspector General that revealed eight other agency employees had taken a total of ten years of officially-mandated leave from their jobs. EPA subsequently told Fox News that all eight were involved in alleged serious misconduct cases, and that three had since left the agency.
The agency provided little other information, declaring that it could not comment on any of the three staffers who had left EPA, and in the other cases was constrained to address them “in a way that is consistent with the law.”
So far as Issa is concerned, however, the probing needs to continue.
“As this Committee has investigated over the past year and examined in multiple hearings,” he told Fox News, “EPA management appears to persist in its ongoing pattern of failure to properly address employee misconduct at the agency. Questions remain regarding the EPA’s management of these cases of misconduct -- and taxpayer money being wasted by keeping these individuals on the payroll instead of taking common-sense disciplinary actions.”
The big question is whether the Republicans who chair both of those powerful committees will share that sense of priority.
The new chairman of the Republican-controlled EPW committee starting in January is James Inhofe of Oklahoma, one of the leading critics of the Obama administration’s aggressive climate change agenda.
Inhofe is likely to have plenty to do in addressing that agenda, where EPA is taking a leading role in propounding a wave of new clean-air regulations, for example, that its critics declare are excessive and likely to be crippling to U.S. industry, as well as highly expensive for consumers.
Issa’s successor in the House Oversight job is Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, a highly regarded congressman who played an aggressive role in the committee’s probing of the Benghazi scandal, among other things.
Setting the agenda of both committees, however, is a task that the newly reconstituted membership can only take up in January.

GOP lawmakers, Benghazi survivors fume over House report

A recent report by a GOP-led committee that was seen as going easy on the Obama administration's Benghazi response is drawing stinging complaints from a number of Republicans on the panel, as well as survivors of the attack. 
Some GOP members on the House Intelligence Committee grumble that the final product "might as well have been written by the minority," while other House Republicans say they are frustrated with the committee's decision to release a report with so many "holes." 
Several lawmakers point their fingers at the committee's chairman, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich. Some members who disagreed with the findings said they stopped going to meetings because of concerns with his handling of the report, and didn't even take part in the final version. 
The report, released last month, found no intelligence lapses in connection with the fatal terror attack. Republican heavyweights like Sen. Lindsey Graham have blasted the findings as "garbage." 
But the findings also drew complaints from survivors, who testified behind closed doors, and caused deep divisions on the committee itself ahead of the report's release. Critical lawmakers wished to remain anonymous due to fear of blowback from Republican leadership. 
While House committee members have remained mostly silent, due to the secretive nature of the committee, some have complained to House Speaker John Boehner about the proceedings for months. Among the concerns was that Rogers was focusing strictly on the debate over the changed so-called "talking points" -- the administration's flawed narrative of the attack that initially blamed a protest over an anti-Islam film. Other Republicans on the committee, though, wanted the focus to be broader. 
Frustrations with Rogers have been boiling for more than a year, but nobody wanted to openly question the chairman with a midterm election looming, fearing it would give the media the chance to focus on Republican infighting rather than the issues. 
Even one Democrat on the committee said, "Rogers was more dismissive at times than Democrat members." 
No members would officially give consent to use their names, but all continue to question controversial maneuvers by Rogers and some members of his staff. 
"Rogers' staffers know more about some highly sensitive issues than some members. There is major stonewalling with information to other Republican members of the committee from Mike and some of his staffers," one House member who asked to go unnamed due to fear of backlash from GOP leadership told Fox News. "There is a lot of fighting and pressures behind the scenes and even some members oddly defending the Obama administration." 
Committee spokeswoman Susan Phalen said late Wednesday, "All members of HPSCI were given numerous opportunities to voice their views, comment on the report, or speak publicly or privately about the process. If any member disagreed with the process or outcome, every opportunity was made available for that member to voice his or her concerns."
She added no member wrote to express any frustration.
So why the internal battles? Why the struggle with members of the same party over a scandal that still has so many questions unanswered and an administration that still is vulnerable and unwilling to fully cooperate with the investigation? 
Now, at least five survivors contacted by Fox News say they too are frustrated and concerned their testimony is not fully represented. Kris Paronto and John Tiegan, both members of the CIA Annex Security Team who responded to the attack in Benghazi, say the report has major flaws. 
Paronto said: "Mike Rogers asked me ... 'Do you think that the delay cost lives?' ... and I looked him squarely in the eyes saying 'yes ... definitely.' We were told to wait and delayed three times which caused the deaths of Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith. Why would the report say otherwise or our words be disregarded?" 
Paronto's concern is echoed by others on the ground that night in Benghazi. While official timelines have differed and stories from the State Department and administration changed, the story from the men and women on the ground has remained steadfast. 
"As I stated for the FBI, CIA and House intel committee, we were delayed, held back, told to stand down, however you want to put it," Paronto said. "We finally left without authorization. I only wish we had disobeyed orders sooner, because not only would we have rescued the five State Department security guys, we would have stopped the terrorists before they killed the ambassador and Sean Smith." Yet this account doesn't jibe with the report released by Rogers' committee last month.   
Tiegan adds, "We provided the same unchanging and accurate information of what took place in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 through September 12, 2012 to our immediate chain of command in the CIA's office of security, during several FBI interviews, and to Congressman Rogers and his committee. So it comes as a very big disappointment to us as those on the front lines that this report is full of inaccuracies and bias." 
Phelan, while calling the loss of American lives in Benghazi a "tragedy," added "ultimately the opinion of one witness about what could have or might have happened is not credible evidence."
Their frustrations and concerns are echoed by members of the committee and others who have watched the hearings closely. Paronto, who along with Tiegen and others testified in front of the committee behind closed doors, said, "I think some people in Washington knew what was going on that evening in real time, and could not, or worse, would not make the tactically correct decisions ... and when Ambassador Stevens died, they wanted to cover their butts." 
The State Department and CIA weren't the only entities involved. Some operators in Benghazi on the night of the attack, who are still working for U.S. agencies, insist there were at least eight elected members of Congress read in on controversial operations that were ongoing in the country, including some Republicans. Operators also tell Fox News that many of these operatives and operations were completely unknown to the Libyan government and that would have caused an international incident if they were revealed. They wonder whether that is the reason some Republicans have allegedly been treading lightly. 
The frustrations with House intelligence and leadership also has extended to the new Benghazi Select Committee chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. Sources have said they were told to wait until after the midterm to truly go after information and even as they do, information leaks about witnesses, proceedings and details has hindered the process. 
As the investigation has picked up since the election, sources also say that the Gowdy-led commission has concerns about major pieces of information that the Rogers committee didn't take into consideration and important witnesses that were never called by the chairman. One survivor who has to remain anonymous because he still works on highly sensitive U.S. operations told Fox News, "I kept waiting for a phone call ... and nobody ever came."

Justice Department to investigate Eric Garner case

The Justice Department is planning to conduct a federal investigation into the chokehold death of an unarmed black male after a New York City grand jury declined to indict the white police officer who performed the move, Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday.
The probe will look for a potential civil rights investigations in the death of Eric Garner. Garner, 43, was confronted by police officers on July 17 on suspicion of selling loose cigarettes. A video shot by an onlooker shows a police officer choking Garner and Garner repeatedly saying he could not breathe.
Holder said this is one of "several recent incidents that have tested the sense of trust that must exist between law enforcement and the communities they are charged to serve and protect." Both cases have put law-enforcement officers under a microscope on how they use excessive force to arrests minorities.
"This is not a New York issue or a Ferguson issue alone," Holder told reporters late Wednesday. "Those who have protested peacefully across our great nation following the grand jury's decision in Ferguson have made that clear."
Separately, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said he had spoken with Holder and Loretta Lynch, the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of New York who has been nominated as Holder's successor, and was told that the federal investigation into the death will now move forward.
The investigation was announced Wednesday night, hours after the Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo. The grand jury could have considered charges ranging from murder to reckless endangerment.
The Justice Department had been monitoring the outcome of the local investigation before announcing its own probe. That investigation will be similar to a separate federal one already underway into the Aug. 9 shooting death in Ferguson of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. A county grand jury in that case decided last week to not indict the white officer, Darren Wilson.
To mount a federal prosecution in police misconduct cases, officials have to satisfy an extremely difficult legal standard — that the officer willfully violated a victim's civil rights and used more force than the law allowed. Though the legal standard will be the same in both the Ferguson and New York cases, there are important differences between the two investigations, said William Yeomans, a former Justice Department civil rights official.
"One big difference, and one thing I think makes this an easier investigation, is the existence of videotape," Yeomans said. "We didn't have that in Ferguson, and we would know much more about what happened in Ferguson if we had."
The chokehold maneuver is banned under New York Police Department guidelines. Police union officials and Pantaleo’s lawyer both argued that he used a legal takedown move because Garner was resisting arrest.
The medical examiner ruled Garner's death a homicide and found that a chokehold contributed to it.